KIPP and the Science of Psychological Neutering

[Hannah Bell]

Does your KIPP teacher scream at you? Does your KIPP principal make you bark like a dog? Does your KIPP teacher throw chairs through plate glass windows when you don't make amends for not doing homework properly? Well, KIPPsters, don't get angry, don't get scared, or don't get depressed. Just work hard and be nice, and things are sure to get better.

KIPP-notizing is a core component of training within the KIPP total compliance sects. The first big dose occurs in the three week summer sessions that KIPPsters must attend to get them ready for initial entry or for the next grade up within the sect...It's called "KIPPnotizing" -- what officials at KIPP DC: AIM Academy say is their way of indoctrinating students into a culture of high expectations...

Another part of KIPP-notizing that the Post's Jay Mathews doesn't talk about is the constant monitoring and correction for the slightest rule infringement during KIPP-notizing, the constant surveillance and certain punishment that a part of every 9-10 hour day. This is a part of breaking children down into small puddles of compliance, and it is inspired by Dr. Martin Seligman's research on learned helplessness...

Now in 2010 the UPenn disciples of Seligman like Dr. Jane Gillham have an entire research program devoted to these psychological techniques, and KIPPsters, in their urban containment camps of corporate colonialism, are their chief guinea pigs... We may think of the sadists who ran KIPP Fresno, where the principal screamed at children all day, or when he no longer wanted to scream at them, made them stand outside in the sun all day. Now instead of feeling angry or sad, students learn that they can feel "okay." They just need to work harder and be nicer, and maybe the "coach" will stop being a sadist. The most insidious part of this brainwashing technique, of course, is that the screaming, berating, and constant monitoring never stops, regardless of how much KIPPsters work hard and be nice. And that becomes the fault of the child, who just isn't trying hard enough.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/search?q=kipp+fresno


The KIPP Fresno Horror Story That the National Media Won't Tell: Part I


For reasons that are becoming increasingly clear, the KIPP Fresno scandal never got any coverage beyond a few stories in the local media. If a public school had the documented case against it that KIPP Fresno has garnered through its ethical breaches, abusive practices, and violations of the law, the national media and cable news would have had a feeding frenzy. But, then, the oligarchs see KIPP as the solution to the 21st Century "minority problem," and the corporate media is that corporate message...

Even so, reading the lengthy "Notice to Cure and Correct Violations" issued by the chartering authority offers a case study in how an organizational culture that encourages any means to achieve its ends of behavioral transformation and high test scores, combined with a lack of Board authority, has created a monstrous form of penal schooling that is about to be unleashed on urban America, if the misanthropic oligarchy gets its way...

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/03/kipp-fresno-horror-story-that-national.html

[ananda]

1. I wonder how the parents got indoctrinated..

.. into putting up with this treatment of their kids.

[Hannah Bell]

2. actually, it was parents that utlimately got kipp fresno shut down.

but kipp goes on -- cause it's for poor/dark/troubled kids.


"In the end, it is this kind of case-hardened callousness toward the poor and the children of the poor that allows the misanthropic elites, from the Fishers to the Dells to the Gatess, Broads, and Waltons, to embrace the "no excuses" model that is exemplified by KIPP and that now inspires the cheap knock-offs that will be funded by Dunc's $5 billion for such dehumanizing experiments on children. It is a moral travesty that history will regard in the same way that we look back at the "progressive" eugenicists of a hundred years ago, when Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all offered courses in the new science that would engineer a new and improved social order."

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. We have a KIPP school here

and they were featured in a report on the local TV news a few weeks ago. There was something about the kids that really bugged me. They seemed to be almost robotically responding to the reporter. Not spontaneous like kids normally are.

Now I wonder if they were rehearsed for this interview.

[Luminous Animal]

7. Kick.

[rucky]

4. Somebody needs to update KIPP's Wikipedia page.

no mention of this sick shit.

[Newest Reality]

5. Social engineering is in progress!

In a corporate-owned and controlled world, (well, now more openly and boldly so) the notion of profit as the summum bonum of life is logically the direction society will take if there is no strong and ceaseless resistance to it.

Considering how much energy and effort it takes to do so when your opponent is granted personhood and that that fictitious person can profit off of you and turn vast amounts of wealth and influence against your struggle, holding out won't last too long.

I don't know, maybe its not an anomaly? Perhaps our species will always trend in that direction when society becomes too large and complex? This species appears to be in its adolescence, (if that) judging by how it utilizes its knowledge and technology so ineptly. Funneling all the finances and ownership of resources into the hands of a few, only for the sake of their status, bragging rights, and choke-hold on humanity certainly evokes a sad indictment towards what is being called progress and civilization.

[Hannah Bell]

6. brave new world, anyone? "I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.

"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able…"

[eridani]

8. Sort of reminds me of the Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze people that

--health care "reform" will be creating.

[Hannah Bell]

9. all the same agenda.