Thursday, November 29, 2007

Not, again

Calif. Teachers May Get Racial Sensitivity Training


Teachers in California may be required to take racial sensitivity training next year. The training would help close the "achievement gap" between students of different races; white and Asian students score higher on tests than their black and Latino classmates.



If you click on the article title, you can listen to the 3 minute news story.

Basically, they blame the racial divide on racism. While racial bias does exist, it doesn't explain the divide. For example, black immigrants don't have the same achievement lag. Even with a language barrier, the black immigrants are measurably more successful than their American born counterparts. If racism was the ultimate cause, why would it only effect the American born minorities? [John Stossel did a story on this. I'm looking for the reference.]

Children of all races in an intact two parent home do better academically. Fathers have a huge influence on academic achievement. It has been estimated that 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. That is a huge number. With the high divorce rate, very few of the 30% of children who are born into a two parent home, will spend their childhood in a household with both biological parents. That is a true disadvantage.

It is well documented that the disintegration of the family negatively influenced children. That is not to say that nobody should ever get divorced or the step-parents are bad. But, you can't get away form the data. Kay Hymowitz's does a good job of document this trend in her new book, Marriage and Caste in America. She postulates that marriage has become the great dividing line.

While I'll be the first to say that we need changes in our government run schools, racial sensitivity training for teachers is not going to make a positive difference.

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3 comments:

locomotivebreath1901 said...

I believe the example comparing the relative success of immigrant black Africans to the pervasive lack of success for many 'native' black Americans highlights a tragic axiom voiced by Bill Cosby, John Stossel, et al.

And this latest attempt in Kalifornia at multi-cultural relativism to "close the achievement gap" is simply government school bureaucratic-ese for 'dumb it down even lower and blame (white) society while you're at it.'

Anonymous said...

Racial sensitivity training makes people feel better. It makes them feel like they are doing something, even if it changes nothing.

Since nothing short of a miracle from God is going to fix the government schools, and Americans are not ready to scrap them, why not let the school teachers and adminsitrators do useless things in order to feel better about themselves?

Meanwhile, you can teach your kid to read, write, and do 'rithmatic at home. There's nothing else for it.

Chris Fritz said...

Hopefully that racial sensitivity training doesn't include coercing a nine-year old to say "brown people" then suspending him from school for a few days for being a racist, only to tell his mother that she has no right over what the school does to her son. (I was going to e-mail about this, but didn't see any contact addresses, so hopefully the link fits in here as it's loosely related to the topic!)