What's The Matter With Cajon High?
A Filipino math teacher at a San Bernardino high school allegedly refers to her black students as “n-----s.” A black student naturally takes offense and complains to the school's administration. The school investigates and puts the teacher on administrative leave. The story blows up in the local news.
Some former students and parents rally to the teacher's defense. She's a nice lady, they say. Her student accuser is lying, they insist. Her students are awful, they allege. They treat her disrespectfully. They play pranks on her. Basically, they make her job absolute hell.
Who's right?
The San Bernardino Sun last week reported on the Sept. 3 exchange between teacher Bernadette Yuson and her student, LaRue Bell, a senior at Cajon High School. The story relies heavily on the student's account. All the San Bernardino Unified School District will say, in its maddening bureaucratic fashion, is that Yuson used “inappropriate language” in class. Yuson so far has declined to speak with the press.
Bell says he asked Yuson, “How come you're moving all the black people around?” Her alleged reply: “Because I want to move all the n-----s.” Bell immediately reported her remark to school staff. He also claims that Yuson said as he left the classroom, “Go ahead and tell them. I've got a lawyer and pay him every month.”
Bell told the Sun that school staffers were initially cool to his claims, saying he shouldn't worry about his teacher's remarks and concentrate instead on his studies. The district disputes that part of Bell's tale. “We launched a fair and deliberate investigation regarding the matter and we took quick and decisive disciplinary action once all of the facts were in,” district spokeswoman Linda Bardere wrote in an email.
But a number of current and former students, and some parents, claim that Yuson was the victim here. Several of them complained on Facebook over the weekend that the story isn't as straightforward as it sounds. Some students allege Bell provoked Yuson, and that he used the offensive word first.
What if everyone is right?
Truth is, Cajon High is like too many urban high schools: third-rate and failing. Cajon's state Academic Performance Index score last year was 740, which represented a six-point drop from the year prior. (The state's definition of “success” is a score of 800 or better.) The school serves mostly minority, mostly low-income students — 84 percent of Cajon students are eligible for free or reduced price lunches.
Numbers, of course, don't tell the whole story. One parent refers to the school as a “zoo,” a sentiment shared by students who describe the casual violence and bullying that prevails in Cajon's halls.
Last year, a 14-year-old freshman was arrested and charged with battery after a video that showed him punching another boy in the back of the head went viral. Although the school district's police characterized the incident as “isolated,” it was hardly the first of its kind. Google “Cajon High School fights” sometime — it's practically a meme.
So this story offers something for everyone. If you've paid even the slightest attention to California's public schools, stories of callous, abusive and outright hostile teachers are commonplace.
And for parents of students who have struggled to succeed in public schools that more closely resemble prisons — attendance is compulsory, after all — it's easy to believe that many of Yuson's charges are unruly, incorrigible and have no business being there.
It's also easy to believe Yuson's reported response to Bell: “I've got a lawyer.” Bell's mother told a reporter she wanted the teacher fired. Even if that outcome were warranted, she'd better not hold her breath. Yuson's union contract guarantees ironclad “due process” rights that would make it prohibitively expensive for the district to sack her.
But Bernadette Yuson isn't the problem — not really. Her students aren't the problem, either — not entirely. The problem is an intractable, largely one-size-fits-all, compulsory public school system that resists reform, crowds out most competition and seems to exist primarily as a job-protection racket for adults. All at taxpayers' expense.
We forget that public education is supposed to educate the broader public in how to be free, self-governing, productive citizens. Whatever Cajon High School is doing, “public education” isn't it.
This piece originally appeared in Riverside Press Enterprise
This piece originally appeared in Riverside Press Enterprise