"Not everyone is intelligent."

My mentor teacher had a great writing prompt for the "bellwork" writing assignment yesterday: "If you were in charge of balancing the district's budget after big budget cuts from the state, what would you cut? Security, sports, new books, something else?"

Of course, a bunch of the kids said they would cut teachers "who don't teach anyway," not realizing that, in their case, this would mean that there would be 70 kids in their 9th grade English class. But almost all of them argued against cutting sports. My mentor talked about some districts in the area that have cut school funding for football, demanding that the families of team members pay up to $300 per season plus the cost of uniforms and helmets. Nobody liked that idea.

A female ringleader in this class, who will occasionally burst out into a spontaneous and loud rap in the middle of being given directions and who will constantly and casually toss out outrageous (and loud) insults while others are speaking - who, when I was standing in for the sub on Monday, would barely let me get three words out before she would interrupt me with a loud question - made a particularly telling comment:

"We can't cut out the sports program, because not everyone is intelligent. The sports program is the only way a lot of us can get money for college."

I raised my hand, and the teacher recognized me.

"Darlene, I want to ask you something. You say not everyone is intelligent. But is everyone good enough at sports to get a scholarship?"

Of course, she and her backers in the seats around her thought so. The thing is, Darlene is intelligent. She has made strong, commonsense points during the few discussions I've witnessed. But she is so much more interested in negative attention than positive, it's going to be pretty tough for her to get past the F she will probably receive during this marking period.