[rattrap]

Long, but interesting, got the link from boortz.

[LiteKeeper]

Education SITREP

[ImpotentRage]

I have read similiar conclusions in articles, etc. It is unfortunate that "acting white" has become such an epithet in the black community. The only ones who suffer is themselves - at least presently. The rest of society will suffer eventually.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

McWhorter ping.

[wiseone]

Same old story: blacks who can't pass exams,employment promotion tests blame white racism, school system!

[vastrightwc]

The group concluded that the academic gap was an "unusually complex subject, involving the internal and external synergistic dynamics not only of the school system, but also of the parents and of students, collectively and individually, as well as our community as a whole."

Just shut-up and make your kids do their homework. Jeez....

[Cacophonous]

...maybe they're just stupid...

[capt. norm]

I think one of the biggest problems among blacks teenagers is that it is considered "uncool" to be intelligent or to study....so why bother. It's more of problem of attitude than it is ability.

[marktwain]

Liberals cannot stand the truth. It robs them of all power. They live by the big lie.

[ClearCase_guy]

African-American parents worried that Ogbu's work would further reinforce the stereotype that blacks are intellectually inadequate and lazy.

Why black parents who mistrusted the school district as a white institution would leave it up to that same system to educate their children confounded Ogbu. "I'm still trying to understand it," he conceded. "It's a system you don't trust, and yet you don't take the education of your own kids into your hands."

Well, the problem isn’t intellectually inadequate or lazy parents, that’s for darn sure!

[RonF]

Asa Hilliard, an education professor at Georgia State University and one of the authors of Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students. "Education is a very high value in the African-American community and in the African community.

As measured by what the members of the community say about education, or as measured by what they do about it?

The fundamental problem is Dr. Ogbu is unfamiliar with the fact that there are thousands of African-American students who succeed.

First, how do you know he's unfamiliar with those thousands of students? Second, he wasn't invited to study those thousands of students. He was invited and paid to study a group of students whose own parents found them to be underachieving. And, surprise, the researcher found that, in fact, they were underacheiving. Any other finding would have contradicted the parents' own observations.

It doesn't matter whether the students are in Shaker Heights or an inner city. The achievement depends on what expectations the teacher has of the students."

No.

No.

Hell, no.

While teacher expectations are very important, the number one dependency for student achievement (relative to the student's own abilities) are what the parents' expectations are.

Meanwhile, Howard Hall, a black Shaker Heights parent who is a child psychologist and professor at Case Western University, believes Ogbu had his mind made up before he even started his research. "It's scandalous to blame the kids for this,"

He's right. It would be scandalous for Ogbu to blame the kids for this. Which is why he didn't. Re-read the report, Mr. Hall. Mr. Ogbu didn't blame the kids. He blamed you. And your failure to grasp that point is very telling.

And I see a bunch of people complaining about how Mr. Ogbu is "blaming the victim". Kids whose parents have professional jobs and have moved them into a middle-class neighborhood aren't victims. I don't care what color they are. And neither are their parents.

Did Mr. Ogbu publish a "% of turned in homework" broken down by race? Because if he did, and there's a significant difference, then the parents are just blind about what that means. It's not the teachers fault if you don't turn in your homework, it's the parents.

Understand that "it isn't cool to achieve, it isn't cool to do good in school" isn't a phenomenon that only black parents are fighting. I (a white parent) have had to fight it in my own home. We won that fight, but not all the parents in my (white) neighborhood have. I know, their kids are in my Scout Troop. Or were. The deliberate underachievers usually drop out in a year or two.

[AppyPappy]

The most racist people I ever met were Africans. They have a horrible opinion of American blacks. Of course, they have horrible opinions of their fellow Africans as well. It's almost Hitleresque they way they dismiss genocide as "sweeping the steps". And they are the first to complain that Americans have too much freedom.

[ken5050]

OTOH...Shaker Heights HS, long the doormat of Cleveland athletics....now field teams that excell in basketball and football, even winning a few league championships...heck, LeBron James has accepted an offer to speak at this year's graduation...

[Onelifetogive]

"I find it useless to argue with people like Ogbu," says Urban League educational fellow Ronald Ross, himself a former school superintendent. "We know what the major problems in this school system are: racism, lack of funding, and unqualified teachers." Although Shaker Heights is in fact an integrated, well-funded, and well-staffed school district, Ross is nonetheless convinced that it suffers from other problems that contribute to the achievement disparities between the races.

Shaking my head in disbelief...

[martin gibson]

Black homes and the black community both nurtured failure, he concluded.

DING..DING..DING!! We have a winner!

[pbear8]

bookmarked

[Mochamadness]

bump

[7thson]

What I found interesting is whites described their relationship with blacks as okay and blacks described it as tension filled. I have read and come across these two different perceptions. Why is this?

[Stand Watch Listen]

Related links

A couple of clues [re: why our education system is failing]
Source: TownHall.com; Published: May 1, 2003; Author: Thomas Sowell

Walter E. Williams: Inferior Education of Black Americans
Source:CNSNews.com; Published: February 05, 2003; Author: Walter E. Williams

Union Fraud Underscores Need for School Vouchers
Source: CNSNEWS.com; Published: February 05, 2003; Author: Linda Chavez

The intellectual rape of Oakland's schools
Source: TownHall.com; Published: January 17, 2003; Author: David Horowitz

Hip-hop hogwash in the schools (Michelle Malkin)
Source: TownHall.com; Published: January 15, 2003; Author: Michelle Malkin

Washington's education establishment
Source: TownHall.com; Published: January 8, 2003; Author:Walter Williams

White Teachers Fleeing Black Schools
Source: Newsmax; Published:January 1, 2003; Author: Chad Roedemeier

Fiddling whilst Rome burns

[Paradox]

Its the CULTURE, stupid!

This has trickled down into non-urban cultures as well. Its become a part of modern Americana.

I have read studies that show that while FIRST generation Asian immigrants do extremely well in American schools, the Second and succeeding generations do more poorly.. It ain't genetics folks, its CULTURE.

[LADY J]

"Involuntary immigrants don't think that way, he says. They have no separate homeland to compare things to, yet see the academic demands made of them as robbing them of their culture."

Seems like these black parents should take some of their money and take their kids back to their "roots" and "culture".

A few months vacation - back to Africa so that they can start relating to who they are and make a comparison about where they would all be today if the terrible white folks had not 'dragged' them to America!