At least one student in Chicago’s public school system is mad as hell. And if the YouTube video posted Thursday by the urban culture website World-Star Hip-Hop is any indication, she’s definitely not going to take it any more.
The video shows a student from a high school on Chicago’s South Side berating a music teacher because, she says, he isn’t teaching students anything despite striking for a week for better wages.
The language in the video is occasionally explicit.
Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5UbTh6fchMThe unnamed student is loud. She’s viscerally strident. She’s tremendously disrespectful. At the same time, if what she is saying is true, it’s a scathing indictment of incompetence in the Chicago public schools.
The three-minute-long video is a one-sided rant, making it impossible to know if the student’s views accurately represent what’s going on in the classroom.
“You went on strike for a whole week to get paid to teach us,” the furious student says. “And now you’re here, and you don’t want to teach. Man, you better teach me something.”
“You get paid, right? I want an education!” she continues. “I refuse to sit in this class and not be taught.”
The student rebuffs the teacher’s requests that she sit down, instead becoming even more emphatic. She refers again to the Chicago Teachers Union strike before accusing the teacher of failing his students.
“Every day I walk out of this class with nothing. Why? Because you don’t do your job,” she yells.
NewsOne, a website serving the black community, called the video “a diamond in the rough.”
Chicago public school teachers are among the most lavishly compensated in the nation, the website reported. Their average salary is $76,000 per year plus benefits and substantial time off. The Chicago Teachers Union’s new post-strike contract calls for guaranteed annual raises.