2006-09-25

More Blacks Homeschooling Their Children Rather Than Deal With Failing Public Schools

Many black homeschoolers worry that their children will be labeled in a public school. Black public school students are three times as likely as white students to be categorized as needing special education services, a 2002 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found.

"My son is high-energy, and I didn't want him to end up on Ritalin or feel bad about himself," Utsey said. "There is an assumption that black boys are violent if they are too energetic."

A desire for more rigorous academics and greater emphasis on black history also has led black families into homeschooling, educators say.

9 comments:

Paul Hue said...

Black kids perform better in white schools on average than they do in the black schools (though of course some black schools are excelling, and some white schools are failing). Many more black families strive to get their kids into white schools, and flee black schools, than flee white schools for home-schooling. And, sadly, black kids more so than white kids misbehave in white schools.

If vouchers existed, the tiny fraction of blacks who flee white schools could keep the voucher money for themselves.

Paul Hue said...

Most of the reasons cited by these black parents are identical to the reasons cited by white parents, even those in relitively nice public schools. Even white parents fear that their active sons will get targetted for ritalin. No evidence in this article demonstrates that black and white kids with identical behaviors will get treated differently with respect to getting placed in special ed or prescribed drugs; all this article presents is claims by parents, which can be completely wrong. Many white parents reject the same diagnoses for their kids, but they don't have the charge of "racism" at their disposal.

Ulimately the greater phemomenon among black parents with respect to cracker schools is to get their kids into them, not to escape them. Nadir and I have extensive experiance with black kids who attend white schools. My experiance leads me to believe that the ones who work productively perform well and get treated well in the honkey schools, and those who perform poorly there have poor attitudes even in our all-negro academy.

(And what does learning "black history" have to do with performing well learning math, science, writing, reading... and even "honkey history"? The Asian kids beat the crackers in everything, even honkey history. But given that just about all "black" kids in the US descend from crackers, even honkey history is "theirs"... if you are given to assigning history racistly. I teach my negro daughter that all history belongs to her, and that all those who have done well set an example for her, and I am correct!)

Paul Hue said...

“Black public school students are three times as likely as white students to be categorized as needing special education services, a 2002 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found. “

That is a far cry from showing that black and white kids with identical behaviors get treated differently, isn't it?

Asian boys are less likely to get so catagorized, and so are girls compared to boys, and even black girls compared to white boys. Does "the system" favor girls (even black girls!) and Asians?

Nadir said...

"No evidence in this article demonstrates that black and white kids with identical behaviors will get treated differently with respect to getting placed in special ed or prescribed drugs; all this article presents is claims by parents, which can be completely wrong."

Incorrect.

"Black public school students are three times as likely as white students to be categorized as needing special education services, a 2002 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found."

Nadir said...

"(And what does learning "black history" have to do with performing well learning math, science, writing, reading... and even "honkey history"? The Asian kids beat the crackers in everything, even honkey history. But given that just about all "black" kids in the US descend from crackers, even honkey history is "theirs"... if you are given to assigning history racistly. I teach my negro daughter that all history belongs to her, and that all those who have done well set an example for her, and I am correct!)"

The difference is between learning the truth, and learning a history that treats your people as equal to everyone else. Your daughter is half white, so certainly "all history belongs to her" as she is part of the race that rewrote history. Because she has been raised by her white father, this will be easy for her to accept.

Were she darker skinned and had parents who didn't force her to read (more important than her skin color) she may suffer from slightly lowered self-esteem. This is less true of Black kids whose parents make sure they grow up with an understanding and appreciation of African history.

It shouldn't be this way, and I would imagine, US history is more inclusive now than it was when we were in school, But white folks write the history books, and European mythology is more imporant to the people who create the curriculum than is African, Asian and Latino history.

Asians do better at white history, but culturally most Asian culture is taught at home. African-Americans have disproportionately rejected much of their African heritage, therefore they don't teach these things at home.

You grew up without a cultural pride in your Irish heritage, but you grew up white in America. You have American culture. It's getting better, but Black folks are still behind white folks here.

Blacks homeschooling will help this trend.

Nadir said...

You'll notice from the stats in the article that upper income folks of all races homeschool a little less. This is because they can afford to send their kids to good schools.

Homeschooling is more popular in the lower income brackets across the board.

Paul Hue said...

Nadir, do you seriously believe that the following statement constitutes proof that black and white boys behaving identically get treated differently?
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"Black public school students are three times as likely as white students to be categorized as needing special education services, a 2002 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found."
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The above statement does not demonstrate that black and white boys behaving identically will get treated differently! Are you aware that white boys get these diagnoses more often than black girls and Asian boys? Are teachers thus treating differently white boys and black girls who identically? Are coaches treating differently white boys and black boys who play basketball identically?

Paul Hue said...

Nadir: You also have white ancestors, so even by your racist logic "white history" belongs to you. Do you claim as "your" history even the history of "black" people who provide for you no genetic ancestors, such as the Zulus, Ethiopians, and Egyptians?

I am raising my kid without racism, and thus I claim for her all human history, not just what you classify as "black" and "white". I also claim for her Asian history, and the history of all other people.

I am very curious to know facts about how much these high-performing, well-behaving Asian kids are learning about "Asian" history. In many of the black-controlled, black-majority schools that are failing, the curricula is stuffed with what you would celebrate as "black" history, and black kids in the pre-1960s excellent public schools in such places as Harlem performed magnificently on standardized tests and exhibitted excellent behavior, and they learned as history all those "white lies" that you deplore. How do you explain that?

Paul Hue said...

Nadir: Don't you wish that the black Detroit parents (or, for that matter, the rich black parents in the subburbs!) who opt to home school (for whatever reason!) could keep the $12,000/year now spent by the govt to mis-educate each of their children in the govt school? You cite yourself that "low income" people are more likely to homeschool. Consider a two-parent family in Detroit, with one parent earning merely $40,000. They have two kids of school age. That's $24,000/year spent by the government to educate them in a govt school. Under my proposed voucher system, these people could increase their family income by over 50% by home-schooling. That would provide more than enough so that they could afford to get govt photo ID cards to help reduce voter fraud!