New Teachers Face NCATE Litmus Test on Diversity Educators Must Exhibit

Heartland Institute / School Reform News ^ | 1/1/2002 | Robert Holland

[I_Love_My_Husband]

This is totally insulting to everyone.

Blacks don't learn like whites do? Bull!

[ZGuy]

"This breaking news just in, Generalísimo Francisco Franco is still dead."

[This article is over 2 years old]

[hellinahandcart]

We cannot teach about diversity in the absence of diversity.

Here's an idea-- why don't you teach about reading and math and science instead, and junk the diversity crap?

[Henchman]

Translation: The Native Born, English Speaking White MALE doesn't get the job. It started as "The WASPs" then EEO with Affirmative Action, now Diversity. No one ever mentions ABILITY or MERIT. Once they remember those two words, then there will be EEO, Diversity etc based on reality, not political correctness

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP - EDUCATION - SOCIOLOGY -

would someone please explain to me how including people from different ethnic groups increases anyone's ability to learn. How does ethnic diversity guarantee a better educational system? How does it make the government system indoctrination any more useful to the "real world," not the "ought-to-be" world of the leftist activists?

[Luke]

Public education in America took a step backwards during FDR's agenda to establish central government control over sovereign state government during WWII. While this might have been good for the war effort. This allowed today's all powerful NEA to establish control over all public school districts in America via unionization. Today's public school districts must continually combat unions for control of a system that regulates education as secondary by-product after the primary function of a secure 'jobs program'. Public education is very similar to the Veterans Administration: in order to produce "health care" one must first be concerned with primary function of jobs and careers.

No amount of change in the past has ever been able to correct either institution. I fear that the only way to correct this gross downward spiral is to totally do away with both systems... in order to create something new or better. Children receive substandard education when compared with any education effort prior to the 1940s. And veterans receive substandard care via VA hospitals and clinics which must first be concerned with funding for jobs.

Example it takes almost a year to complete a VA entry process unless you are discharged for physical reasons; and once in the system... almost a year to obtain a simple appointment with a dermatologist. If for any reason you do receive hospitalization you must contend with the fact that more than 1,000 VA patients a year are killed because of mistakes made by VA physicians, nurses or pharmacist or simple in attention to detail. (All this has been documented by congressional testimony.) It has gotten to the point where any type of private health care insurance is better than VA health care.

Why are the two so related? The dumbing down of public education equals the dumbing down of everything else we rely on. The article above is just more foul odor from a decayed system of failure. How can we correct this? Take education out of the hands of a socialist organization calls unions.

[Born Conservative]

[Hibernius Druid]

That most important diversity of all, diversity of intellectual viewpoints, the raison d'etre of the university is scarely to be found on college campuses today.

I just came back from a meeting where the department head (a Caucasian) said he was leaving soon for Jerusalem to address a conference on Palestinian Liberation and would be working against "Christian Zionism."

Happens all the time in the academic Gestapo. Tenure has become a cloning device for radicals. Once it guaranteed a free market (oops, dirty word) of ideas.

That's all changed since the late 1960's.

[SteveH]

[This article is over 2 years old]

Acknowledged. However, I searched for it on FR but did not find it, and I thought that FR folks would find it of interest. So, con permiso...

[SteveH]

J.E. Stone discusses NCATE standards at length in "The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education: Whose Standards?" available through the Education Consumers Web site at www.education-consumers.com/articles/whose_standards.shtm.

This link did not work for me when I tried it. However, the following link works:

http://www.education-consumers.com/articles/whose_standards.shtm

Also, I posted it as a FR article here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1105700/posts

(Read it and weep ;-)

[SteveH]

Translation: The Native Born, English Speaking White MALE doesn't get the job. It started as "The WASPs" then EEO with Affirmative Action, now Diversity.

Go to the front of the class... ;-)

[ZGuy]

I was just kidding you. I try to do the same thing when I find articles that I feel are important enough to preserve for future reference.

[SteveH]

I was just kidding you. I try to do the same thing when I find articles that I feel are important enough to preserve for future reference.

In that case, phooey on me... ;-)

[Dianna]

On Standard Two, dealing with field experiences, NCATE will insist this work be done "in diverse settings."

This is already a requirement for the ed program I am in. I *think the requirement is something like a 70% minority population for the school to qualify.

We are required to have taken some multicultural gen ed classes. I'm not sure if we are required to demonstrate our sensitivity in some manner or not.

[KC_for_Freedom]

A monocultural faculty cannot do the job very well. We cannot teach about diversity in the absence of diversity. We need to reconstruct identities, values, beliefs, and lifestyles," said Smith, a NAME icon for whom the organization names its Multicultural Educator of the Year Award.

This simply is not true, a teacher of any stripe could teach diversity. The issue is that diversity is not something that has value in a performance based world. (It has plenty of value in a diversity plagued group trying to acheive equal outcome in a multicultural love fest. ) But in the classroom, the subject may be taught without regard or mention of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and all the other stuff. Now I also agree that a teacher who does not see every student as an individual with the potential to master a subject should not be in front of the classroom.

[Amelia]

While saying much about the differences known as diversity, the new NCATE standards have little to say about raising student achievement. That could be because the view of NCATE accreditors pretty much corresponds with the dominant view of the NAME conference: that standardized tests are unfair impediments to diversity.

For example, keynote speaker Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, criticized tests for a "get-it-right syndrome" that elevates fact over feeling.

"African-Americans learn holistically," elaborated Smith. "They are not so concerned about specific little details. Most white kids have respect for validated knowledge. In other cultures, it has to feel like the truth."

They ALL need to learn to succeed in the dominant culture. It's unrealistic to expect the culture to adapt to you...I've always been a small-town Southern girl, but if I moved to New York City I've no doubt I'd need to learn new ways of doing things and of interacting with others, both to get along and for my own safety.

If students want to succeed, and if we want them to succeed, we need to teach them how to succeed in the real world, in the dominant culture. This doesn't mean we should ridicule their current cultures, however.

Too many of these educrats have spent their entire lives in the educational establishment and have never ever ventured out into the real world.

[Amelia]

And it IS a two year old article. What's up with that?

[KC_for_Freedom]

I just responded to the comment, not to the age of the article, the poster said he did not find it in the FR archives.

[Amelia]

I just responded to the comment, not to the age of the article,

As did I in #17. I was curious, though.