Philadelphia schools to require African, black history

Associated Press ^ | 06/09/2005 | Maryclaire Dale

[americaprd]

Three decades after students demanding African-American studies in city schools clashed with police, the district will require all high schoolers to take a full-year course on the subject.

Philadelphia, whose public schools are two-thirds black, may be the first U.S. school district to require the class.

"I think it's a promise that we are many, many years late in filling," said Cecilia Cannon, an assistant superintendent for curriculum. "We have the opportunity ... to do something under our watch that is really going to do right by our students. To say, 'We've come from some pretty great places.'"

The course in African and African-American studies, now offered as an elective at 11 of the city's 54 high schools, has captivated students who have taken it, teachers say.

At nearly all-black Strawberry Mansion High School, a top student in the African-American studies class was chosen as the subject of a $360 genetic test designed to help blacks trace their roots back to Africa. James Sullivan, a senior, learned the bittersweet news that his maternal family descends from the Ibo tribe in Nigeria, and that they came to the U.S. as slaves.

"There were tears in his eyes, but joy also," said Principal Lois Powell Mondesire, who said other students are now interested in genetic testing.

National education groups said they did not know of other districts that require black studies, now a high-profile academic field on college campuses such as Harvard and Cornell.

But urban school leaders will no doubt be watching the Philadelphia experiment. School districts in California, Massachusetts and elsewhere have called to ask for details, Philadelphia officials said.

"School districts all across the country try all kinds of different things to engage the kids and improve student performance," said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents 65 large urban school districts. "So this will be of interest, but it won't necessarily create a stampede in this direction."

Philadelphia students must take three other social studies courses to meet state requirements and five electives to graduate. The new class, designed for 10th graders, will be mandatory and reduce the number of electives to four.

"I think if we have to take African-American history as a mandatory class, that we should have it open to other cultures: Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans," said Briggitte Rodriguez, 14, a freshman at Philadelphia High School for Girls, which is 62 percent black. "It's a big world. You have to think about everyone else, too."

Some schoolmates disagree.

"They usually just focus on African-American history in February, and it should be all year-round," said Victoria Pertell, who is black.

The push for African-American studies in the city dates back to at least November 1967, when a few hundred students demonstrating outside a school board meeting clashed with police. Under the direction of then-Police Commissioner Frank L. Rizzo, officers clubbed some of the singing students after a few climbed atop cars.

The district's 210,000 students are about 67 percent black, 14 percent Latino, 14 percent white and 5 percent Asian. Three years after a state takeover that brought reform-minded schools chief Paul Vallas from Chicago, test scores are up and new buildings are planned to replace crumbling schools, although violence continues to erupt.

School leaders hope the course will not only keep black students interested in their academic work, but also give other students a more accurate view of history.

"It has an impact on our African-American children, but it also affects children from other cultures. Their perception is often skewed," said Sandra Dungee Glenn, a member of the five-person School Reform Commission that unanimously approved of the requirement this spring.

With a better understanding of each other and history, students will have the "opportunity for better understanding in schools and in the community."

[backtothestreets]

This is very bad. Will the schools in Los Angeles follow with classes on Mexican American history? Maybe Boston can add Irish-American history, or why not Catholic-American history, and New York can require Irish-American and Italian-American History. There's little worse than bureaucrats using their positions to separate people, and that's what I see the end result of this Philadelphia program bringing.

Maybe someday people will learn how freedoms truely came about in our country. Women's suffrage didn't end because women voted against it. Racial segregation didn't make the news because African-American media executives decided to air it. The the legislation pushed through Congress in the sixties wasn't by the hand of minorities.

It's saddening that we even have a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. It's not a question of his character at all. If there must be such a day it would have been more aptly named Civil Rights Day, Human Rights Day, or some such designation. The changes that came about in our society were because people in power made the changes happen within. If racism is to end in this nation, it must be recognized people of all colors have a hand in it, not just minorities.