Former Government-school Teacher Issues Warning: Schools Creating “Walking Powder Kegs”

by Selwyn Duke

“Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians,” wrote Professor Thomas Sowell in 1986, “who must be civilized before it is too late.” This civilization process’ absence is most obvious where the family has most broken down: the black community. The schools are only exacerbating this problem, too, warns an ex-government-school history teacher and whistleblower.

In fact, says Frank McCormick in a viral X post, schools are creating “walking powder kegs.”

McCormick addresses a long-standing problem kicked into high gear under the Obama administration: Schools’ complete unwillingness to discipline black students and the resultant worse behavior among them.

Of course, this unwillingness is hardly inexplicable. One reason is that Obama Attorney General Eric Holder had threatened to sue schools that didn’t stop punishing black students “disproportionately” (not disproportionately to their misbehavior, mind you, but disproportionately to other students).

In his message, posted on Thursday, McCormick wrote:

I’ll never forget when my principal asked me to “reflect” on why most of the students sent to the office were Black and I told her it’s because they misbehave more.

You could actually watch her have an aneurism [sic] in real-time. Not because she thought I was racist, but because she didn’t know how to respond to a teacher being truthful on the issue.

They use language like “reflect” to have you engage in some sort of pseudo-psychological struggle session where you discuss your own “intrinsic biases” and how you’ll “do better,” but ultimately it’s an implied threat: change your behavior or lose your job.

What 99% of teachers do is simply stop referring Black students to the office.

This emboldens them, and their behavior becomes worse. Everyone notices- including the students- but no one says a thing. It’s Orwellian.

It got so bad that we literally had Black students walking around the halls during class doing whatever the hell they want. Security and administration would just shadow them and ask them to talk politely 2000 times.

The kids would just keep walking while mumbling “fu** this n****a *mumble mumble” and so on.

It increased racial resentment from other students and staff members, and the increased visibility of this behavior just reinforced stereotypes.

These are the kids that become the adults in society that get in standoffs with police over minor compliance issues, get shot, and become “civil rights martyrs.”

Schools are creating walking powder kegs that blow up. Society is collateral.

McCormick’s post follows. Note that below his commentary he presents some relevant headlines you may find interesting.

This illustrates, again, how American education has become a farce: Taxpayers are funding a very expensive lie that provides only the pretense of education. This is why, do note, homeschooling is growing in leaps and bounds.

As McCormick points out, too, this “preferential” (deferential) treatment hurts both race relations and the “favored” race. Nothing evokes bitterness and hatred toward a group more than showing it overt favoritism. So if you want to get youths of all types to despise blacks, this is how you do it.

The double standard will also lead to worse behavior in general, with other students essentially concluding, “If they don’t have to follow the rules, why should I?”

The farcical nature of today’s education cannot be overemphasized. Discipline and obedience — two dirty words to modernist ears — are prerequisites for learning for a simple reason:

How can someone learn from you if he’s not first willing to listen to you?

Listening precedes learning.

This truth was illustrated well by a commenter under Olivia Murray’s article, who explained what transpired after he was recruited to take over a fourth-grade, urban-district class for three months in 1977. Poster Chuck Lowe wrote:

The first two days were, as I expected, somewhat chaotic…. None of the kids could read, comprehend, ad [sic], subtract, divide or multiply. It was a disgusting joke.

On the 3rd day, I arose from the dead after some little puke called me a cracker. I tossed all of the paperwork off of the desk into the closet, walked over, grabbed the little loud mouth by the lapels and military pressed him over my head and shook him for about 15 seconds. 15 seconds is longer than you might think.

There was not one kid in that class that could have pulled a darning needle out of their butt if their life depended on it.

After that, it was ROW ONE TO THE BOARD!!! ROW TWO TO THE BOARD!!! They had to run laps at recess after the bell was rung, they had to stand tall, I screamed, threatened used both positive and negative reinforcement….

Every single kid, 32 of them, could in just 3 months read, write, comprehend, ad [sic], subtract, do long division and multiply at a 5th and 6th grade level. It was NOT cold fusion, or, string theory, it was just caring enough to take your job and your charges seriously enough to believe, that, as they say, “Teachers affect eternity.”

Of course, this was 1977. Today, Lowe would never get to improve the kids’ education. Students would video the incident with the loudmouth and post it on the internet. It would go viral and be big news; and Lowe would be demonized, lose his job, and perhaps do jail time.

And now, in our upside-down world, here’s what happens:

Note, too, the same media that would be apoplectic if this teacher had laid a hand on the overgrown, entitled brat don’t even find the above newsworthy. That’s how accepted student misbehavior and violence are now. It’s also how common they are, as Murray illustrates with examples in her article.

Murray further points out that chapter 13 in the Book of Proverbs states something relevant here: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”

“Chastening means to correct, for the sake of virtue and righteousness,” Murray adds; “to allow bad behavior to go unpunished is akin to hating the person.”

For sure. Also know that when a failure to civilize generations leads to national collapse, the kind of regime that rises from the savagery doesn’t tolerate disobedience. It kills.


Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.

Reprinted with permission