So far nobody has answered my original question.
[quote]In a nut shell, different things are expected of black males. They’re expected to be great athletes; they are not expected to be great writers. They are expected to be good rappers, but not good poets, or good mathematicians. A black student in a classroom is simply not the same as a white student in the same classroom. The think differently, they relate differently, and they’re perceived differently.
Generally speaking, black males have a different culture than their white counterparts. Making direct eye contact with a black male can be seen as a challenge or an insult. A black male student may take criticism “on the chin,” looking away from his teacher with a very tense stance. This may be seen as aggressiveness or obstinacy by his teacher. A white male in the same situation might look down at his shoes, or make eye contact and plead more of his own defense. Of course, this is gross generalization, and I’m not sure if I’m being clear enough, but I hope you get my point.
Also, in general, young black men are much more boisterous and loud than their white counterparts. [/quote]
Jesus! I don’t even know where to start with this one!
Them black fellahs, though – can’t be beat when it comes to chucking spears, eh?
God, Housecat! Can’t you just do voodoo on 'em when they get uppity?
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]So its the “schools” who are doing this?
I guess that rap music sub-culture and being born into a single-parent family family thing have nothing whatever to do with the situation?
Pass the blame…it’ll hit the whiteman sooner or later…and, IMO, that whiteman is Lyndon Johnson and his “Great Society” social engineering plan that completely destroyed the Black Family Unit.
Do the research. This is where it started.[/quote]
Mostly lazy teachers and ignorant or bigoted administrative staff who don’t value the strengths and differences a black child brings to class. It isn’t that they can’t learn, just that they don’t fit well into our usual business model and we can’t be arsed to accommodate them.
*The quick answers to why this doesn’t happen to young Asian men are that they are seen as quiet, non-threatening, super students who raise benchmark scores=dollars for the school.
Latino students have many of the same problem black students have, but many of them are segregated into either all day, or most of day ELL classes, in some cases even when they’re quite fluent in English. This means they are in a special catagory of benchmark testing and will have less of a negative impact on scores=money. I’ve seen this practice here in Arkansas in many different schools.
I don’t know about that. In South Africa all the javelin throwers seem to be big burly Afrikaans boys.
[quote=“housecat”][quote=“TainanCowboy”]So its the “schools” who are doing this?
I guess that rap music sub-culture and being born into a single-parent family family thing have nothing whatever to do with the situation?
Pass the blame…it’ll hit the whiteman sooner or later…and, IMO, that whiteman is Lyndon Johnson and his “Great Society” social engineering plan that completely destroyed the Black Family Unit.
Do the research. This is where it started.[/quote]
Mostly lazy teachers and ignorant or bigoted administrative staff who don’t value the strengths and differences a black child brings to class. It isn’t that they can’t learn, just that they don’t fit well into our usual business model and we can’t be arsed to accommodate them.
*The quick answers to why this doesn’t happen to young Asian men are that they are seen as quiet, non-threatening, super students who raise benchmark scores=dollars for the school.
Latino students have many of the same problem black students have, but many of them are segregated into either all day, or most of day ELL classes, in some cases even when they’re quite fluent in English. This means they are in a special category of benchmark testing and will have less of a negative impact on scores=money. I’ve seen this practice here in Arkansas in many different schools.[/quote]
I haven’t read the links you posted yet, but it is starting to seem to me that this may be a unique American cultural thing.
I’m not sure if this was discussed in one of housecat’s links, but a large number of blacks both male and female go to schools in the inner city. These schools are underfunded because the residents of the community cannot afford the funding or parent/teacher interaction that is required for a school to flourish. Poor schools produce poor students and teachers that just don’t give a damn. This is the decaying saga of marginalization and racism from the days when blacks began moving in mass from the rural south to the larger metropolitan areas. Furthermore, the inner city community does not encourage the values that the schools attempt to bestow on their students. When life is truly about survival and when one must support their family from a very early age then school seems/and is less important. Parents do not have the proper time to devote to their children because of financial burdens. Certain programs, such as school vouchers, have tried to erradicate these errs, but by in large, schools still remain segregated. The legacy of racism in America is still present in our decayed educational infrastructure despite any shifts in our values.
[quote=“bismarck”]
I haven’t read the links you posted yet, but it is starting to seem to me that this may be a unique American cultural thing.[/quote]
If by unique you mean some Americans actually recognize and talk about the problem, then yes.
[quote=“naijeru”][quote=“bismarck”]
I haven’t read the links you posted yet, but it is starting to seem to me that this may be a unique American cultural thing.[/quote]
If by unique you mean some Americans actually recognize and talk about the problem, then yes.[/quote]
That’s not what I meant…
Well said.
A review and comparison of per student funding by Federal, State and local monies might well (hint - it will) show that throwing money at this problems does not and will not work.
Using the convenient “race card” in an attempt to ‘explain’ and/or ‘solve’ this problem has 35+ yrs of proven failure. Why keep trying it?
One simple suggestion:
Re-form the basic Black Family Unit. Emphasize success by education, hard work and self-accomplishment.
[quote=“occhimarroni”]I’m not sure if this was discussed in one of housecat’s links, but a large number of blacks both male and female go to schools in the inner city. These schools are underfunded because the residents of the community cannot afford the funding or parent/teacher interaction that is required for a school to flourish. Poor schools produce poor students and teachers that just don’t give a damn. This is the decaying saga of marginalization and racism from the days when blacks began moving in mass from the rural south to the larger metropolitan areas. Furthermore, the inner city community does not encourage the values that the schools attempt to bestow on their students. When life is truly about survival and when one must support their family from a very early age then school seems/and is less important. Parents do not have the proper time to devote to their children because of financial burdens. Certain programs, such as school vouchers, have tried to erradicate these errs, but by in large, schools still remain segregated. The legacy of racism in America is still present in our decayed educational infrastructure despite any shifts in our values.[/quote]I call BS. :liar: There is no funding gap per student in the inner city and some of the most well funded schools are also the worst schools in the US.
Simple reasons that black males fail is that they don’t have a father. Fathers are important. Anyone who has kids should understand this very simple point. There are times when mom is too tired or involved with something else and can’t enforce rules or teach certain things this is when fathers shine because while we tend to do less as far as child raising compared to our wives we are a second set of eyes, play buddy, parent, teacher and enforcer. Single parent children also get less interaction and are talk to less which effects their later academic performance.
Asian and whites doing better because they have a smaller percentage of single parent homes.
The schools that tend to do very well educating minority children tend to be extremely strict and no-nonsense affairs. No parent in their right mind puts their child into an inner city public school.
I can debunk this crap first hand.
Shitty areas tend to have shitty schools and I don’t see what that has to do with racism.
I grew up in shitty government housing where most of the residents were Indian, Chinese, Somali or Nigerian. Before I was even old enough to understand what race was I noticed that my asian classmates generally got better grades and didn’t come out to play much. I avoided the Somali and Nigerian kids because they were always picking fights and even some of the teachers were scared of them. The white kids were more of a mixed bag with everything in between.
99% of those kids as they grew into young adults were content to carry on complaining about their lot and wallowing in their own shit without doing anything about it.
We all grew up as neighbours and were all at the same income level and generally came from fucked up or single parent families (including yours truly) so no excuses about environment, parents or opportunity please.
If we are all truly equal then why not stop all this bullshit talk about disadvantaged blacks and instead talk about poor communities and poor schools as a whole. Anyone who thinks that black people need more support and understanding than whites, Chinese or Indians is a bigger racist bigot than anyone.
No, it’s not all about the dollars. You can’t just throw money at this and fix it, but inner city schools DO suffer funding shortages, and it DOES matter.
Not all black students are fatherless. Not all fatherless students fail to do well. My son is fatherless and is doing outstandingly well.
Much research has also been done on these factors, especially the funding issues of some schools. Fundamentally, the one greatest indicator of student success is teacher quality. Every time. And that means teachers doing as I said earlier, teaching to student strength–making content accessable to all students, no matter culture, language, or other factor.
Poverty is one of the most difficult factors to overcome because there is no way to directly address this in the classroom. But if a child is dirty, hungry, has no proper or stable shelter, or has to work after school, he or she is very unlikely to do as well in class as his or her peers. No one in their right mind sends his or her kids to an inner city school, Okami, for a reason. The kids are poor, the district is poor, and the priorities are going to be different, and the goals much closer to the court.
Single parenting can be extremely overwhelming–I do speak from experience. But one of the best things about traditional black families is that black single parents are able to cope well because of the extended family and close ties they share. There is an uncle around, or a grandfather, or an older cousin. Most of the time, these children do have role models and are rarely alone.
There is simply such a huge cultural devide between the blacks and whites in America. And I don’t know if it’s everywhere or not, but I expect it is to some degree. I wish I could bring some of you posting in this thread to my house here for a week. I could feel the difference from the day I moved up here, but befriending the woman who works with me in class really was a great education.
It is not even PC to talk about this sometimes. We are all Americans, all free, all equal. But we sure as hell aren’t all the same! There are very big cultural differences between a white family and a black family, even living on the same street two houses down. And the only difference, by the way, between the white Baptist church and the black Baptist church is not just the amazing music the Black House Of The Lord.
It’s not PC to talk about these things because we must admit that we haven’t always been equal and that can be uncomfortable. But if we don’t acknoledge the differences in the cultures, and try to understand them, then we will never serve our black students as well as we should.
My graduate classes in education were designed to make me aware of cutural differences between myself and Native Americans (Especially Alaskan tribes for some reason), Asians (one broad stroke, or course), and poor vs. wealthy students. Perhaps because half my classmates were black, differences in black and white culture were not brought up by the teacher–that was left to the black students themselves.
One last thing–many black males are very good at sports like basketball or football. They’re good at these things because they work very hard at these things. They often teach themselves/each other with only the study of televised games and equipment that fits in a driveway. Why do they do this? Almost any black male in an inner city school knows that his only shot at college is a sports scholorship!
Yes, maybe he dreams of winning the lottery and being drafted into the pros, but it just may be that he wants to study! A young black man may very well feel that his only choice is to play his way in to college because he can’t ace his way in. And he can get help in college through peer study groups, or lab hours, and it’s very likely that his professors in college will not know him from anyone else. His race will matter less.
That’s acutally what I’d like to see researched.
I can debunk this crap first hand.
Shitty areas tend to have shitty schools and I don’t see what that has to do with racism.
I grew up in shitty government housing where most of the residents were Indian, Chinese, Somali or Nigerian. Before I was even old enough to understand what race was I noticed that my Asian classmates generally got better grades and didn’t come out to play much. I avoided the Somali and Nigerian kids because they were always picking fights and even some of the teachers were scared of them. The white kids were more of a mixed bag with everything in between.
99% of those kids as they grew into young adults were content to carry on complaining about their lot and wallowing in their own shit without doing anything about it.
We all grew up as neighbours and were all at the same income level and generally came from fucked up or single parent families (including yours truly) so no excuses about environment, parents or opportunity please.
If we are all truly equal then why not stop all this bullshit talk about disadvantaged blacks and instead talk about poor communities and poor schools as a whole. Anyone who thinks that black people need more support and understanding than whites, Chinese or Indians is a bigger racist bigot than anyone.[/quote]
You have some good points, Llary. You and I likely grew up right next door to each other. And yes, 99% of people tend to do as their parents did and never have another thought about it. This is something that I feel has to do with personal intelligence and I still haven’t decided what all I think about it. But it is not usual for someone who grew up where you did to end up doing any better for himself than anyone else. That’s true, so good on you, and on me, for being smart enough to know there was something else out there and figuring out how to get it.
But that doesn’t mean that the kids don’t matter and that we shouldn’t try to reach them without making them figure out how to reach us. The fact is that black kids don’t get a fair shake. Really. That may be the case for many kids, but if we’ve identified a problem, even if not the complete problem, then we have a responsibility to try to fix it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/nyregion/25hebrew.html?_r=1&hpw
[quote]Some parents who are not Jewish said they applied because they were simply eager for their children to learn a second language. But others gave reasons the school would be unlikely to cite in its recruitment brochures.
“By going to school with Jewish children, they are going to be getting a good education,” said Mr. Moody. “In that community there’s no foolishness when it comes to education.”[/quote]
[quote]Black male teachers, who carap out of school early.
I think I might be able to help:
[quote]By the Associated Press
At Birmingham, a federal judge called before him the first and so far the only Negro ever admitted to the University of Alabama. The Negro student, Autherine Lucy, was driven from the school’s classrooms by a mob on Feb. 6.
New Orleans found itself at grips anew with the issue of integration. Last night a cross 10 feet high was set ablaze near a statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. Its flames near the downtown business district brightened a sign which read: “Keep our kids safe from the black plague.”[/quote]–“A Cross Burns as Segregation Seeth[e]s,” Pennsylvania State University Daily Collegian, March 1, 1956
[quote]New York (UPI) – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is organizing a major drive in the North and West against school districting by racially segregated neighborhoods.
Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, said that hundreds of communities throughout the North and West still enforce school segregation by drawing school district or zone lines around the white and Negro sections of town.
“In the South, they pass a law,” he said. “In the North, school boards misuse racial residential patterns to perpetuate school segregation in fact, although not by law.”[/quote]–“NAACP Aims at District Lines,” St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, August 27, 1962
[quote]NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 5-- Demonstrations by an angry crowd outside a suburban school today marred the second day of parochial-school desegregation in the New Orleans area.
“They can get these n*****s out of here if we have to shoot 'em one by one. . . .”[/quote]–“Louisiana Crowd Jeers at School; Attacks Car of Negro Mother in Integration Protest,” New York Times, September 6, 1962
[quote]The Negro population once was largely Southern and largely rural. But for many years, Negroes have been moving out of the South and out of rural areas to the cities. Because of job opportunities and housing availability, they have tended to concentrate heavily in the central cities of the nation, where today the[y] form a disproportionately high percentage of the population.
The white “flight to the suburbs” over the past generation has also helped boost the Negro percentage in the central cities.[/quote]–“Negro Strength to Rise Rapidly in Cities,” Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune, August 27, 1966
[quote]The decline in property values began nearly a decade ago, when the expanding Negro ghetto broke the color line at Monroe Street. Block-busting and panic selling fed the integration conflagration.
“When the first Negro family moved into a block, ‘For Sale’ signs popped up like mushrooms almost overnight up and down the street,” Mr. Gallagher recalls.[/quote]–“The Old West End Turns the Corner,” Toledo (Ohio) Blade, October 5, 1969
[quote]New York Times News Service
LOUISVILLE – Kentucky National Guardsmen were called to Louisville early Saturday after a night of rioting, violence and vandalism associated with the start of cross-district school busing of black and white students between the city and its suburbs.
About 50 people were reported injured, a few of them seriously, in the rioting at two locations in white working class suburbs south and southwest of Louisville. Scores were arrested.
At least once, state and Jefferson County police near Valley High School in the southwestern part of the county, were in danger of being overwhelmed by 2,500 rioters while thousands more spectators looked on. Finally the officers used tear gas to disperse the crowd.[/quote]–“Guardsmen Called to Halt Louisville Riot,” Wilmington (North Carolina) Star-News, September 7, 1975
[quote]BOSTON (UPI) – Rock-throwing crowds of whites clashed with police below historic Bunker Hill in Charlestown yesterday, and later stoned firemen trying to extinguish two fire bombs tossed during the night at a middle school.
In suburban Brookline, Mass. the birthplace of President John Kennedy was moderately damaged by a fire apparently set late yesterday to protest busing in Boston. The manager of the site said an antibusing slogan scrawled on a sidewalk said “Bus Teddy,” in apparent reference to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.[/quote]–“Riots, Fires Resume over Boston Busing,” Pennsylvania State University Daily Collegian, Sept 9, 1975
If I spend to much time on this thread I’m sure I’ll be labeled as racist.
Laying the burden on the schools and teachers can only go so far. It comes down to the family, end of story. If a peer group is having more influence on the child than the parents, then it’s time for the parents to figure out where they’ve gone wrong.
A family (in whatever form that may be) that values education, is very involved, and refuses to accept poor grades, is going to do far more for the child than any teacher or school could ever dream. I have a good friend who teaches in a pretty bad district. She says hands down the biggest indicator if a student is going to be successful is if the parents actually take the time to come to the parent/teacher conferences, they’re actively involved in their child’s education.
Her school is predominantly white but you could certainly say the same things about the students there as what people are labeling here as a ‘black issue’. Too many parents who are checked out, on crack, would rather see the football team in a state championship instead of giving a nickel to the library fund, or just plain don’t give a shit.
I suppose it’s easier for the government to throw money at the schools than to change the priorities of American families. The US spiral into mediocrity will continue unabated.
Peers consistently influence children more than parents, across cultures. Wrong or right is irrelevant. The smart / wealthy parent manipulates their kid’s exposure to positive peer groups. It’s all symbiotic.
Schools can help in trying to create a culture where people excel. At my school, losers smoked behind the bike sheds and got off with boys. The cool kids went to Cambridge, won ballet scholarships, rode horses, did Sanskrit, played the clarinet. At my cousins’, it was above yourself to get GCSEs or to talk posh, or to not get boys or to not smoke weed. British parents tend not to overly involve themselves in their kids’ education (the attitude when I was a kid was: homework is your business).
Those school and social cultures of achievement come from everyone. There’s no easy answer, and the former government in the UK have proved that throwing money at schools doesn’t work, nor does demonising teachers or parents.
Are we talking about American schools here, or schools in general?
Teachers stereotyping black children seems to happen in UK schools too:
[i]Black children are being systematically marked down by their teachers who are unconsciously stereotyping them, it has been revealed.
Academics looked at the marks given to thousands of children at age 11. They compared their results in Sats, nationally set tests marked remotely, with the assessments made by teachers in the classroom and in internal tests. The findings suggest that low expectations are damaging children’s prospects.
The study concludes that black pupils perform consistently better in external exams than in teacher assessment. The opposite is true for Indian and Chinese children, who tend to be “over-assessed” by teachers. It also finds that white children from very poor neighbourhoods were under-assessed when compared with their better-off peers.[/i]
Yup, and they will continue to because it’s not an overt, conscious prejudice. It’s simply that people favour people such as themselves.
Teaching is filled by certain demographics in the UK, with the majority being ‘white’, middle class, older, married, females especially in primary education. Ethnic British girls do best in British schools (although they still get paid less). British working class boys with British ethnicity do worst, with other ethnicities in between.
Boys need males teaching them. Girls need women. And because teaching is a bullshit, underpaid ‘vocation’ job, men aren’t queueing round the block for that gig.
It’s society’s responsibility to bring up kids. Leaving it to parents, governments or teachers, singularly and autonomously is a recipe for disaster. Yup, we can all wail about parental responsibility and example, but as we all know, getting knocked up doesn’t mean you have the brains or commitment to do that. Despite that, every kid deserves a fair crack of the whip. Will they get that? No, because every kid needs a very delicate and individual range of conditions to thrive. No system will ever provide that.