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“Gender Bias in College Admissions Tests”, FairTest.org. (via vaginawoolf)
We were told our English Lang GCSEs were often about sport or politics because boys often underperformed in that exam. I can’t even fathom the number of things wrong with this kind of thinking.
(via benedictatorship)
i don’t understand how this is “unconscious” they saw numbers of both males and females and only made adjustments for the males. that is pretty damn blatant and conscious to me.
(via strugglingtobeheard)
Arizona Official Considering Banning Ethnic Studies In Universities Too
Two years ago, Arizona outlawed the teaching of some ethnic studies courses in K-12 schools, and now it may expand the prohibition to universities too.
Just weeks after the state passed its infamous immigration law, it also passed a law aimed at scuttling Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program, which critics claimed taught kids to resent white people. The argument, at the time, was that teaching subjects like critical race theory to kids in high school amounted to indoctrination because they were not old enough to question the teaching critically, like university students.
But now, Arizona’s chief education official sees university-level Mexican-American sudies programs as a danger too:
Arizona’s superintendent of schools, John Huppenthal, says Tucson’s suspended Mexican American studies curricula teaches students to resent Anglos, and that the university program that educated the public school teachers is to blame.
“I think that’s where this toxic thing starts from, the universities,” Arizona Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal said in an interview with Fox News Latino. “To me, the pervasive problem was the lack of balance going on in these classes,” Huppenthal said.
Not surprisingly, a long list of Latino groups and education activists have protested the move, as they did when the state shut down Tucson’s program, decrying the imposition on free speech. “What we’re trying to do is expose children to a much broader perspective, so that we’re not indoctrinating,” said Augustine Romero, the former director of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies Department.
The ethnic studies law, which bans schools from offering courses designed for a specific ethnicity, had far-ranging consequences, including banning books like Shakespeare’s The Tempest and other seemingly anodyne works of literature.
And while many call the state prohibitions unprecedented, Devon Peña, the former director of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies said, “There is a precedent, and it’s called McCarthyism.” “It’s just a witch hunt of a different color. Now, instead of going after the reds, they’re going after the browns.”
Such a weird concept. Women do better at school because we are socialized to be obedient….
“A recent study by the Yale University Child Study Center shows that Black children — especially boys — no matter their family income, receive less attention, harsher punishment and lower marks in school than their White counterparts from kindergarten all the way through college. A subsequent article published in “The Washington Post” reported that Black children in the Washington, D.C. area are suspended or expelled two to five times more often than White children. It’s a national trend that needs to be addressed.”
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”Ladies” or ”Loudies”? : Perceptions and Experiences of Black Girls in Classrooms by Edward W. Morris
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Claire Etaugh and Marsha break down the socialization of school children on a number of levels. First they explain that educators “tend to give more negative sanctions to boys than to girls.” They also touch on gendered toys given to schoolchildren, revealing that students are more likely to receive traditionally gendered toys than toys that are gender non-specific (Etaugh, 137). Generally, this study discussed the ways gender is used as a teaching tool to make sense of the classroom and quickly engage students in the material and daily activities.
It’s been five years since the launch of Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa and out of the first group of 75 girls, 72 are getting ready to graduate on Saturday, January 14th, with all of them heading to tertiary institutes in both South Africa and the United States.
News organization the Associated Press sat down with the American talk-show host and philanthropist about her inspiration, the progress of her elite school, and the controversies that plagued the institution.
Why Teach For America Is Not Welcome In My Classroom
Every spring, without fail, a Teach for America recruiter approaches me and asks if they can come to my classes and recruit students for TFA, and every year, without fail, I give them the same answer.
“Sorry.”
Until Teach for America becomes committed to training lifetime educators and raises the length of service to five years rather than two, I will not allow TFA to recruit in my classes. The idea of sending talented students into schools in impoverished areas, and then after two years encouraging them to pursue careers in finance, law, and business in the hope that they will then advocate for educational equity really rubs me the wrong way.
It was not always thus. Ten years ago, when a Teach for America recruiter first approached me, I was enthusiastic about the idea of recruiting my most idealistic and talented students for work in poor schools. I allowed TFA representative to make presentations in my classes, filled with urban studies and African American studies majors. Several of my best students applied, all of whom wanted to become teachers, and most of whom came from the kind of high-poverty neighborhoods where TFA proposed to send its recruits.
Not one of them was accepted!
Enraged, I did a little research and found that Teach for America had accepted only four of the nearly one hundred Fordham students who applied. I become even angrier when I read in the New York Times that TFA had accepted forty-four of one hundred applicants from Yale that year. Something was really wrong if an organization which wanted to serve low-income communities rejected every applicant from Fordham, students who came from those very communities, and accepted half of the applicants from an Ivy League school where very few of the students, even students of color, come from working-class or poor families.
Since then, the percentage of Fordham students accepted into Teach for America has marginally increased, but the organization has done little to win my confidence that it is seriously committed to recruiting people willing to make a lifetime commitment to teaching and administering schools in high-poverty areas.
Never, in its recruiting literature, has Teach for America described teaching as the most valuable professional choice that an idealistic, socially-conscious person can make. Nor do they encourage the brightest students to make teaching their permanent career; indeed, the organization goes out of its way to make joining TFA seem a like a great pathway to success in other, higher-paying professions.
Three years ago, a TFA recruiter plastered the Fordham campus with flyers that said “Learn how joining TFA can help you gain admission to Stanford Business School.” The message of that flyer was “use teaching in high-poverty areas a stepping stone to a career in business.” It was not only profoundly disrespectful to every person who chooses to commit their life to the teaching profession, it advocated using students in high-poverty areas as guinea pigs for an experiment in “resume-padding” for ambitious young people.
In saying these things, let me make it clear that my quarrel is not with the many talented young people who join Teach for America, some of whom decide to remain in the communities they work in and become lifetime educators. It is with the leaders of the organization, who enjoy the favor with which TFA is regarded with by captains of industry, members of Congress, the media, and the foundation world. They have used this access to move rapidly to positions as heads of local school systems, executives in charter school companies, and educational analysts in management consulting firms.
The organization’s facile circumvention of the grinding, difficult, but profoundly empowering work of teaching and administering schools has created the illusion that there are quick fixes, not only for failing schools but for deeply entrenched patterns of poverty and inequality. No organization has been more complicit than TFA in the demonization of teachers and teachers’ unions, and no organization has provided more “shock troops” for education reform strategies which emphasize privatization and high-stakes testing. Michelle Rhee, a TFA recruit, is the poster child for such policies, but she is hardly alone.
Her counterparts can be found in New Orleans (where they led the movement toward a system dominated by charter schools), in New York (where they play an important role in the Bloomberg education bureaucracy) and in many other cities.
And the elusive goal of educational equity—how well has it fared in the years Teach for America has been operating? Not only has there been little progress in the last fifteen years in narrowing the test score gap by race and class, but income inequality has become greater, in the last fifteen years than at any other time in modern American history. TFA has done nothing to promote income redistribution, reduce the size of the prison population, encourage social investment in high-poverty neighborhoods, or revitalize the arts, science, and history in the nation’s schools. TFA’s main accomplishment has been to marginally increase the number of talented people entering the teaching profession, but only a small fraction of those remain in the schools where they were originally sent.
But the most objectionable aspect of Teach for America—other than its contempt for lifetime educators—is its willingness to create another pathway to wealth and power for those already privileged in the rapidly expanding educational-industrial complex, which already offers numerous careers for the ambitious and well-connected. An organization which began by promoting idealism and educational equity has become, to all too many of its recruits, a vehicle for profiting from the misery of America’s poor.
Mark Naison
Mark Naison is a Professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African American History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book, White Boy: A Memoir, was published in the spring of 2002
**After seeing his picture and reading the brief bio, I recognize this guy. He’s the dude that came out on the Chappelle Show skit with the Jeopardy-esque game regarding people’s knowledge of random, sarcastic, and hilarious questions about black people.
There are so many post grab opportunities I want to pursue that I feel wont accept me simply because I didn’t spend my 4 years in undergrad padding my resume and “playing my cards right.” womp. whatever. People still root for the underdog right? *crosses fingers*
Think of it from the 1% Perspective
While this isn’t a new topic, our country is STILL fucking up when it comes to sex education.
Or perhaps this issue really bothers me because I grew up in the south where they were MILITANT with their abstinence only education… Every single year we were told to take our virginity and keep it locked in a “special box” or some weird shit…
from the article:
The battle over sex education, however, isn’t about what’s safe or healthy for children. It’s about what’s comfortable for seriously sexually repressed adults. In the War on Sex, it’s the children who are the victims. The welfare of our children is being sacrificed so that religious fanatics to inject their beliefs into the structure of our government. The safety of our children is being sacrificed so that adults can feel better about themselves. It should be, of course, the other way around.
The battle over sex education is the battle over childhood and adolescent sexuality. Our government, controlled by corporations and their right-wing authoritarian pawns, has set a clear, tragic, and dangerous challenge: Preventing young people from having sexual experiences and ignoring their health needs as they do.
They’re forcing kids to join them in an unholy crusade to deny sexuality — in the process creating a toxic synergy of teaching kids to fear sexual feelings, while adults fear sexual information. They’ve put kids on the frontlines of the War on Sex as shields and demanding they patrol a toxic landscape of a cultural conflict.
And they’re doing this with your money. Anti-sex educators were awarded more than $200 million in funding in 2006 alone, in every state in the nation. Abstinence-only-until-marriage has been taught in more than half of American public schools and most private schools. Probably in your kid’s school.
hmm… I wonder if this is a factor in the achievement gap, lower rates of social & economic mobility, graduation rates…
no. can’t be.
The report, interestingly enough, notes that black students are more likely to get in trouble for PDA?
Here are snippets of the report, however, you can fine the entire report by clicking the above link!
Daniel J. Losen of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, who wrote the report in conjunction with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, sought to challenge a common misconception: “that some children — especially black children — simply misbehave more than others.” In fact, according to the report, more than 30 percent of black students caught using, or in possession of, cellphones for the first time were suspended, while only 17 percent of white students who committed the same infraction were suspended.
Suspensions for public displays of affection represent a larger gap. Black students caught publicly canoodling for the first time were suspended at a rate three times higher than that of white students who were first-time PDA offenders.
What’s more, white students were disciplined most often for easily documented offenses, such as vandalism and use of explicit language, while black students were disproportionately disciplined for offenses that may have required more judgment on the part of the teacher, such as being disrespectful and being loud in class — suggesting that blacks may be singled out when it comes to more subjective infractions.
Also, interesting that they point out cell phone inractions. I remember once in like 6th grade l I carried around a busted old NON-working BRICK cell phone in my bag JUST BECAUSE there was a cell phone slot in my bag and wanted to fill it with something. I remember my teacher taking it from me, even though it was OBVIOUSLY not functioning because “it could still be used as a pager (somehow, magically) to sell drugs.” That was seriously her reasoning for taking a dead, non working, 5 year old phone I found in my parents closet from a girl in the 6th grade. Because I could possibly be using it to sell drugs.
I’m glad the administration taught their teachers to unequivocally treat every student in my area like criminals at such a young age.
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Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black & White - Prudence L. Carter
This happens at the higher education level as well. I have friends who have been doing theatre, art or music their entire lives come to my school are are taught to abandon what they learn and embrace the world of the bourgeoisie (LITERALLY). All of a sudden our experiences are invalidated because we can’t quote enlightenment era thinkers and bougie french philosophers? Or my friend who takes women’s studies courses and is the only WOC voice and is marginalized every.single.day by her classmates because she didn’t read Judith Butler or Gloria Steiniem like everyone else who’s mother was a rich 2nd waver?
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Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black & White - Prudence L. Carter
This is actually a really interesting book - I fear that the snippets I’m typing up aren’t doing justice the the authors main argument about how the education system impacts low-income students of color. One of her main arguments is that the idea that students of color intentionally do poor in school and demonize good grades for fear of acting white is false - while students of color are obviously (and rightfully) face resistance against adopting the main cultural ideals of their teachers and administrators - these students are certainty not averse to doing well in school or getting good grades. Its not the school success that students are against - its complying and blindly succumbing to the order and control of administrators and teachers that they feel reject and disregard their own rich cultures and backgrounds.
Students are resistant to white-washing, not education. Its a shame that the education system has yet to realize that this is a barrier to student success.
— Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black & White - Prudence L. Carter
