Modern African families are curious and like to meet visitors from afar.
Posted on 06/09/2005 7:49:35 PM PDT by FeeinTennessee
Philly Schools to Require African History Class to Graduate NewsMax.com Wires Thursday, June 9, 2005
PHILADELPHIA -- City high school students will be required to take a class in African and African American history to graduate, a move that education experts believe is unique in the nation.
The requirement in the 185,000-student district, which is about two-thirds black, begins with September's freshman class, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday.
The yearlong course covers subjects including classical African civilizations, civil rights and black nationalism, said Gregory Thornton, the district's chief academic officer. The other social studies requirements are American history, geography and world history. Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for big city school districts, said Philadelphia appeared to be in the forefront with such a requirement.
"Courses on the subjects are offered as electives in other cities," he said.
Some parents opposed requiring the course, including Miriam Foltz, president of the Home and School Association at Baldi Middle School.
"There are other races in this city," said Foltz, who is white. "There are other cultures that will be very offended by this. How can you just mandate a course like this?"
While acknowledging it would be better to have courses adequately reflecting all cultures, district officials said African and African American history had been neglected too long.
"We have a whole continent that has been absent from most of our textbooks," said Paul Vallas, the district's chief executive officer.
© 2005 The Associated Press
--Fee, a black conservative (I'm not an 'African-American'. I was born in the USA and am proud of it)
Will the textbooks be written by Louis Farrakhan?........
I was required to that that class in college. The instructors were too bigoted to be objective in the least. We need to put our foot down now.
Hateing Whitey 101
I wonder why it wasn't offered as an elective? Hmmm....
Way back when I was in the 3rd grade in the 70s I found a hero in George Washington Carver. It's strange that I would learn about the man way back in those dark and evil days before we learned anything about black history.
Sounds like a good idea to me. They can start by studying Zimbabwe and Angola.
oops, that's 'take that class'
darn surgical eyes...
That's right...we can learn about great black Americans who have contributed something to this country. Don't need to get into African studies. Makes no sense.
Sounds like a good idea to me. They can start by studying Zimbabwe and Angola
...which is a HUGE mess right now!
I'm seriously glad I left the public school system in 2001. I could not have graduated at a better time. By the time I have kids they'll be forced to take all sorts of pathetic "diversity training" and what not- and I'm sure it'll focus entirely on one or two "underrepresented minorities", while leaving all the other ones out to dry.
I bet the Philadelphia school system will place more emphasis on this crap than actual American history.
Will the textbooks be written by Louis Farrakhan?........
What I meant to say in response to your comment....GAG!
Louis Farrakhan stirs up too much hate. He's not one to be admired at all!
Modern African families are curious and like to meet visitors from afar.
Got you beat. I was in third grade in 1953!
Don't remember exactly when I was taught about G.W. Carver but it was sometime during grammar school - St. Rose of Lima in Freehold, New Jersey.
Also learned about Ralph Bunch who became UN Undersecretary in 1955 after winning Nobel in 1950...OK, I did a quick google on Bunch re: the years but I remembered the UN & Nobel things!
BTW, my Catholic grammar school did not have one black kid enrolled although a "black street" was just a block away and we all played basketball/football/baseball together nearly every day.
Exactly!
LOL
I learned about Carver, MLK, Harriet Tubman, slavery, the revolution, the civil war and on and on in American history period.
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
I'm more white than I am black, more Scoth than I am Irish, more German than I am English. But more than that, I'm more American than I am anything, so I'll just settle for American too, (even though I was born in Massachooooosettes). :>
What kind of garbage is this? Why is African American history required, but not Asian American history, or Latino American history, or White American history, or European American history?
Fee: Don't have a clue. What ticks me off...like I said earlier, we are losing our identity as Americans. ALL of us are supposed to be a family. When people start putting emphasis on one culture over another, it separates us. One reason why I don't like to be called "____-American"...because, hello! We are all Americans here.
I'm seriously glad I left the public school system in 2001. I could not have graduated at a better time. By the time I have kids they'll be forced to take all sorts of pathetic "diversity training" and what not- and I'm sure it'll focus entirely on one or two "underrepresented minorities", while leaving all the other ones out to dry.
Fee: Well I am sure you will teach them right and they won't buy any of that crap.
I bet the Philadelphia school system will place more emphasis on this crap than actual American history
Fee: They probably will...and Philly is a city symbolic in our nation's freedom.
I would not mind stuff like this being the focus of a course. http://www.innovationodyssey.com/smallpox.htm
This really should be American history though. A really good African history course would be a survey course going from ancient to modern, from the top of the continent to the bottom, Cairo to Cape Town in other words.
LMAO! Believe me, nobody who gives a rat's behind about their kids sends them into the Philadelphia government schools! None of this pathetic stupidity matters to you or me or the rest of normal America, so let them have their "African History Class". I think it's hilarious! No doubt the other third of students in the Philadelphia School System, the Hispanics and Asians, will just LOVE "African History Class", lol.
This new mandatory requirement will certainly chase away the handful of remaining white students, if indeed there are still any white students left in the Philadelphia Schools. Perhaps that's the whole idea.
Are you talking to yourself? Wow you really are mad :o)
As Philly mayor John Street famously said a couple years ago, "The brothers and sisters are running this city!"
Why is it any surprise that something like this would be instituted? Kids won't learn to read, but I'll bet they will learn a bunch of racist nonsense.
Sigh...and it's a shame I used to live there. It wasn't this messed up then.
Cyborg,
What are you talking about?
i wonder how they do in math and english?
The post reads like if you were interviewing yourself. I was just wondering.
I got news for you, this is standard knowledge for getting an Associates Degree (2 year college degree) in Texas.
I wonder if George Washington Carver needed this class in order to become a scientist. Or Duke Ellington to become a composer. Or Harriet Trubman to be a great activist.
Maybe they will be written by Maya Angelou with legal help from Star Jones and self-esteem studies by Queen Latifah. Narcissism studies by Oprah Winfrey.
Will the coursebook contain a chapter on "Hoosier Daddy"?
"Today we will study how Rhodesia, the Jewel of Africa, became Zimbabwe, the Basket Case Nation" Or perhaps we won't?
and people wonder why companies want to either outsource or bring in more people from other nations...
"The brothers and sisters are in charge!"
--Phila. Mayor John Street on the complexion of his administration.
oops--you said it first.
Man, that class time during that semester could have been better spent.
Doubly curious, actually. Those historical figures I happen to admire, well, I do believe I've learnt (British English, live with it) how to spell their various names correctly, if for no other reason than simple respect.
Or, perhaps you take the view of one of Flip Wilson's personae, that I shouldn't ''Ralph Bunche'' your argument? An hilarious routine, that one was...assuming your old enough to remember it, and old enough to remember Ralph Bunche.
Wups, my bad...
The "Early East Asian Immigrants" and their descendants were not American. They just inhabited what we call North America.
They had nothing to do with American values or culture.
Diva's Husband
for later read
1. Did you know a little child name Bruce Springsteen? He was younger than you although he attended St. Rose of Lima?
2. Is it true that there was at one time a large hillbilly population in Freehold?
I just checked his birth date and he was born in 9/49 while I was born in 8/48.
I know I'm getting older but it's always been my memory that Bruce was in my class on 1962. My brother was in the class of 1960. Sometimes kids were held back for different reasons, which could explain why I would swear that he was in my class.
Another point of reference would be that he tried out for the CYO basketball team which was coached by my dad. Terrible basketball player!
Another point of reference memory was his band (with Danny Federici playing a teen night at the old Woodhaven Country Club. The music was so bad most of the kids left the room where the "music" was playing. Bruce was playing the accordian that night - I kid you not!
Also, cruised the Asbury Park circuit like everyone else and regularly stopped in to the Stone Pony to see what Bruce's band was called that month and who was in it that day. Lots of changes of names & members in those days.
What happens when the back students fail this class?
Who will be blamed.
This fellow black conservative also wishes to know: will they also be required to read and write at a 12th grade level?
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