From Queens Rules:...this school is situated in Elmhurst, the most multicultural zip code in the United States, according to the Department of City Planning. Newtown has more than 3000 students who represent over 100 countries and speak 60 different languages.
“Newtown is a typical United Nations,” explained Mary Wang, an associate principal at the school. Facing a wall map of the world in her office, she described how this internationalization helps her wards adapt to an increasingly globalized world.
That's all well and good. But would you want to send your kid to this school?
To be sure, Newtown has had its share of tensions. Students say some classmates belong to gangs and occasional fights break out.
Only one line about this, eh?
18 comments:
Diversity is not something to be touted; it is a situation everyone must put up with and try to work around.
...What..NO THAI?
Queens Rules is the news service run form the Columbia J-School.
Forgive the reporters, they must be new to Queens.
Public schools have gone to shit ever since diversity chiefs came to run it.
(into the ground)…
Diversity will never work, it never has anyplace on earth
Take a hint from history any point between the Romans to that modern day cesspool called Los Angeles
Hey I went to Newtown in the late 60-early 70s and it was the same diversity makeup then. We never feared violence, although it happened sometimes mostly with students who deserved to be arrested and expelled - they were. Otherwise, I enjoyed my years there and the teachers were still good at the time but I did not like the morning/afternoon condensed shifts which eliminated a study period and otherwise rushed everyone through classes.
" Anonymous said...
Diversity is not something to be touted; it is a situation everyone must put up with and try to work around."
That is a very Asian viewpoint BTW.
The fact is that multiculturalism has had a long run in most Western and some Eastern countries for almost 50 years.
It was born out of a mixture of horror at the bigotry and deprivation that led to the atrocities of the second world war and a desire to counteract the influence of Communism by allowing poor people access to the huge wealth and opportunities in Western nations.
Thanks in part to arab/islamic terrorism the era of immigration and pan culturalism is coming to an end.
A few years ago, there was a multiplicity of foreign flags on the flag poles jutting out from the front of Elmhurst Hospital. The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, et al. Someone must have read the hospital administration the riot act. Now those flag poles have nothing hanging from it but Old Glory.
As the great journalist Theodore White once said, the English language is the "glue" that holds the republic together.
It is time to make the English language the official language of government. It is time to end this insanity of catering to all these ethnic groups. If a non-English-speaking person needs help in understanding the language, let their fellow countrymen aid them via mutual aid organizations, foreign-language press, etc. Like it was done in the past.
Amen, brother!
I graduated from NHS a few years ago.
Of 5000 or whatever students, i pretty much was the white population. One of my teachers called me the "token blond."
It is actually a good school. Yes there is trouble there, but ONLY IF YOU GO LOOKING FOR IT.
I went to that school because they have a good pre-engineering program, on par with Brooklyn Tech (which i got into, but my commute would have been 1.5 hours each way. no thanks)
Considering, the high level or recent arrivals and 30% or so of entering students arent on a 9th grade reading level, 75% of them pass the English regents.
The principal actually does a fantastic job for what he has to work with.
The school is something like 150% overused and they dont have to go to some extremes like other schools and used metal detectors.
The only issues was overcrowding, but ofcourse that's thanks to people using nearby 2-family homes as 4 to 6 apartments. THAT is the real issue.
So we're going to make a point of gang activity at a hyper-diverse school, as though that's the most salient point with regard to diversity? Now explain all the gang activity that can be found in LESS diverse schools!
Nope, you're totally not understanding the point. It's a school. Does it have a great academic reputation? No. Is it dangerous? Judging by the throngs of police dedicated to patrolling it when it lets out, the answer is yes. Are there major problems with gangs? Yes. Are they getting worse? Yes. And yes, it happens to be diverse. So was my grammar school. So are most schools in this city. For decades. It's not a big deal. Yet that is the focus of the article.
Such a trivial issue to be speaking on.
Not learning English will only hurt the person who doesn't learn it. If you don't want to learn it.... well then too bad for you.
Actually, not learning English hurts society as a whole because by not learning English a segment of it is keeping itself poor, ignorant and a drain on taxpayers (see the vast number of translation laws).
“Newtown is a typical United Nations,”
yeah you can tell by the rags they wear on top of their heads. the school is crap and same for grover in ridgewood. It's ashame english is second and that's why these schools fail today. When i was in school english was first and you had to learn it.. bloomturd made a mess of the school system.
SPEAK ENGLISH!
Diversity is not something to be touted; it is a situation everyone must put up with and try to work around."
That is a very Asian viewpoint BTW.
It's not exclusively an Asian viewpoint but most of us go about diversity in this manner. We go about our buisness and diversity happens to be what it is in this city.
Celebrate diversity - that no one looks like me? - I don't think so!
Nor will the next guy, unless of course you are one of those who stand on corners in Jackson Heights looking for the free food guy and the other guy paying you in cash to work.
Well Crapper, from your presentation of the article ("only one line about [gangs], huh?) and your tagging of the item as "vibrant, diverse, gangs," it seems that's the message you want your peanut-brained audience to come away with. And it is consistent with your site's key theme of diversity-bashing.
I don't bash diversity on this site. I bash the notion spoonfed to us by pols and newspapers that diversity is the panacea we are all looking for. Meanwhile, where are the pushers of that theory living? They certainly aren't sending their kids to Newtown.
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