Prologue: It was more snark than serious that the New York Times had started publishing mad libs op-eds just to troll its readers. After all, one totally incoherent op-ed doesn’t make a trend. But there’s a second, this time by an associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, Christopher Emdin.  Poe’s Law? Trend? Or can the Times’ editors no longer distinguish rational positions from gibberish?

When dealing with a subject of some serious importance, and the failure of young black men to be adequately educated in public to achieve success in life, whether to go on to a college or find sufficiently fulfilling and lucrative employment, it’s a problem for everyone. When a person is vested in society, has a decent education or job, he will strive to maintain and improve the norms of society. If you’re doing well, you want to continue doing well, to do even better.

One of the things a criminal defense lawyer learns from years of representing young black men charged with crimes is that their lifestyle choices are framed by two primary influences: the first is that they can’t overcome the challenges of their youth. The second is that they have few alternatives. We can attack them for not being strong enough, smart enough, tough enough, for not rising above their circumstances, but that doesn’t help. Not everybody is Hercules.

Some aren’t that smart, and struggle with a lousy education born of myriad reasons, strong street influences that are far cooler and more alluring than the boring, unhip prospect of working hard in a crappy job for a pittance. Some are very smart, but the distance from 125th Street to the C Suite is too far to bridge.

Among the theories that are trendy today is that “black boys”* would succeed if they had more black teachers as role models.

How can we help black boys succeed in school? One popular answer is that we need more black male teachers.

The logic appears simple: Black boys are not faring well, and the presence of black men as teachers and role models will fix this problem. The former secretary of education, Arne Duncan, brought this theory to national attention with a number of speeches at historically black colleges and universities. His successor, John King Jr., has taken up the argument, often repeating the statistic that only 2 percent of our nation’s teachers are African-American men.

One might suspect that someone teaching at Columbia would realize that an answer being popular isn’t the same as an answer being correct. One might also suspect that someone teaching at Columbia would be capable of distinguishing a string of words and sentences from a line of logical reasoning. But in this case, one would be wrong.

Then comes what, at first, appears to be a recognition that willful indulgence in racism isn’t an adequate answer!

The argument may be well intentioned, but it is a cop-out. Schools are failing black male students, and it’s not because of the race of their teachers. These students are often struggling with the adverse effects of poverty, the inequitable distribution of resources across communities and the criminalization of black men inside and outside of schools.

Yes! Yes! Mencken would be so proud. But as quickly as hope arose, it was snatched away:

Black male teachers can serve as powerful role models, but they cannot fix the problems minority students face simply by being black and male.

No, this isn’t an opportunity to reminisce about To Sir, With Love.

Black male teachers are not just expected to teach and be role models; they are also tasked with the work of disciplinarians. The stereotype is that they are best at dispensing “tough love” to difficult students. Black male educators I work with have described their primary job as keeping black students passive and quiet, and suspending them when they commit infractions.

Perhaps Emdin was that kid in the front row, hand raised in response to every question, whom all the other students hated and got swirlies in the gym locker room twice a week, because he doesn’t seem to be aware that maintaining a level of discipline in a classroom is part of the teacher job, not just the black male teacher job. That’s right, even white women teachers have to maintain discipline in the classroom.

Here’s a secret: if students are interrupting class, they aren’t learning and the rest of the students aren’t learning, because they’re interrupting class. This isn’t a new concept, and this doesn’t just apply to black students or male students. I know, but sometimes things aren’t racial or gender in nature.

And then Emdin does what Columbia Teachers College does best: takes a dive down the rabbit hole:

Teachers hear the phrase “tough love” all the time; it is used to justify hurtful practices such as not giving black students the second chances that others receive to complete assignments, suspending students for breaking minor rules that others are not punished for, or yelling at students for being playful or asking too many questions.

So the problem with teaching black boys is they are being punished too harshly for being playful or asking too many questions? Are you sticking with that answer, because there’s a damn good chance black male teachers are going to give you a swirly in effigy for being a dumbass if you’re sticking with that answer.

Many black male teachers at first believe in the need for “tough love.” When they realize it is code for doing damage to black students, they are filled with remorse and often leave the field of teaching.

Code for doing damage? How about code for doing teaching? It can be hard and unpleasant, because teaching kids who aren’t particularly interested in learning is hard and unpleasant. Not everybody is cut out for it, good at it, capable of getting kids to quiet down and learn the stuff that’s not at all cool, like arithmetic, the ability to read, write and speak standard English, maybe even think logically,

The other role models in a student’s life (because, shockingly, it’s not all about teachers) may draw a black boy astray. They can’t all make the NBA, NFL or be a rapper. It’s a lot easier to get a job selling drugs on a street corner or grab smartphones on the subway. But if trying, every day, to teach students to learn so that they have the capacity to find success, is too much for some teachers, then the problem is that they shouldn’t be teachers. Just being black males isn’t good enough. They still need to teach.

Beyond school, we need to provide opportunity for black boys (and all boys, and girls, but you don’t care about them so let’s leave them out of the equation) to land jobs that will enable them to become vested in society, to make a good living, be proud of what they do, achieve success and be good role models for their children.  But first, they have to be taught.

There is no string of social justice gibberish that will substitute for a solid education. It’s not the number of black male teachers that matters, but their ability to teach students. And keeping students under control so they and their fellow students can learn is, so sad for you, part of the job. Either teach them or get out. They deserve better than this.

Epilogue: Emdin’s solution is so vapid that he feels compelled to explain what it’s not, because his “what it is” solution is meaningless:

This is not a call for more white teachers or a statement about some inherent inability of black male teachers. It is a call for a more thoughtful approach to teacher recruitment and retention, and a renewed focus on teacher preparation. Have we not seen the effects of programs that recruit mostly white, middle-class college graduates to “tough schools” only to see high teacher turnover, ineffective teaching and increasing achievement gaps? Why are we embracing a black male version of the same broken model, instead of working to fix the problem?

A “more thoughtful approach” really explains it well, as opposed to that “more unthoughtful approach”? You’re the guy doing the teaching of teachers, raising the theories of what’s wrong and how to fix it. If it’s failed up to now, it’s because you and your ilk have failed. And why are you embracing more empty rhetoric, strings of incoherent sentences, social justice gibberish, instead of “working to fix the problem”?

I have a theory, too. It’s that you’re so enamored of your own failed racist beliefs and trendy critical race theories that you’ve forgotten that there are actual black boys (and the rest, but you don’t care) who aren’t learning. Your “more thoughtful approach” is anything that doesn’t involve the hard and unpleasant work of teaching.

*I really dislike the phrase “black boys,” but use it because it’s Emdin’s phrase of choice.