In a message dated 12/6/2001 8:35:24 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > I think that it's really sad when we need to blame parents for the failure > of the public schools. Have I been deluded, or is education the > function of the public schools? How many parents are knowledgeable > in methods of reading and phonics instruction? And why should they > be? Teachers go to college for five years to learn how to teach. [snip]
Well said! I was a Minneapolis public school parent and Mr. Mom to a couple of kids during the 1980s. Both children were designated as "gifted." I had no complaints about the quality of education they received. I also put in some hours as a classroom volunteer at Longfellow Elementary (class size 30). Household income > 40K / year. Call me Mr. White Privilege. Back in the good 'ole days (1980s), I was aware that ability-grouping was being done in grades 3 and up. I didn't like that. I figured that the non-gifted kids were being shortchanged. But I was blissfully unaware of the real impact it was having. It didn't motivate me to join the NAACP, carry a picket sign outside of 807 NE Broadway, or read scads of books related to K-12 education. When I became a Minneapolis Public School parent again in the 1990s, I trusted the Minneapolis School System. I expected my child would get roughly the same quality of education I had come to expect as a parent in the 1980s. However, I was shocked and outraged by what was being done to my kid and a lot of his class mates, and I couldn't get the district to put a stop to it. Call me Mr. White Trash. One issue was reading instruction. We don't have effective reading instruction in most of the schoolrooms. It is a fact that we do not. Why is this so? Could there be a problem with the curriculum and learning strategies employed in the schoolrooms? The school board and its apologists on this list respond to every criticism of the schools, constructive or otherwise, by pointing a finger at those bad parents. Anyone who says the schools could do a much better job of educating our kids is a "school basher." Anyone who points out that important educational resources are not equitably distributed is a "school basher," and, of course, an attorney for those bad parents. And there is the "culture of poverty" theory, which explains the academic achievement gap between blacks and whites, and between the poor and non-poor as THE effect of what happens outside of the schools. The distribution of educational resources, curriculum, ability-grouping and everything else that the board is responsible for has little or no effect on how the kiddies turn out, or so the argument goes. The culture of poverty theory helps the school board justify keeping things the way they are, in and outside of a courtroom setting. The gist of it was clearly articulated in a SW Journal column, and again, with considerable elaboration, in a recent post to this list by the writer of that SW Journal column. By the way, this isn't personal. It's part of a debate about public policy. I will close this message with a quote from a book that was published 68 years ago. It is strange how little has changed since then: "As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and crime. It is strange, then, that the friends of truth and the promoters of freedom have not risen up against the present propaganda in the schools and crushed it. This crusade is much more important than the anti-lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom. Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?" (Woodson, Carter, 1933, The MIS-Education of the Negro, p. 3) -Doug Mann, Kingfield Doug Mann for School Board <http://educationright.tripod.com> _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
