By Dr. John Trotter

   NCLB, QBE, APEG, ITBS, GTOI, GTEP, et al.  All of it "ain't" worth S-H-_T.  None of the acronyms address D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N-E.  The responsibility for leanrning should rest squarely on the shoulders of the students and their parents.  Give the teachers the authority to run his or her classes with the full backing of the administration.  This is how it worked in the old days, and it did indeed work!  Bring back the paddle.  Yes, the good ole "board of education."  Most people over forty (even educators) grew up in schools where paddling was readity available and used.  It was used on my friends, colleagues, and me, and the paddle did not emotionally scar us one bit.  In fact, we laugh about our experiences with the paddle in the schools that we attended.  I was an administrator in Georgia in the 1980s and used the paddle in two school systems.  The discipline was in check, I must say, and the students respected me for the good discipline.  Now, however, the
discipline is out of control.  In fact, a phrase like "DeKalb Discipline" is an oxymoron.  It doesn't matter what program/reform or how much money is thrown at public schooling in Georgia, until the teacher's classroom authority is restored and teachers are treated with respect (meaning defiant students are swiftly removed from the rregular classroom environments), then the educrats are just spitting into against a Category Five hurricane.  Nothing is going to change.  In fact, with people like Crawford Lewis and Alvin Wilbanks in charge of our schools, then things will only get worse.

  You never allow the the teachers to do the paddling because this could become problematic when there are not adult witnesses and the teacher may be very emotional at this point.  The administrator can administer the paddling dispassionately and without the danger of getting carried away, so to speak.  Always have an adult witness.  Only swat the student two or three times.  This makes the point that there are no free trips to the office; there are always consequences for misconduct.  If a parent refuses to give their "blessings" to corporal punishment (by law, it is  not needed), then simply write this on the student's disciplinary card (I doubt that today's administrators even understand this concept) and call the student's parents to come get the student when he or she disrupts the class.  This will get very old for the parents.  Before you know it, this student begins to behave in school.  I have seen this happen so often.  But, the administrators have to be consistent in their support for the classroom educators.  Corporal punishment is no panacea, but simply another tool in the school's disciplinary "arsenal." 

   The Georgia schools are going the way of the Chicago, Detroit, New Jersey, and New York City schools.  Enough said?  Our educrats will no longer dare permit padding but gang-banding is just accepted and swept under the rung.  In their minds, paddling in brutal and barbaric, but these same dimwit educrats benignly overlook the abject bullying which sometimes even leads to tragic deaths.  I heard Newt Gingrich once remark at a forum about school discipline:  "Yes, we no longer allow paddling but we allow drive-by shootings."  For years, the "board of education" was part and parcel with public education.  It was understood.  It worked.  Then came along the Dr. Spock mentality of raising children.  By the way, I am now reading James McBride's The Color of Water.  It was on the NY Times's Best Seller List for two years.  Read it and see how this mother of 12 children raised her children in NY City.  Extremely strong discipline.  All today are very successful
and contributing well to society.  Several of these "childfen" are now living in the Atlanta area.  Without discipline, all of the attempts to "educate" our children will fail -- whether in the home or in the public school setting.  The private schools clearly understand this, and this is why these schools are flourishing.  Enough said.  

   ( Mr. James McBride did admit that his house seemed like organized chaos when he was growing up, but he also talked about how his "white mama" (Jewish too) "beat" them whenever she perceived that they got out of line -- like when Richie (I think) got stage fright and forgot the Bible story he was suppose to recite in front of the whole church.  I thought that this was a bit much!  But, you can't argue with how all 12 of the children turned out!  Occasionally getting it wrong as far as being too strict in the discipline is better than pandering and coddling miscreant children simply because you don't have the intestinal fortitude to discipline them.  This is what is happening in our schools today.  The thugs are running the show and ruining our schools.  The "äverage" students who have not been sequestered into the "gifted" classes have to "survive" in the classes with the thugs.  It is the "average" students who are suffering so much.  The administrators, as I have said in the past, ought to be metaphorically strung up and horse-whipped because of their lack of guts.  Mama Ruth in The Color of Water may have screwed up many times in dealing with her children, but she did not let them run the show.  She ran the show -- to the best of her ability -- and her 12 children and many grandchildren honor her to this day for her dogged determination that they were going to make something out of their lives.
   The world sends its best and brightest to our shores to study in our colleges, universities, graduate schools, and medical schools, but they would cringe at the thougth of sending their children to attend one of our urban schools.  The urban schools in American are completely in shambles, and as soon as we first admit this, then perhaps can we address the matter.  Burying our collective heads in the sand and acting as if thugs are not running the schools will only exasperate the problems and ensure that these schools will continue to be war zones.  Heck, even SACS's Mark Elgart is AFRAID to venture into one of these  war zones.  Hey Markie boy, I am still waiting for your response to debate me concerning the application of SACS's almighty "standards."  Are you too afraid of John Trotter, the big, bad wolf? (c) MACE, June 20,2009.

By Dr. John Trotter

   I have found that DeKalb County (and it is not the only system, but perhaps the worst) will go to great ends to cover up wrong doing.  In late April, they went to the end of trying to try "ban" me from being on any property in the DeKalb County Schools -- as if they can arbitrarily do this with egregiously trumped-up lies because they do not like my message to them:  They are engaging in corruptiom.  They seem to have the philosophy of killing the messenger if they disagree with the message.  They even had their joke of a legal counsel, Josey Alexander, to threaten me with arrest for "ïllegal pickets." For real!  Lol.  Of course, MACE kept picketing and drawing attention to "systematic cheating" in DeKalb.  Channel 11 (Keith Whitney) even covered one of the many pickets which we staged AFTER Josey Alexander's preposterous threat about "ïllegal pickets."  (Has she ever heard of Category One Free Speech Forums?  What about Content Regulations which, by the
way, are patently illegal?  What about Ronald Ramsey?  Where did these lawyers go to law school?  Were they asleep in the classes when Constitutional Law was taught?)  Yes, Ronald Ramsey summarily and illegally shut down a grievance hearing when a Clarkston High School teacher was about to testify, along with other teacher-witnesses, that there is systematic cheating taking place in the area of grading at DeKalb's Clarkston High School.  Why don't the State's investigators start at Clarkston High School if they REALLY want to uncover what is apparently taking place in a widespread manner thoughout the State of Georgia -- and especially in the more urban areas?  Where is that joke of an educator Mark Elgart?  No standards have been violated, Mark Elgart?  Or, Little Markie, were you only interested in Clayton County because your little friend Ericka Davis called upon you for help?  I challenge Mark Elgart to a public debate about the hypocrisy of how
SACS's so-called "standards" are applied.  It is hit or miss.  They are applied in the most capricious and arbitrary ways.  What about a debate, Mark?  Are you still afraid?  Still want people to treat you like you are a demi-god?  In my book, you and Crawford Lewis and Beverly Hall are three of the biggest educational hypocrites in Georgia.  Hey, Mark Elgart, I am calling you out.  Are you afraid?  My name is John Trotter.  You know how to contact me. (The foregoing was written on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's GetSchooled blog.)

    By Dr. John Trotter

  Yes, at least DeKalb’s Central Office Administrator Bob Moseley admitted to the cheating at Atherton Elementary School in DeKalb County.  This is a bit refreshing.  I know Bob, and I have found him to be even-handed.  He probably is the most qualified administrator in DeKalb to be the superintendent in DeKalb.  Did you hear this, DeKalb County School Board?  Oops!  He doesn't qualify after all.  He's the wrong color.  Robert Moseley is white.  This is another little dirty secret which I will let out of the bag...predominantly black school systems, like predominantly white school systems, are also racist in their approaches about who receives which appointments, if any.  Jobs in public schools are made based on racial considerations.  This is simply a given.  Tokens (be they black tokens or white tokens) are thrown in the mix to create some deniability, but nevertheless my assertion here is true.  Public school systems' decisions (eminating from the elected board members) invariably are race-based -- despite the hollow and empty protestations to the contrary.  This is unfortunate that promotions are not based on merit but on racism, cronyism, nepotism, sororityism, fraternityism, churchism, clubism, and, of course, who's-sleeping-with-whomism.  Sorry, Bob, but you are simply the wrong color in "Premier" DeKalb.  The citizens of DeKalb will just have to suffer under the clownism of Crawford Lewis.  Your colleagues did not want to face the music, and you were given this onerous task of facing the media about the egregious cheating.  You were a "stand-up" guy.  We at MACE have known about the serious allegations of systematic cheating in DeKalb for quite some time now.  We have written about it and filed grievances about it but, of course, the good senator's, Ron Ramsey's, office just shuts down a grievance which "Premier" DeKalb apparently does not want to hear for fear of more sordid exposure.  So, we have also picketed on several occasions about this systematic cheating.