Reply to Racism / Classism on DCurbanmom trolls or true?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you want to claim that "unprepared students" is really some code word for poor and brown children, then please provide me the correct words to describe students who are unprepared. [/quote]

I think you should just go ahead and use the term unprepared in any way you see fit, but then be prepared for the response it receives.

Maybe as a quid pro quo, you can share how you know that kids in a given school or classroom are unprepared and how you find schools where the kids are all prepared.

A lot of DC parents would be grateful if you could make the distinction discernible.  [/quote]

I am a NP.  I lived for many years EOTP, have now moved to dark side.  In my children's new school versus our old neighborhood, I can tell children are "prepared" in the following ways : they got enough sleep.  They were not kept up by a party, or just not great parenting, or (in the case of my next door neighbor) what I was pretty sure was prostitution.  They have enough to eat, so that they can concentrate and learn.  They've been read to at some point in their lives.  No one today has screamed obscenities at them.  My heart absolutely breaks for so many of the kids I used to see on a daily basis.  I don't want my kids away from them, or not to associate with them.  None of this is their fault.  But you are blind if you think it doesn't have an effect on schools and classrooms and peers.  And it doesn't make those of us who admit that bad people, racist or classist, to worry about it.  Navigating DC schools is hard.  But I really think the vast majority of us are good people with good intentions, both for our kids and their classmates.[/quote]

Perhaps this is not a major point that moves the current discussion forward, but just as an aside, it's mildly irritating when all of EOTP is painted with the same huge brush.  My kid is currently at a NW EOTP elementary where none of the above characterizations are true of my kid or her friends.  After three years at the school, from what I can tell, all of her classmates are excited about learning, and are coming to school prepared.  I've seen a couple of behavioral and learning problems, but those have actually been transient issues among of the more affluent families in our upper 16th St. neighborhood.  There are also several OOB (of various races/ethnicities) kids who are well-spoken, early readers, and kind kids who are wonderful additions to the class.

A neighbor recently relayed how his kid who goes to Deal was called "poor" by a WOTP classmate.  The dad sort of just rolled his eyes and laughed it off, because this kid is from an upper middle class, well-educated AA family.  Because this kid lives EOTP and is black, I'm guessing the assumption was that she was from a modest background.

The problem with simply referring to EOTP as if it is one big, disadvantaged swath of the city is that it paints all kids here--many of whom are AA or Latino--with the same broad brush.  And the concern of many parents (including my own AA family) is that our kids are sometimes treated as "less than" or as potential problem kids by peers and teachers, particularly WOTP.[/quote]

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