Number 10
Gadsden Elementary -- 10th Best?Nine little Indians,
Their hearts were full of hate.
One took his neighbor's goods,
Then there were eight
--Ten Little Indians,
The Yardbirds
Kind of makes me feel sometimes,
didn't have to go
But as the eagle leaves the nest,
it's got so far to go
--Ten Years Gone, Led Zeppelin
My arms enfold the dole queue
Malnutrition dulls my hair
My eyes are black and lifeless
With an underprivileged stare
--One in Ten, UB 40
___________________
So Ranger was surprised to see this sign on the grounds of his local Elementary School: "10th Best School in Florida, 2012". Looking very penitentiary-like and down at the heels as it was built the same year the Titanic sunk, that linkage was probably portentous; not all sinkings are swift. But the surprising thing about the school was that it was thrilled to be #10.
It was not easy to find online how this modest rating was achieved, or by which agency it was awarded; Gadsden Elementary is not a SACS affiliated school. Surely it can't be 10th best in every metric. Most of the hits gave a generic thumbs up by real estate companies trying to woo potential clients of young children to settle in this modest town. However, some of the rankings of the local Quincy Shanks High School were online, testifying to a more dismal public school legacy:
Quincy Shanks High School is an "F" school -- the lowest ranking possibly, and it has held that position for a number of years, probably since the rating system began. (The other two schools in Gadsden County are only marginally better: West Gadsden is ranked in the bottom 20%; East Gadsden slightly higher in the bottom 40%.) The dismal Quincy Shanks High School is 95% black; 9% of the students take the SAT, with an average COMBINED score of 702 (Quincy Shanks High School data.)
In this context, #10 would be noteworthy. Now if you want to discuss football rankings, you will get a far cheerier picture. After graduation, Gadsden County jail or a number of fast food joints await.
If this elementary school truly is the 10th best school, something bad is happening between childhood and young adulthood. But the county is No.1 in one ranking: It has the highest sexually transmitted disease (STD) rate in the state. And per capita recently, Gadsden's AIDs rate was in the running for top spot, just behind that of the nation of Ghana, actually. (When national magazine Essence featured Quincy's remarkable AIDs standing in Feb. 03, it was not the sort of notoriety the poor town was hoping for.)
It all depends on where your priorities lie.
Labels: gadsden schools, gadsden std rate, quincy education
posted by rangeragainstwar at 8:43 PM
10 Comments:
Speaking of numbers, every year my privileged Upstate New York High School out in vanilla suburbia volunteered for a day at an Inner-City School in what used to be one of the top-ten most violent cities in the country.
Although it was primarily a one-off event to inflate the ego of my liberal elitist faculty it did show me how that other half lived. Empty bags of cocaine lined the side streets and bullet holes through windows were clearly visible. For my own haphazardly organized work group, cleaning out the dusty basement of broken desks lasted the entire day alone. Others, long finished could of sworn we accidently entombed ourselves there.
Indeed, that I didn't have to go to an elementary school that was converted, literally from a tuberculosis hospice is why I count my blessings.
Nikolay,
Thank you for sharing. I volunteered for a Habitat for Humanity build while in college at the behest of a liberal professor who told us it would make us feel good. I was struck by the fact that the black family whose house we were renovating sat inside watching t.v. as we, under a builder's supervision, labored away.
Why was that?
I have also worked with dropouts and potential dropouts, and seen a little of the poverty of mindset and circumstance which serves as the cauldron for such outcomes.
[n.b.: If you attended an elite school, grammar matters:
"could of sworn" should be, "could have sworn ;)]
These parts of the U.S. are, almost literally, a war zone.
And I mean that in the sense that central Germany was a "war zone" in the Thirty Years War. Read accounts of people who traversed the present day German Länder Hessen, Thuringen, and Rheinland-Pfalz; those places had been destroyed so many times that the people who remained had just stopped giving a shit. They were doomed and they knew it. Anyone who could had gotten out - those that remained were the hopeless. Fields lay fallow because the farmers knew that they wouldn't get to reap - it would be stolen by someone's troops. Women didn't bother to spin or weave because the results would be taken as soon as they were done.
Same-same here; these folks are completely and utterly defeated.
When she was in grad school my wife (who was in an "urban planning" program) was assigned a piece of inner Detroit to study. Her job was to assess the present condition and give recommendations for courses of action the City could take.
Well, she completed her study and time came to present the results to the City. And she stood up and presented her data...and her conclusion was, in effect, "destroy the brutes"; that the neighborhood was so completely destroyed socially, economically, and personally that there was nothing that anyone could do. Even moving a start-up in and employing everyone employable at middle-class wages wouldn't work; the number of people who were utterly messed up in terms of human skills was too huge, and they would pull down the smaller group of functional humans.
Here's a funny - but fucked-up and true - take on the sort of thing that you "learn" when you're really poor: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor/
Lisa: I'm surprised. I've worked on HfH projects, and one of the requirements is that the future residents HAVE to work. IT's not an option; if they don't, our HfH won't sign a contract with them.
Chief,
You are correct in the case of the Habitat homes which are built for the homeowner; the prospective occupant must put in a certain amount of sweat equity. However, not so in the case of the retrofits.
I just saw their staying inside as a case of feeling impotent or marginalized; like it was the white people helping, and they had a mixture of relief but also probably resentment. Almost like they were the recipients of some benevolent colonialism. Maybe it was more at "defeat".
Your wife's story is most instructive, and the link confirms things I've often stated on this blog.
Yesterday I entered a discussion about a mutual friend, a retired sociology professor emeritus from FAMU. As the child of poor black sharecroppers in AL, he said even to this day it is hard for him to choose filet mignon if he wants a nice cut of meat -- even though money is no problem -- over, say, chuck. He is still possessed of the "bean counter" mentality, and moreover, does not feel he deserves the better item.
Formative mindsets are so very hard to re-wire.
You had to correct Mr. Levin when he wrote "could of sworn" instead of "could have sworn?" So he made a tiny error. This is a BLOG. It's not someone's doctoral dissertation for Christ's sake. Why are you so hypercritical of others when your own writing is so mediocre? I really don't understand.
BTW I have found plenty of errors in your past blog entries. Should I start pointing them out to you?
--Disappointed reader
Lisa...
Mr. Levin's could of sworn would be recognized by anyone with any expertise in linguistics as a speech production error or lapsus linguae-- not a grammar error. could have, could've and could of are clearly homophonic heterographs, the transposition of which is entirely unrelated to educational attainment or intelligence. In the absence of cerebral dysfunction, such simple speech errors are generally a function of fatigue, stress, or intoxication.
-- @^@
Nikolay,
Were you drunk? Shoulda just said it, buddy ;)
Dear Anon D.R.,
Thanks, no; just start your own blog.
Disappointed reader,
Just a few small points.
We strive to present a professionally presented blog.
We do so at no profit or compensation b/c we oppose senseless wars.
That's my side of it.
I also do so with the balls to present myself for attack and never hide behind the word -ANONYMOUS.
If you want to bust our balls then have the guts to sign your name.
jim
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