A ghetto is the real estate where a society isolates and segregates a segment of itself. After a time, the people who have been confined there start to define themselves in terms of it. Some actually like being there. If they are to be ostracized, they reason, it's better to be close to others who are ostracized as well and to deal with those on the outside as little as possible.
Ghettos are created by sick societies as a way to redirect criticism, guilt, hatred, fear, and a host of other uncomfortable emotions onto a specific group of people. They are also created by ruthless leaders for the purpose of consolidating their power. Having a group of targets in one location makes pogroms much more convenient and therefore much more likely. Pogroms desensitize people over time to expect worse and worse behavior on the part of the larger society and worse and worse suffering on the part of the victims in the ghetto.
This can lead to genocide.
I am NOT saying that the teachers in the Rubber Room are about to be carted off to concentration camps and gassed.
I AM saying that New York City has created a ghetto and is therefore sick.
Ghettos are bad.
Societies that create ghettos are sick.
People who are isolated in ghettos are victims of a larger, sicker society.
The Rubber Room is a ghetto.
The Rubber Room is bad.
New York City is sick.
The teachers in the Rubber Room are victims of New York City's sickness.
On general principals, we cannot allow ghettos to exist. We must fight to tear them down as they are built. Life outside the Rubber Room might be more challenging and uncomfortable for the detainees, but there are better ways of helping each other than sitting together in ghettos.
Reason #1 to celebrate the closing of the Rubber Rooms: GHETTOS ARE BAD.
5 comments:
could not get the right atmnosphere for what the "rubber room" is. But you did it is a ghetto atmosphere, as people await their fate.
It's on general :"principles" not principals. Remember the Principal is our pal. I only correct this because I don't want someone remarking that teachers can't write and ignoring the insights of your post.
Moriah,
A ghetto is not the correct definition of the rubber room ambience. A more fitting analogy would be death row.
The rubber room is death row for teaching careers.
The gloom and depression that are part of the latex latrine experience are rather unique.
The restriction of movement between floors is indicative of a penal colony.
The pariah status of the inmates goes much further than that of a ghetto inhabitant.
The term ghetto originated in medieval Italy. Jews were forced to live in a walled in section of a city and couldn't leave.
The term is entirely misused by minorities in Obama's Amerikkka.
I see the rubber room as something a lot more menacing. The only ghetto I can compare it to would be the Warsaw Ghetto, as it was being liquidated by the Germans during WW2.
The Latex Latrine will be transformed into a regular mundane office building utilized by those fantastic new money grubbing CFN's.
Some of the former inmates of the Rubber Rooms will now be the clerical slaves of these CFN's.
They will not be able to exchange information and help themselves.
They will be working for the sadists who will see to it that their education degrees are well utilized in filing papers and doing clerical scutwork.
Thank the bald pimp for having closed the ghetto and sending you to the forced labor camp.
Cordially,
Angry Nog
Yes, Anon 4:33, Principal P is my pal. I'll try not to forget again.
Angry Nog, Whatever the analogy or metaphor we choose to use, we still agree that the Rubber Room is bad.
Whatever Rubber Room metamorphosis awaits us in September, we will not be able to exchange information as easily as we do now, and we will be more isolated. However, have we really taken advantage of being together in one place, or have we wasted precious time with idle gossip and malicious games?
As more teachers' careers join ours on the chopping block, I hope that we can organize ourselves outside the workplace to sympathize and strategize.
Sorry, I think some comments have disappeared. Google's fault, not mine. Feel free to resubmit if you kept a copy.
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