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School uses race to motivate students?

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iambrutus

iambrutus

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    i'm sure this will have a nice happy ending...

    With schools under increasing pressure to improve test scores, Mount Diablo High School has resorted to a new way to motivate students: by race.
    The Concord campus on Friday held separate assemblies for students of different ethnicities to talk about last year's test results and the upcoming slew of state exams this spring.
    Jazz music and pictures of Martin Luther King greeted African-American students, whereas Filipino, Asian and Pacific Islander students saw flags of their foreign homelands on the walls. Latinos and white students each attended their own events, too, complete with statistics showing results for all ethnicities and grade level.
    "They started off by saying jokingly, 'What up, white people,'" said freshman Megan Wiley, 14. Teachers flashed last year's test scores and told the white crowd of students to do better for the sake of their people.
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    Granted, someone is going to get their panties in a bunch over this, but like it or not, pride in your ethnic heritage is a powerful thing.

    If it works, its genius. If it doesn't, someone is going to lose their gig over it. Actually, I would suspect that someone is going to whether it works or not.

    However, the school may have created a new problem. They've basically split up the school into factions and have pit them against each other in a "survivor" type contest. The social backlash could very well be devastating and far reaching, as many kids may see it as a view into real life and how things are done after they get out of school. And its hard to reprogram someone when they enter the world that jaded.
     
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    "They started off by saying jokingly, 'What up, white people,'" said freshman Megan Wiley, 14. Teachers flashed last year's test scores and told the white crowd of students to do better for the sake of their people.
    Click to expand...

    Yeah..."what up?" is such a traditional Caucasian greeting. :roll1:

    Instead of intentionally dividing the students by race, they should be focusing on motivating all students on improving their test scores for their own sake and for the sake of American society in general.

    While recognizing the differences in our society is fine, essentially segregating the students in this manner is probably not quite what great civil rights leaders like MLK had in mind.
     
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    IMO, this is moronic-you teach kids the same. I don't differentiate what I teach for different races, or use their ethnicities as "inspiration". I can just see some PC Bay Area principal telling the white kids to be smart for "white pride".
     
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    scooter1369;765122; said:
    However, the school may have created a new problem. They've basically split up the school into factions and have pit them against each other in a "survivor" type contest. The social backlash could very well be devastating and far reaching, as many kids may see it as a view into real life and how things are done after they get out of school. And its hard to reprogram someone when they enter the world that jaded.
    Click to expand...

    Just playing a little devil's advocate here, but I don't think it would necessarily be competitive in the sense of pitting them against eachother. At least, if the test itself isn't competitive, but rather a measure of one's skill/understanding. If it is just a "do your best for your ethnic identity" thing, that could be a healthy kind of competition.
    Again -- I don't agree with this, just playing a little devils advocate.

    from the article...
    Principal Bev Hansen said she held the student assemblies by ethnicity this year and last year to avoid one group harassing another based on their test scores. The 1,600-student campus, one of the most ethnically diverse high schools in the Mt. Diablo school district, is roughly half Latino, 30 percent white and 15 percent black, with Asian nationalities rounding out the mix.
    Click to expand...

    That's a horrible reasoning. "We don't want them being made fun of, so instead we'll call each of them in separately and then show everyone's scores." Erm... right... if that was really your concern, why would you show everyone's scores?

    MililaniBuckeye;765138; said:
    Instead of intentionally dividing the students by race, they should be focusing on motivating all students on improving their test scores for their own sake and for the sake of American society in general.

    While recognizing the differences in our society is fine, essentially segregating the students in this manner is probably not quite what great civil rights leaders like MLK had in mind.
    Click to expand...

    I agree, that's a much healthier way of motivating kids.
     
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    This is ridiculous. Why not just greet the black students by saying 'What Up Nigga's" and blasting out Will Smith's "Gett'in Jiggy With'It" and reminding them that he was a brilliant student that earned a Schollie to MIT? :shake:
     
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    From the District Six Museum

    D6I-2whitesonlysign.jpg

    link for photo

    Separate education for people of different races was a cornerstone of Apartheid. The result? A country that was among the ten most educated in the early twentieth century fell from the top 100 by its end.

    Send the administrators responsible for this to me in South Africa for just one week. They will abandon this lunacy on their own accord immediately.
     
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