From InhouseJD:

CNN brings us a story of the latest insanity in public miseducation – yet another attempt to bring political correctness to an all-time low, and drag our children’s education along with it:

City high school students will be required to take a class in African and African American history to graduate, a move that education experts believe is unique in the nation.  The requirement in the 185,000-student district, which is about two-thirds black, begins with September’s freshman class, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday.

I’d love to see the American history test scores on the outgoing senior class, just to ensure that the current crop of students is learning all that should be about…well, the country they actually live in.  Some quickly took offense with this hamhanded attempt to make out children a little less informed:

“There are other races in this city,” said Foltz, who is white. “There are other cultures that will be very offended by this. How can you just mandate a course like this?”  While acknowledging it would be better to have courses adequately reflecting all cultures, district officials said African and African American history had been neglected too long.  “We have a whole continent that has been absent from most of our textbooks,” said Paul Vallas, the district’s chief executive officer.

It might be presumptuous to assume Mr. Vallas is aware of the Asian continent, of which Philly’s graduating seniors are relatively unaware of.  Then again, is this the man of who it was said:

When Paul Vallas was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools they watched with dismay as he lied to the press, abused veteran educators, gave out lucrative no-bid contracts, misused standardized tests and engaged in shocking acts of racial bigotry.

Or wait… is this the Vallas who became the most prominent big-city superintendent in the nation, as well as a candidate for several political offices, before stepping into the unenviable job rebuilding Philly’s mess of a public school system?  One thing is for certain– it will take one heck of an effort to retrofit this country’s educational system, but we can’t begin by forgetting which country we’re living in.

Insider adds:

The argument that will no doubt be made by the move’s defenders is that the new course requirement is simply to balance out the Euro-centric bias that is supposedly rampant in schools and that we effectively already have European history as a study requirement. This claim can be rebutted in any number of different ways.

But let’s instead look at the individuals who this will affect the most, black students. As it stands, 53% of blacks who are born into the bottom 20% of income level remain in that bottom 20%. The primary difference between the upward mobile and non-upward mobile blacks is the jobs they are able to get based on the skills and education that they obtain. I’m not so sure that the Philly school move is going to help those 53% whatsoever and in my opinion that is the true crime here.

At least this move is not as bad as the absolutely lowest point in PC scholastics, Oakland School Board’s Ebonics fiasco.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 10th, 2005 at 2:11 am by Insider and is filed under (Un)education, Politically Correct ... and stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.