Cultural relevancy can close the achievement gap

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Capt Worley PE

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I don't buy into this, but it makes for interesting reading.

The focus on accountability, particularly through the federal No Child Left Behind law, has had the perverse effect of widening the achievement gap between African-American students and their peers. Unfortunately, most education theories do not address the needs of African-American students, and so many teachers enter the classroom without the cultural knowledge needed to effectively instruct African-American students.

In order for learning to be maximized, it has to be related to prior knowledge and experiences. Too often, teachers who struggle to effectively educate African-American students attribute their failure to cultural deficiencies in their students. This explains why African-Americans have overpopulated special education programs. This is not to say that non-African-American educators can’t teach African-American students, because many of them are great educators, but rather that many of them need to become more familiar with the experiences associated with being born African-American. Geographic living patterns prevent this from happening naturally, so it requires a little more effort from the teacher.

Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/05/26/1834038...l#ixzz1ObVLPl3d

 
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There is just no way to comment on this article without broadly stereotyping or potentially sounding racist.

Oh, what the hell.

Our community is no where near as culturally diverse as the south. Our African-American population comes mostly from the Air Force base, along with an assortment of other ethnicities. What we do have is a very large Hispanic population. I would say that both of those populations are strongly driven to do well in school, with a few outliers. The base kids typically have pretty involved parents. The Hispanic kids are surrounded by parents that want better for their kids and typically have pretty involved families as well. It seemed like the slacker kids were well distributed across all "cultures" with the rich white kids having a pretty firm hold on "kids most likely to screw up" as a group.

Sure, I can buy into the fact that we still have a pretty Euro-centric history focus and even potentially the same for literature. However, that doesn't address math, composition skills, and science that should be universally addressed. I fail to see how a difference in cultures can change the way someone learns science. Is this like that Freedom Writers movie with Hillary Swank? I don't know. It helps that I'm a mostly white kid who had really involved parents that expected a lot out of me.

:2cents:

 
From speaking with public school teachers I know the lowest score a student can get is 60% due to No Child Left Behind. A grade of 'D' will get you a high school diploma. At this point public education is a joke anyhow if everyone passes.

From the article, there is no way anyone can know what it is like to be someone else therefore trying to will probably at best come off as condescending.

 
Blood... boiling.

That's the biggest wad of putrid apologist drivel that I have read in a long time.

My mother spent most of her career teaching English in rural southern classrooms and Shakespeare is no more irrelevant to those students than it was to me (read completely irrelevant). Yet we all had to study it and are somewhat smarter for having suffered through it, regardless of whether we liked it or not - that's just the English language, love it or hate it. Many of her students actually enjoyed and saw the value in it. But success has nothing to do with whether or not your teacher knew how to make Shakespeare relevant based on your cultural heritage; success comes from individual pursuit of excellence given your talents and I've seen plenty of African-Americans succeed to great heights from humble beginnings (where so many others have embraced the putrid apologist drivel), so many so that I do not believe in the soft-racism of lowered expectations anymore and rally to ridicule it wherever it rears it's ugly head. Students who embrace learning win; students who embrace ignorance lose. If that's just an extension of cultural heritage, so be it, but no more excuses.

 
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My mother spent most of her career teaching English in rural southern classrooms and Shakespeare is no more irrelevant to those students than it was to me (read completely irrelevant). Yet we all had to study it and are somewhat smarter for having suffered through it, regardless of whether we liked it or not - that's just the English language, love it or hate it.
I was a voracious reader but absolutely hated the classics. I've always wondered if more people would be interested in reading for pleasure if they had been taught Engish using more modern works.

Shakespeare, Beowulf, Great Expectations, and Silas Marner were all horrible experiences.

 
My mother spent most of her career teaching English in rural southern classrooms and Shakespeare is no more irrelevant to those students than it was to me (read completely irrelevant). Yet we all had to study it and are somewhat smarter for having suffered through it, regardless of whether we liked it or not - that's just the English language, love it or hate it.
I was a voracious reader but absolutely hated the classics. I've always wondered if more people would be interested in reading for pleasure if they had been taught Engish using more modern works.

Shakespeare, Beowulf, Great Expectations, and Silas Marner were all horrible experiences.
I discovered that Shakespeare, Dickens and the like are amazing story-tellers, with the weakness being the language. The stories are generally timeless, except for the changing language. A 20th century-style language telling the tales of Shakespeare and Dickens are great.

 
My mother spent most of her career teaching English in rural southern classrooms and Shakespeare is no more irrelevant to those students than it was to me (read completely irrelevant). Yet we all had to study it and are somewhat smarter for having suffered through it, regardless of whether we liked it or not - that's just the English language, love it or hate it.
I was a voracious reader but absolutely hated the classics. I've always wondered if more people would be interested in reading for pleasure if they had been taught Engish using more modern works.

Shakespeare, Beowulf, Great Expectations, and Silas Marner were all horrible experiences.
I discovered that Shakespeare, Dickens and the like are amazing story-tellers, with the weakness being the language. The stories are generally timeless, except for the changing language. A 20th century-style language telling the tales of Shakespeare and Dickens are great.
I could see that. I read a prose copy of The Canterbury Tales and laughed my behind off. Much more enjoyable.

 
THose were for the Honors english kids. Shakespeare yes, the rest nope didn't have to read...but those could have been the required reading for juniors where my teacher was obsessed with other stuff...mostly anything native american related.

 
I once took a Women's Lit class because it covered three of the requirements all in one class. Even though I am a woman, it might as well have been in Greek. There was a cluster of engineers and science majors in the back and we did our best just to make it through. There was a group on the other side that managed to find a penis in everything we read...snake, cane, thundercloud...all penises. Hmm...so maybe there is something to cultural upbringing and success...

 
Thomas Sowell has written quite a few things about this very subject. He's an economist/historian/political writer. His conclusion is that the degree of success/achievement for any demographic group is directly proportional to the values imparted by the culture of that group. If the culture you grow up in places a very low value on education, chances are you're not going to do well in school and no action by the school itself is going to do much to change that.

 
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