So, (and this is question, not an attempt at being labelled a racist), are people in the black population pushing for the re-segregation of schools that civil rights activists worked so hard to integrate? I wonder how many of those individuals would roll in their graves at this news.

The sciences are hard and cold. Math, biology, and chemistry are composed of facts. Theories, as well of course, but generally they are more fact-driven than the humanities.

The humanities, however, are subjective. What makes a good work of literature? I'd argue, that if they don't speak to inner city black kids, these authors DON'T represent some sort of universal human condition.

I agree that these authors are an important part of the Western literary tradition, and that black people living in the west would do well to learn the literary traditions of the west. However, I'd say their value lies more in their cultural import than any inherent inner worth.

Don't get me wrong. I love Shakespeare, especially the comedies. People in drag! Twins! Magic potions! Love confusion! Fart jokes! What's not to like? And I like the plucky waifs of Dickens. But the humanities are the humanities, they're subjective, they aren't sciences.

Having said that, you can teach these classic authors and tailor it to the needs of your schools. "Oliver Twist" can prompt discussions about street gangs. "Othello"... well, if you can't see how to apply the themes in Othello to minority races in America then you don't deserve your English degree.

Homer and Virgil are important to understand the later authors, as mythology gets referenced a lot. If its' a remedial class, there's always Edith Hamilton who breaks things down nicely. But are greco-roman myths inherently "better" than, say, the monkey king and Sita? I'd say no. I'd say that they are important for us to learn because they are at the bottom of -our- literature, and it is important to know one's own culture. Black people, or other minorities, living here are part of this culture as well, and need to learn it as well if they are to succeed.

Having said that, there's no reason not to learn things other than the basic culture. America is a country of immigrants, and you don't have to throw out all the vestiges of your country or subculture of origin. Loving "A Midsummer Night's Dream" doesn't prevent me from being able to tell you all about William (we call him Guillaume in this part of the country) Tell, or Heidi (she isn't blond).

There's no reason why black kids can't read "The Bluest Eye" or "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".

My one beef with African-American literature, is in many of the well-known ones, the theme of children being raped by their uncle/mom's boyfriend/father/etc is far too prevalent. I agree that is tragic and an important issue, but aren't there other issues? I don't think I read any book by a black woman in High School English that didn't involve kiddie rape by a fatherly figure. If they're trying to destroy stereotypes...

I've lived in London for a long time and have a couple of friends who work as teachers. Rest assured, when it comes to the substandard state schools in Britain, Homer et al aren't being taught to black, white or Asian students.

Similar but different article ... http://www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/2010/09/22/sell-the-girls/

There's no reason why black kids can't read "The Bluest Eye" or "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".

There's no reason white kids can't read them either.

uh-huh, and you are telling me that in majority-minority schools, they read Maya Angelou? Or do some of the kids read her at the cost of being "too white" by being interested in her writings? The problem is a bit more broad in that there are vast numbers of kids that aren't interested in learning, especially the boys. They don't see a need for it.

The break isn't what is in the books, or who wrote it. The issue is that the book itself isn't seen necessary. You have to fix that at home.
And here we see a problem...

...consult with black community groups to make the curriculum more relevant...find content which interests and empowers young black people...

Is this an honest call to broaden literary horizons, or a demand by black activists to be able to indoctrinate students with Black Power bullshit at taxpayers expense?

Debating the relevance or literary merits of Maya Angelou vs Shakespeare seems futile when so many kids can't read anything more complicated than a stop sign.

>>"uh-huh, and you are telling me that in majority-minority schools, they read Maya Angelou?"

My friend teaches elementary at a "majority-minority school" (it took me a few seconds to figure out what you meant by that. I may ask her if she's done any research as to what the kids read as they go into middle and high schools. It'd be interesting. This year, she is struggling, as nearly half of her third-grade class is reading at a *beginning* second grade level. I wonder what the expectations are by ninth grade in these urban schools. Even in third grade, she's struggling to get the slower students to read fiction. (It's easier to get them nonfiction, because they are generally shorter, picture-heavy books about topics they're already interested in).

>>"But are greco-roman myths inherently "better" than, say, the monkey king and Sita?"

Oh, hells no. One of the biggest things our educational system is missing is more literature, tales, and history from the East. I'm guessing that this isn't a purposeful exclusion - rather for the longest time our educations were based on the "classical" education from ye olden days. It's only in, what, the past fifty years (maybe less) that we've started to think in more global terms.

But most of all, I want to know what they're thinking of when they say "relevant". This seems open to a *LOT* of interpretation and I'm wondering what they have in mind.

In her award-winning 1991 essay, "Why We Read: Canon to the Right of Me," Katha Pollitt (who's an English professor, incidentally) pointed out that what really matters is whether or not students ever read for pleasure. If they don't, she said, it doesn't matter what books they're FORCED to read; they're not going to remember them! So learning to enjoy unassigned reading at home has to come first.

Quote: "But is there any list of a few dozen books that can have such a magical effect, for good or for ill? Of course not. It's like arguing that a perfectly nutritional breakfast cereal is enough food for the whole day."

You can read it here:

http://tinyurl.com/34jzzr8

I dare anyone to read it and not enjoy it.

One personal note: I don't believe - and I doubt Pollitt does either - that teachers should have to assign books that aren't that high in literary quality just because they're highly popular. If a few kids won't read ANYTHING, not even the trashy books that all the other kids do, that should not be the teacher's problem.

Someone once said that the true heavy lifting lies in convincing parents that reading aloud to kids can actually be fun, since many functionally literate parents just don't enjoy reading.

(My guess is that's always been the case, even long before TV existed - and I wish people like Harold Bloom would acknowledge this. Instead, he spends all his time indirectly scolding well-read but wimpy parents who are too timid to say to their kids "turn off that video game" or "can't you read anything other than THAT?")

"what really matters is whether or not students ever read for pleasure"

We could never get my stepson to read for pleasure, though his father does. Then he got *sent up* for a couple years..where he could really do nothing but read, with maybe a weekly TV night. He came back an avid Harry Potter and sci-fi nut, which lasted him through 5 years in the service and to this day. Sadly, that's not what most boys learn in stir.

"My guess is that's always been the case,"

We need to remember that in the last 30 years or so have we tried to push every kid through HS and college. It used to be that 8th grade was the norm, and plenty of guys dropped out before that to work and never looked back. Don't know what to do with those people now and interests & aptitude have changed little since then.

We need to remember that in the last 30 years or so have we tried to push every kid through HS and college. It used to be that 8th grade was the norm, and plenty of guys dropped out before that to work and never looked back.
__________________________

That reminds me of this thread about a recent "Stone Soup" strip:

http://tinyurl.com/346ucnj

Excerpt that I wrote:

I was well aware of Jan Eliot's point. I simply find it very tiresome - and very distracting - that someone as socially astute as she generally is could be so conformist when it comes to the not-so-subtle idea that everybody HAS to go to college to be financially successful. Colleges, sadly, are loaded with young people who really don't want to be there but who are not necessarily lazy or unambitious. There is no
way to sift them out in advance unless they admit they don't want to be there. Plus, IIRC, well over a third of those who go to college do
not get a degree. That's a big waste of money.

That said, I feel that slacker kids should also be told that it's OK not to go to college; what's not OK is using that as an excuse not to
read real newspapers and challenging books. (If only for the sake of cutting your risk of developing Alzheimer's later on, but of course no teen worries about that, so it's better just to say that 30-year-olds are expected to have twice the vocabulary and knowledge of 15-year-
olds if they want any respect.)

You know why africa never produced as many philosphers or scientists and eurpoe or asia?

THEY DIDNT HAVE TO.

Think about it. Neccesity is the mother of invention.

If you can get by hunting and fishing and digging up crops for less than 3 hours a day why would you need to invent a plow?

Or domesticate a horse?
Or need to develop a way to house hunndereds of people on less than one acre of land?

Or keep out the harsh elements for more than six months of the year?

There is a reason people who lived in climates harsh enough to require long term planning, but fertile enough to allow for population growth conquered the world.

As someone said the hummanites are subjective, but hardly noone in my high school(90% white, middle class church going mormons) like reading anything for english, let alone shakespere

So lujlp we can expect the Indians or Chinese to overtake western civilization any time as they've definitely had a population growth, potentially world conquering.

There's nothing to worry about, as the state education is in currently we'll be lucky if the high school college bound graduates can read, write and interpret at a college level. No worries about catering to minorities, schools are too busy testing kids and measuring the results to compensate the teachers who proctor the exams...

By the way, girls are currently outperforming boys in the humanities in k-12. Soon we'll have single-gendered, single-raced classes so that each students will get an appropriate education to their individual needs... gag.

Paula, dont be a bitch.

First off, yes they could but for our nukes, secondly, you might have noticed I used past tense.

Our knowledege of science has progessed to the point where we could now quite easily destroy ourselves, but not the the point of being able to get off theis plaent let alone out of the solar system.

I'm not going to apologize to a buck of racist race baiters because people with my "ethnic" features happend to win the scientific and technological arm race based on nothing more then the luck of the draw on where they finally settled down.

I am not responsbile for shit that happened long before I was born - Nor do I owe anybody of any "race" anything for shit that never even happend to them

You want to talk about education? Why is it forbidden to mention that afriacans sold each other in to slavery, or that muslim in the middle east had slaves until as little as 40yrs ago?

40yrs ago??

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2003/11/saudi-religious-leader-calls-for-slaverys

Are people saying that black kids -shouldn't- read Aristotle? Or are they rather saying they should use a different hook? Having them read books from other cultures than western doesn't prevent them from reading western lit.

I agree with SwissArmy, though, fundamentally its about what is going on at home, and if the kids don't like reading at all, then giving them Langston Hughes isn't going to help. (Though I love his short stories, "The Ways of White Folks", its pretty hilarious and I recognize a lot of people in there).

Amy, didn't you post one time about a housekeeper who realized the homes of the people whose houses she cleaned were full of books, so she bought lots of books and her son grew up successful?

There was some study, I need to see if I can find it on google... I'll post back if I can find it, but the gist of it was that white people speak to their children a lot more, so by the time the kids get to school, the white kids have a much larger vocabulary. This cuts across social class... lemme see if I can find it.

OK, I messed up in the last post... apparently it DOESN'T cut across socio-economic class, but here is a study, not sure if its the same one:

http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=38&articleid=120§ionid=791

Lujlp, if African American students read an African American book like "Roots", they'd know that africans sold each other into slavery! Poor Kunte Kinte! A real tear-jerker, that book, I was sobbing at the end. (I'm a marshmallow with books and movies.)

Sorry lujlp, I didn't mean to make you defensive. I do think you're right about population growth but I don't think our nukes will help much against China's devalued currency :-( It seems the days of military prowess have dissolved and been replaced by economic growth (just look at the melt down of the USSR in trying to replace the "guns" for the "butter").

My point about education is that the majority of college-bound high school seniors are unable to read, write and think critically at a college level despite earning adequate grades in high school. "Analyzing federal data, the report estimates 43% of community college students require remediation, as do 29% of students at public four-year universities, with higher numbers in some places." http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-09-15-Colleges-remedialclasses_N.htm

So regardless of skin color, many students trying to better themselves through education are finding high school didn't prepare them.

By the way, I taught middle school English for the past four years (not currently). I taught students from all backgrounds who would show up and tune out. Getting them to read anything was a challenge. Our high school English teachers didn't teach the literary cannon, mostly just short stories from anthologies purchased by the school district (the was no Cicero, Aristophanes, Chaucer). Teachers can only use what they're provided with unless they purchase their own books with their salaries. Consistently standards are being dumbed down for ALL students in public schools in order for the district to "look good" when students are "proficient" on standardized tests.

In Michigan "proficient" is 59% otherwise known as an F on a typical grade scale. What is the future being prepared for? And why must tax payers subsidize a school system sees 59% as proficient?

My son is in high school right now and every year during "Black History Month" which last about 6 weeks (go figure) they read literature written by blacks, written about blacks, they study black created art, black subject art, black figures in history and current ones too. Politicians and activists and anyone else of note. Our school has 0.4% black students (91.7% white).

I don't give a flying flip if black students can't relate to Shakespeare. Neither could I when I was a teen. At least not until some great teachers demonstrated the universal themes. I LEARNED to appreciate things other than those I felt connected to.

Paula, I was joking, if I had gotten defensive or upset there'd've been a paragraph or two tearing into you.

Sucks being a english teacher, I'd say the only harder subject to make kids pay attention to is history

I personally just think acclaimed writers and artist, black or white, should be focused on throughout the year, but I was so grateful to have a Black History Month throughout high school english. My school and I are lily-white, but the most moving and beautiful poets and writers for me were Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. I personally think Richard Wright compares just fine with Dickens (who I love) and I think he's better other authors commonly read in high school like Steinbeck and Mark Twain. If it takes Black History Month or a special focus on black literature to work these writers into the curriculum, that's fine with me.

When I was in high school, we studied them, too. We just called it "American History" and "American Literature." Shocking, eh?

">>Soon we'll have single-gendered, single-raced classes so that each students will get an appropriate education to their individual needs... gag."

Actually, a few friends are pushing to try an experiment at their elementary school with one-gender classrooms. The reason being is that young girls can learn in the "traditional" manner (sitting still and listening) far easier than young boys. They're wired differently (it's why boys are more often diagnosed with ADHD), and boys require a more active learning style. More hands-on and demonstrative than how we're used to teaching these days. You may not be far off. ^_~