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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 3/31/2014 8:36:54 PM

Kirata

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quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

Many of these students are already disliked and unemployable before they begin, and they probably know it. The black children I taught seemed to fall into two major groups (with many in between of course) There were the strivers who seriously sought an education and looked forward to college and then there were the reactionaries who taunted the strivers for "acting white."

I wanted to treat this separately because you've put your finger on it. It's a social problem, not an educational challenge. The hard-working striving students need to be protected from these disrupters and taunters. That may be impossible to accomplish totally, but at the very least it certainly can and should be done in our schools. Offer me a solution along those lines and you'll find an open ear.

K.

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/2/2014 8:56:31 AM

vincentML

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

Many of these students are already disliked and unemployable before they begin, and they probably know it. The black children I taught seemed to fall into two major groups (with many in between of course) There were the strivers who seriously sought an education and looked forward to college and then there were the reactionaries who taunted the strivers for "acting white."

I wanted to treat this separately because you've put your finger on it. It's a social problem, not an educational challenge. The hard-working striving students need to be protected from these disrupters and taunters. That may be impossible to accomplish totally, but at the very least it certainly can and should be done in our schools. Offer me a solution along those lines and you'll find an open ear.

K.

The hard working students are protected from disruptions in the class room. Despite your reinterpretation the research shows that most disruptions occur outside the classroom.

Mississippi was the last state to enact a compulsory education law in 1918. Public schools assumed a dual and intertwined mission: the assimilation of immigrants and the education of all children who came through the door. The assimilation of Black children began in earnest only forty years ago in the 1970s with court mandated integration and busing and with a great deal of resistance from Whites. There was a mass exodus of Whites to suburbia.

Public school education does not occur in a social or cultural vacuum. Neither students nor teachers leave their culture or skin color at the school house door. Cultural and racial differences are most definitely an educational problem. While an orderly class room is a paramount goal a second and equally important issue is closing the racial minority achievement gap.

Sorry, you cannot uncouple the two: cultural and educational.

My experience was that there is probably a correlation between misbehavior and lack of achievement in reading skills. Kids who enter Middle School way behind in their reading levels are almost hopelessly defeated. That has to be remedied.

And teachers need much more training in people skills – listening and communicating with kids from different cultures -- and skills using positive reinforcement of acceptable behavior everywhere on campus. Training workshops were very helpful. But, not enough of them and they were voluntary.

Developing relationships between teachers and kids is an important element in their success.
Every new teacher should begin teaching in a school where the kids are predominantly of a different culture. And have experienced teachers mentoring the new teachers. That was also extremely helpful for me.

It would also surely help if there were more counselors and curriculum administrators in the schools. The few are heavily overburdened.

Early in the 20th Century America assimilated immigrant children even while their parents remained in ghettos. Many in the second and third immigrant generations moved on up. But many left school early, poorly educated, to take unskilled jobs.

We are doing the same with the current Hispanic immigrants and with Blacks. However, we are again losing too many of them to their detriment and the nation’s because we have outsourced unskilled jobs. Working in the modern economy requires much more education for individual success than did the industrial economy at the beginning of the 20th Century.

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/2/2014 9:50:40 AM

thishereboi

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

Many of these students are already disliked and unemployable before they begin, and they probably know it. The black children I taught seemed to fall into two major groups (with many in between of course) There were the strivers who seriously sought an education and looked forward to college and then there were the reactionaries who taunted the strivers for "acting white."

I wanted to treat this separately because you've put your finger on it. It's a social problem, not an educational challenge. The hard-working striving students need to be protected from these disrupters and taunters. That may be impossible to accomplish totally, but at the very least it certainly can and should be done in our schools. Offer me a solution along those lines and you'll find an open ear.

K.

I think that is a big part of the problem. I think economics also plays a major role. But no one wants to talk about that because they can't use it to make the other side look bad and it is harder to fix. Much easier to keep blaming everything on racism.

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/2/2014 11:48:55 AM

vincentML

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quote:

ORIGINAL: thishereboi

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

Many of these students are already disliked and unemployable before they begin, and they probably know it. The black children I taught seemed to fall into two major groups (with many in between of course) There were the strivers who seriously sought an education and looked forward to college and then there were the reactionaries who taunted the strivers for "acting white."

I wanted to treat this separately because you've put your finger on it. It's a social problem, not an educational challenge. The hard-working striving students need to be protected from these disrupters and taunters. That may be impossible to accomplish totally, but at the very least it certainly can and should be done in our schools. Offer me a solution along those lines and you'll find an open ear.

K.

I think that is a big part of the problem. I think economics also plays a major role. But no one wants to talk about that because they can't use it to make the other side look bad and it is harder to fix. Much easier to keep blaming everything on racism.

I agree with you. Economics is a major part of the problem. Poor schooling leads to limited job opportunities leads to poverty leads to poor schooling. Where can we break the cycle?

Additionally, why is it so difficult to acknowledge the existence of institutional racism and institutional employment bias against women?

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/2/2014 12:10:04 PM

Kirata

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quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

Economics is a major part of the problem.

Except that with regard to the racial gap, it isn't.

But there is a major flaw in the thesis that income differences explain the racial gap. Consider these three observable facts from The College Board's 2005 data on the SAT:

• Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 129 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.

• Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.

• Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000.

Source: The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

K.

< Message edited by Kirata -- 4/2/2014 12:27:59 PM >

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/2/2014 1:00:48 PM

kdsub

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Kirata

I believe the most important reason for excelling at school is the help you receive at home. My generation was the first integrated from the 3rd grade through high school. My parents...grand parents and great grand parents and on back received a good basic education and they could help me understanding my school work when I had problems... I had many!

But African American children's parents...grand parents... and great parents went to segregated, inferior, under staffed, and under funded schools if a school at all...That is if they had the economic standing that the child could go to school and not have to help support the family.

How could these parents help their children excel when they did not understand the homework their children are bringing home?

This legacy of poor education is carrying on today...but the gap is closing and soon with continued progress the gap will close completely.

Butch

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/2/2014 5:06:21 PM

Kirata

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quote:

ORIGINAL: kdsub

the gap is closing and soon with continued progress the gap will close completely.

Would that were so...

Students Improving but Black-White Education Gap Persists (2009)
Black Students Taking More AP Tests, But the Racial Scoring Gap Persists (2012)

The following is from a review of "Why the Black-White Test Gap Exists," by John McWhorter, American Experiment Quarterly, Spring 2002.

McWhorter suggests that the reason African American students don't do as well in school as students from other groups is that students are told by their black peers that to do well in school is to "act white." The author considers and rejects some alternative explanations for the test score gap. He argues that the main reason for the gap is not that schools are underfunded. It's simply not true that students can only succeed when schools are well-funded; the kids of Southeast Asian immigrants go to schools with peeling paint, bad textbooks, and lousy teachers but don't have problems in school, despite those factors.

Nor is the test score gap a class issue, since the children of working-class Asian immigrants do well in school, as did children from Jewish working-class families a generation ago. Are teachers biased against black students? In surveys, Latino and Asian students report the same amount of what they interpret as bias from teachers as black students do, but these groups don't have the same test score gap. Children of Caribbean and African immigrants don't have the same problems with grades and scores either, though they have kindred experiences with underfunded schools and residual racism.

K.

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/6/2014 7:14:44 PM

vincentML

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What an outrage. So much of this thread has been chopped away and lost. Just not worth continuing. Very discouraging.

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/6/2014 7:48:12 PM

Moderator3

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quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

What an outrage. So much of this thread has been chopped away and lost. Just not worth continuing. Very discouraging.

There are many threads that have lost post due to the hardware failure. We are trying to get the data back, but at this moment, we cannot. Even some of the admits posts are missing. I assure you, I did not chop anything from this thread and I am very sorry that they are gone.

M3

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RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/6/2014 11:33:50 PM

Kirata

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Moderator3
quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

What an outrage. So much of this thread has been chopped away and lost. Just not worth continuing. Very discouraging.

There are many threads that have lost post due to the hardware failure. We are trying to get the data back, but at this moment, we cannot. Even some of the admits posts are missing. I assure you, I did not chop anything from this thread and I am very sorry that they are gone.

I read the announcement. Shit happens.

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Post #: 90

RE: American Schools Still Racist? - 4/7/2014 6:33:16 AM

vincentML

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: Moderator3
quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

What an outrage. So much of this thread has been chopped away and lost. Just not worth continuing. Very discouraging.

There are many threads that have lost post due to the hardware failure. We are trying to get the data back, but at this moment, we cannot. Even some of the admits posts are missing. I assure you, I did not chop anything from this thread and I am very sorry that they are gone.

I read the announcement. Shit happens.

K.