>Thanks for your comments.
>
>>You can put all of the money into elementary and secondary
>>schools that you want, but if people don't have the kind of
>>family values that place an emphasis on discipline and
>>education, it won't do any good.
>
>"This above, is not an easy thing to say.
>
>I'll leave it at that."
>
>Well, the idea of more funding for schools is important, but
>when there is a situation where the young people just plain
>don't know how to act,

I just don't want to address this assertion in this post.

> I just think that there are
>things we can learn from those parents and educators that
>were themselves educated *in the Caribbean*.

1. Are you Caribbean?
2. Are you an educator?

Honestly, I don't think there is much to learn, that is replicable here.

In essence
- believe in your children
- raise the expectations
- make the curriculum more rigorous

That's what you can do on the school end.

But in Afrika and the Caribbean, you've got an entire culture, where this is the norm. Respect for teachers. Everyone is trying to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer...or the children don't see this as impossible for a black person to be those things, because that is the norm in those countries. (we wont' mention private schools, corporal punishment, or the class issues in those countries)

>The significant point is that these adults are the
>benificiaries of a system of education that is not operating
>on the basic assumption (or at least the strong suspicion)
>of black inferiority.

Well yeah, but they weren't born here either.
They aren't Americans.

> Maybe it is true that the knowledge is not transferrable
>from the West Indian Immigrant context to the broader
>African American context--but at this point, it's all
>conjecture. I'm just saying that it is worth looking
>into--some studies should be done, and experts on that
>educational system should be consulted, in my opinion.

Folks have been doing that.

Here's something from the UK
http://www.bopcris.ac.uk/bop1974/ref4424.html

In the UK, w.i. children raised by W.I. parents statistically underachieve.


>Maybe there could be a study-abroad program where African
>American student teachers would go to teachers' colleges in
>the Carribean, where they would study the Carribean system.

Are you suggesting that the Caribbean schools have diff techniques for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic that would work better for black children?

>All of the comments you make about the problems that some
>parents have with helping their kids with homework are well
>taken. However, I think that there is still a significant
>problem with some kids not really coming to school with the
>kind of attitude that will give them a chance at success.

Those are really 2 issues, that are interdependent.

> However, black people's issues with this
>are much more complex, in my view, because for some of our
>people, the notion of 'blackness' itself is placed in
>opposition to the idea of being an educated person. This
>is where the tie-in with the history of slavery in the US
>occurs.

Maybe.

>I'm saying that, all other things being equal, *our* kids
>should have the advantage over the children of foreign-born
>blacks, in terms of their ability to gain admission to
>prestigious US schools through competetive admissions.

That's what they were saying, but it's not what we're really talking about.

In essence, they're making an affirmative action claim.
Aff Action is meant to remedy abuse of Black Americans.

We're discussing why are there so many black folks who haven't been here as long, and what those parents are doing to make their children succeed in the American school system.


>The fact that 2/3 of these students have foreign-born
>parents (or are biracial) is significant, because these
>blacks form a relatively small proportion of the 30 million
>blacks in this country--the overwhelming majority of US
>blacks have parents who are native-born.

I gotta throw this in again. A lot of American Born Blacks that are achieving academically, think HBCU's are better than Ivy's. So a dearth of Af Am's at these "prestigious" institutions, is not really the cause for alarm that people make it out to be.

Now it's up to you to decide if these black folks are making a mistake by going to an HBCU vs a PWI.

>Its not even like
>we're talking 50-50 in terms of population--it is much more
>lopsided than that. I am going to speculate for a moment and
>say that if a broader study were to be done, you might
>well see similar results at many other prestigious
>institutions across the country.

It will be a detailed study because the college choices aren't as simple as go to school based on SAT score and program.

>"The fact that Lincoln is @ Princeton, might over look the
>fact that Mikey, Bunny, and Desmond are still on the block."
>
>I am not suggesting that all West Indians are at Harvard or
>in the Ivy League. I am simply saying that these results
>would not look like this if native-born AAs were taking
>better overall advantage of their educational opportunities.

possibly.

> Hell, even if you exclude the poorer AAs who are more
>likely to come from low-performing schools (not that I
>advocate ignoring them), there are more than enough
>*middle-class* blacks in this country to preclude a result
>like this.

Enter the HBCU.

>In closing, I say: 'Bravo' to the Caribbean folks and
>Africans--but in the same breath, I say to native-born AAs
>'Why in the hell can't we compete more effectively? We are
>the vast majority of the black population in this country,
>and we should be at these institutions in much greater
>numbers!'

yeah.


>Bottom line--we have to do much, much better than we have
>been doing, in terms of preparing our kids to compete in the
>educational arena.
>
>BTW, it sounds as though you might be a teacher yourself.
>If so, much respect to you for being down 'in the trenches'
>on this issue.

I'm not, my mother is.
I've just tutored.

> I can definitely say that the low pay that teachers receive
>in the US is a crime, and is one of the major contributing
>factors to underachievement among US students in general.

Actually, I don't know about that either.

Teacher pay would have to increase from avg of 20-30 to start, to 60-80 to start to change the folks becoming teachers.

one
k. orr