Jeantel: What We Expect From Public Schools

Some may laugh and others may joke about it. Others will blame it on a system that needs more money. But for those (this essayist included) who have been speaking out against America’s steady degradation of education, Rachel Jeantel is the poster child for exactly what we’ve come to expect from public education.

Jeantel was advertised as the star prosecution witness in the George Zimmerman trial. You know – the one where “a white Hispanic brutally gunned down an unarmed African-American simply because he was black.” (Excuse me while I throw-up.)

At least once every year we witness teacher strikes because they’re upset about having to pay another ten dollars a month in co-pay premiums for their healthcare policies and/or they demand more salary. Their plaintive cries always circle back to “without higher wages” they unable are to teach. You’ve seen interviews of striking teachers looking like outcasts from an off-off-off-off Broadway version of La Cage aux Folles as they demand more money claiming it’s the only way they can teach.

My question is, how much more money will it take for these unskilled, unqualified, overpaid, anarchic prima donnas to teach the Rachel Jeantels (whom the public school system has produced and is producing) to read and write cursive? And for those public school educated liberals who will read this column cursive is script writing where all of the letters of each word are tethered together.

On one hand, I have the greatest condemnation for Jeantel. But on the other hand, I have great sorrow for her. She is ignorant (read uneducated) on levels she cannot begin to fathom. If she is unable to read and write cursive, it is highly unlikely that she is able to read and write on any quantifiable level that would make her employable outside of a federal government job (sarcasm intended).

But there are those who would rather dismiss the substance of my concern for Jeantel. Writing for Slate.com Justin Peters wrote: “These observations are generally framed as discussions of her credibility and how she’ll be received by the jury. But they’re also an excuse to point and laugh at a poor, black teenager who comes from an America that we’d rather not acknowledge exists.” (Rachel Jeantel Gets the Trayvon Martin Treatment; 6/28/13)

His piece of politically correct spin is mind numbing. It is the precise reason that people like Jeantel are flushed from the public school system each year, unable to read and/or write. When all else fails, blame it on a white cooperative who wants to forget about uneducated blacks that are lacking in acceptable social skills.

As friends and I discussed Friday evening, that’s the way liberals reason. Rather than admit failure of the systems they designed, they blame their failure on lack of money, conservative intolerance, or evil white men. Jeantel, as liberal reasoning goes, shouldn’t be held accountable as a poor (and I argue untruthful) witness – the defense attorneys should be ridiculed for daring to point out all of the things that made her a less than credible witness, including her inability to read and write.

Jeantel’s lack of social skills is embarrassing, and, as I have pointed out countless times, indicative of the cesspool of education she comes from. It’s hard to fault her parents (or more probably “parent” singular) for her lack of social skills and education. After all, her family comes from the same public education system.

People like Peters are quick to decry even black people who found fault with Jeantel as long as the blacks can be painted as conservative or uppity blacks who wannabe white.

More money and Cadillac health policies are not going to help the Jeantels of the world. But an effective system of education would. Vouchers, home schooling, and private (preferably Christian) schools are the answer. You do not find children who are home-schooled who are unable to read and write in cursive, nor do you find children who have been educated in private schools unable to read and write same.

The majority of public school teachers do not have enough common sense to be ashamed of their failure to teach. They view teaching as a great healthcare plan and a means to a retirement home at the shore.

We shouldn’t laugh at Jeantel. We should pity her and all of those like her. And color shouldn’t be a factor, because public schools are producing young people of every description just like her.

Hopefully, the day will come when mentioning public schools will make us rinse our mouths and spit, not say we should give them more money.