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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
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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.
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