Black families open up, cram education in

St. Petersburg Times ^ | October 22, 2003 | Bill Maxwell

[Cincinatus' Wife]

NEW YORK - Each time I visit my relatives in Harlem, I always inquire about the children, especially the boys.

Harlem, like most other black enclaves elsewhere, destroys too many African-American boys long before they become teenagers, which encouraged me to visit a cousin, Shirley Harrell, a single, divorced mom with two boys - one in third grade, the other in seventh grade. I have always liked her kids because they are polite and easygoing. Shirley, 38, is a full-time department store cashier and a part-time business major at City College.

She clearly understands the vital role that education plays in the lives of her children. The boys love school, and their teachers say they are exemplary students.

Shirley wants the very best for her sons: "Yeah, they do the stuff other boys do - listen to music, play basketball, hang out on 125th Street. But they like doing school work, too. They like to study. I'm trying to get ahead, but it's been hard. I didn't have anybody to tell me how to get ahead. I had to learn on my own. It won't be that way for my children. I'm doing all I can to give my kids a head start. I'm teaching them how."

For the second year, Shirley's sons are attending a Korean cram school in Queens. Each afternoon, she and the boys ride the subway to a storefront. There, the boys, along with 45 other students, study for three hours with certified math, English and science teachers. On Saturday mornings, they make the trip again. The boys study for four more hours.

One tangible payoff is the improvement of the boys' grades. They went from earning C's and the occasional B to making all A's and B's. The grades are important, but Shirley says she cares more about the boys' new love of learning: "Up here in Harlem, they don't have a lot of role models their own age. A lot of these kids don't open a book after they get off the subway. My kids just don't fit in because they love to study. That makes me feel bad.

"The cram school is different. Those Korean kids study very hard. My boys are the only blacks in the school, but they fit in. I mean, it's normal to work hard. Nobody says they're acting white. When they see all these other kids studying, my kids don't feel weird. The peer pressure is positive. Studying has become a habit - second nature."

Shirley is one of a growing number of African-American parents in Harlem to discover the benefits of the cram schools, long an integral part of Far Eastern education.

I met another family whose 16-year-old son attends a Chinese cram school in Flushing. The boy is taking a weekend SAT prep class that meets for 14 weeks. Their daughter took the same class two years ago, aced the SAT and won a full scholarship to Columbia University to study biology.

My hope is that this phenomenon spreads throughout Harlem and other black communities nationwide. Education is the key to our uplift and creating a larger, more solid middle class that can take advantage of the nation's unlimited opportunities and enjoy its vast wealth.

Shirley and other Harlemites are right to encourage their children to love learning for its own sake. This new generation will reject the self-destructive mantra that being smart is acting white.

For good reason, Asian children have been labeled the "model minority." If this label is a stereotype, Shirley says she wishes it on all black children. For black children to become another model minority, black parents must change their views on learning and formal education.

"You can't be selfish," Shirley said. "Blacks have got to start sacrificing for the children. I'm not a saint or anything, but I put my babies first. I don't make much money. Their dad helps out some, about $150 a month. I spend every penny I can on the boys' classes. I don't even think about it."

While in Shirley's two-bedroom apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue, I noticed the boys' many awards for excellence in math, writing and science. Books are everywhere. The boys share a tiny bedroom, and each has a laptop that Shirley bought through a discount program her church sponsored.

"A lot of people, even some of our kinfolks, told me I was pushing my kids too hard," she said. "I told them to get lost. When people don't understand what you're doing, you have to shut them out and do what you know is right. My kids don't complain. They love making good grades. They really want to study hard."

The seventh grader wants to attend the cram school's summer SAT class. Shirley said: "I'll do anything legal to come up with the money. If he wants to get ahead, I'm going to help him."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Hip-hop product portrayals divide black community***If all goes as planned, gangsta rapper Nelly's new energy drink will be on store shelves by next month. The brand name: Pimp Juice. The Loaded Weapon sneaker is among the latest shoes to hit the Converse conveyor belt. And the new game Ghettopoly, a take on the classic board game Monopoly, features "playas" who vie for stolen property and crack.

All three speak to a growing fascination with hip-hop and its portrayal of urban black America. The products have also ignited protests and boycotts nationwide, highlighting a division in the African-American community over what's an appropriate representation of the black experience.

It is part of a larger cultural war among blacks, fought largely along class and generational lines.

"The traditional civil rights model included a kind of politics of respectability, putting the best face of the African-American community forward," says Imani Perry, a law professor at Rutgers University. "There is an absolute refusal in the hip-hop community to adhere to those ideals of respectability, in terms of what the public face of black people should be." ***

[jocon307]

Here's a compare and contrast. The first part is very interesting, I didn't even know such things as "cram schools" existed. No wonder Asians do so well in school, since they go to school after school as well as during school!

[gunnedah]

The break down of the family in America has led to this. For every single mom that is successful there must be several who are not.I read over the weekend that one out of every three children being born in America today are to single moms. Now there are some in our society doing their best to do away with the institution of marriage, just where the hell are we headed?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Shirley and other Harlemites are right to encourage their children to love learning for its own sake. This new generation will reject the self-destructive mantra that being smart is acting white.

For good reason, Asian children have been labeled the "model minority." If this label is a stereotype, Shirley says she wishes it on all black children. For black children to become another model minority, black parents must change their views on learning and formal education.

"You can't be selfish," Shirley said. "Blacks have got to start sacrificing for the children. I'm not a saint or anything, but I put my babies first. I don't make much money. Their dad helps out some, about $150 a month. I spend every penny I can on the boys' classes. I don't even think about it."

Bump!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Yes! And no racial group is without criticism in this.

Poverty in the Nation by Walter Willams. ***Is poverty pre-ordained? I think not. A married couple, both working full time at a minimum-wage job that pays $5.15 per hour, would earn an annual income of $20,600. Keep in mind that few adults earn wages as low as the minimum wage and those who do earn a higher wage after a few months on the job. If a married couple both working at the minimum wage had no children, they would not be poor; if they had two children, they wouldn't be living in the lap of luxury, but neither would they be below the poverty threshold.

Let's look at poverty in female-headed households. Divorce and death of the father might explain a small part of why there are so many female-headed households. But the bulk of it is explained by people having children and not getting married in the first place.

Having children is not an act of God. It's not like you're walking down the street and pregnancy strikes you; children are a result of a conscious decision. For the most part, female-headed households are the result of shortsighted, self-destructive behavior of one or two people. They might have bought into the nonsense of "experts" like John Hopkins University sociologist Professor Andrew Cherlin, who said, "It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes." The real issue, according to Mr. Cherlin, "is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income." That's a call for fathers to be replaced by a government welfare check. ***

[sneakers]

"You can't be selfish," Shirley said. "Blacks have got to start sacrificing for the children. I'm not a saint or anything, but I put my babies first. I don't make much money. Their dad helps out some, about $150 a month. I spend every penny I can on the boys' classes. I don't even think about it."

God Bless her. This is what a loving mother does. I pray that her boys will go on to be successful and shining examples for other children in their neighborhood. They will do their mom proud.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Yes, they will.

"The cram school is different. Those Korean kids study very hard. My boys are the only blacks in the school, but they fit in. I mean, it's normal to work hard. Nobody says they're acting white. When they see all these other kids studying, my kids don't feel weird. The peer pressure is positive. Studying has become a habit - second nature."

[rintense]

A very good article. Hadn't heard of Cram schools until now. God bless Shirley and her boys.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I hadn't heard of them either. I've heard of Greek School, etc, places to keep language and tradition alive but not of these cram schools. I shouldn't be surprised.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

No excuses***"Excellent schools deliver a clear message to their students: No Excuses. No excuses for failing to do your homework, failing to work hard in general; no excuses for fighting with other students, running in the hallways, dressing inappropriately and so forth."

That's part of the prescription for ending educational mediocrity discussed in Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom's new book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" (Simon & Schuster, 2003).

It's no secret that, as the Thernstroms point out, the education achieved by white students is nothing to write home about. In civics, math, reading, writing and geography, nearly a quarter of all students leave high school with academic skills that are "Below Basic." In science, 47 percent leave high school with skills Below Basic, and in American history it's 57 percent. Below Basic is the category the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) uses for students unable to display even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level.

As dismal as these figures are, for black students it is magnitudes worse. According to NAEP findings, only in writing are less than 40 percent of black high school students Below Basic. In math, it's 70 percent, and science 75 percent. Blacks completing high school perform a little worse than white eighth-graders in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and geography.

The Thernstroms report, "In math and geography, indeed, they know no more than whites in the seventh grade." From these facts, the Thernstroms conclude, "The employer hiring the typical black high school graduate (or the college that admits the average black student) is, in effect choosing a youngster who has made it only through the eighth grade."***

[Lil'freeper]

I hadn't heard of them either.

Nor I. From this brief blurb, they sound marvelous.

[mhking]

Black conservative ping

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[Puppage]

Those Korean kids study very hard.

Well, there ya have it. Effort, combined with determination will win the day. Half measures avail you NOTHING.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

You reap what you sow.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

8-07-02Japanese Schoolchildren 'Cram' To Boost Achievement ***Among the throngs of weary commuters packed into trains arriving here are hundreds of schoolchildren from nearby Tokyo and surrounding suburbs. Toting blue backpacks with reflective trim, they head for their second shift of studying. They spend up to three hours, three nights a week in a Spartan, hot, windowless classroom in a converted storefront taking additional lessons in mathematics, science, or Japanese language and writing. On Saturdays, they return for a test to gauge what they've learned during the week. ***

It's Crunch Time***The concept of a "cram school" may be foreign to a member of this society. In some Asian cultures, however, cram schools are necessary evils in the pursuit of the best education. Taiwan is one such culture that employs the use of these notorious institutions. For students from elementary school (or in some cases even kindergarteners) to college, going to private cram school in addition to the daily curriculum in school is common and sometimes inevitable. Parents that worry about the future of their children seem to spare no cost to make their children competitive in the real world, and oftentimes, sacrifice exorbitant amounts of money as well as the social lives of their children to accomplish this.

Cram schools not only reinforce the subjects taught at a regular school, but also offer lessons to train students in special skills such as performing instruments, mastering ballet, or learning martial arts. Students are prepared to be good at almost everything, and as a result they have to put in a tremendous amount of effort to "cram." Undoubtedly, a lot of personal time is taken away to accommodate this. ***

[Lil'freeper]

Ooooh, good catch! Thanks!

[Lil'freeper]

From your first article:

"More than 70 percent of Japan's 15 million schoolchildren will seek some sort of private tutoring by the time they enter high school, according to national statistics. At any one time, it is estimated, more than 6.5 million students attend cram schools, ranging from large incorporated programs to those offered in private homes."

...

"Many students from lower-income families, particularly those in urban areas, also attend tutoring programs, according to Ms. Russell. Many of those programs, she said, report improved academic achievement among their students; those that are less effective tend to be weeded out by the free market. "

...

"By purchasing private lessons to help raise their children's scores on high-stakes tests, parents demonstrate that the public system and its standards are, on their own, inadequate preparation for the reality of entrance examinations," Ms. Russell writes."

[Temple Owl]

There are selfish politicians out there who are dead set against vouchers. They should be outed.

[HIDEK6]

No wonder Asians do so well in school, since they go to school after school as well as during school!

In my day, it was called "Doing your homework."