Education

Last edited Tue Oct 16, 2012, 10:50 PM - Edit history (1)

"...the objective of "public housing" when it was created in the early 1930s was what you say, but by the early 1950s (about 20 years later) that objective had changed dramatically, not how you portray it."

you keep talking about 'public housing' in generalities, like it was all the same. it wasn't, as you'd know if you'd bothered to read the article or the posts in this thread.

woodside houses wasn't even *built* until 1949, for god's sake, and klein's family moved there in 1955, when he was 9. It was middle-class housing when klein's family lived there, as I've demonstrated *with photos and information from the period*, which you ignore. Not to mention photos from his high school during the same period, his (middle-class, jewish) classmates of the same period, etc.

For some reason, despite all evidence, you want to believe klein grew up poor in 'the projects'. Probably because you've bought into the narrative of 'good teachers/bad teachers' as is clear from your post about 'good teachers making the difference'.

No, he grew up in a middle-class jewish community in astoria in the 50s.

And I went to school in the 50s and 60s & had plenty of *terrible* teachers. Yet i went to college & fulfilled all the middle-class expectations. Because I grew up in a functional working-class community, where people had jobs and parents valued education.

"...he NEVER said his parents couldn't read - I KNEW you would cite that quote - and figured it would be out of context."

Baloney. The meaning is clear from the full quote, & if you can't see it, you need to work on your own reading skills.

Klein: "Teachers set expectations for me that were not commensurate with my background or my family’s income....Nobody in (my) school said to me, ‘Well, you grew up in public housing, your parents don’t read, you’ve never been to a museum, so we shouldn’t expect too much from you!’"

He's clearly saying that teachers' expectations of him were ABOVE what his (fictionally economically and academically impoverished) background might warrant. IOW, "Even though I grew up in public housing, even though my parents couldn't read, even though I'd never been to a museum, my teachers didn't focus on that, they expected a lot of me."

It's not the only place Klein dishonors his parents:

"I stood on the shoulders of teachers to see a world that I couldn’t have seen growing up in the family that I grew up in."

No one in my family....knew about college. I had no appreciation of reading or cultural activities.

By most people’s lights, we were certainly working-class, poor. … I grew up in a pretty unhappy household. …

"surely you're knowledeable enough to know that no one gets through the 10th grade or graduates from high school without being able to read."

Yes, & I also know that the idea that a middle-class (or even working-class) jewish family in 1950s-60s NYC didn't know anything about college, reading or culture is equally laughable. Yet that is what klein said.

He's a liar, he dishonors his parents and his own history, and he's lying in order to destroy the public education system that nurtured him, to fill his own pockets. He's a world-class asshole.