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July 9,
2004
Michelle Malkin,
bemoaning a summer program that teaches the poetry of Tupac Shakur to
high school students, points to the specifics of why Johnny can’t
read. No one expects him to read.
Her editorial
shared space this past week with American father Bill Cosby who has
blasted his American black family. Why can’t Johnny read…or behave?
Because, Mr. Cosby says, no one expects him to.
These two people,
Maulkin and Cosby, are addressing the bad fruits of a culture that has
planted and watered the wrong tree. This tree was planted back in the
1960s when I entered Arizona State University to train as a teacher.
When Rudolf Flesch
provoked the academic elites in 1955 with his bestseller Why Johnny
Can’t Read, people saw the breakdown in education as one of simple
methodology: the “look-say” method of teaching reading versus
phonics. But this debate ignored a greater problem, the changes in
basic educational standards.
Black English
classes went beyond validating unique cultural sentence structure and
dialect when college professors advanced it as an alternative to
standard English. English-as-a-second-language programs mutated into
massive bilingual bureaucracies that institutionalized Spanish as an
alternative track for children who lost any incentive to move beyond
basic functional English.
And it is no
surprise that these changes occurred at the same time as America’s
pop-psychologists worked to make everyone forever happy. In a culture
that esteems self-esteem, we began to teach children their happiness
comes as the result of never being criticized or challenged. This has
had disastrous results in the classroom.
Under a banner of
diversity, educators refused to exclude any possible form of
communication for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. Discipline
could only be positive. And as the breakdown of two-parent families
gained momentum, homework became optional.
It is no
digression, as Mr. Cosby points out, to discuss marriage. Two-parent
families where both a mother and father share the responsibilities of
raising children are essential to success in the classroom. Fathers
and mothers working together have the energy and resources to lay the
basic foundation of respect for education, take children to the
library and supervise study time.
Removing Tupac’s
poetry from the summer reading list is a start in improving education
for our children. But it’s only a start.
If we want children
to read poetry of substance and meaning, the answer involves everyone
from teacher to parent to student. We must unabashedly embrace
two-parent families with both mother and father as the optimal
environment to support schools and teachers.
Teachers must have
students who do their homework. And when the papers are graded and
report cards come out, teachers must have the backing of parents who
understand that a “D” in English is evidence that the child is not
performing, and not evidence that the “teacher is punishing my baby.”
And if we really
want our children to read…and write…and count, we must finally accept
that there are general standards of excellence in education that
transcend culture and race. We must have the courage to select the
best of human achievement and set it as the standard for our
children.
Because we are
race-sensitive, criticism of Tupak and his poetry becomes a racial
argument, ultimately suggesting that black children aren’t capable of
basic standards of literacy because their self-esteem is too fragile
to call trash what it is…trash.
It is silly when
teachers, if white, are discounted as racists in a culture where it is
impolite to suggest that gansta’ rap is anything other than cultural
comment. It is ridiculous when only Hispanics can tell Hispanics that
their children must learn proper English in order to succeed.
It is no surprise
that good teachers would see Tupak as their “key” to reaching kids.
Teachers, lacking a culture of support, try desperately to find some
method of getting kids to turn off the video stream and study a
spelling list on Friday night.
If we really want
to turn things around, we must all get involved. We need to finally
embrace as a culture what it means to be civilized, humane, and
dignified…and then teach it to our children. Most importantly, we
must do this together…black, brown, red and white…mothers and
fathers. If we fail to take the lead, we can’t expect our children to
follow.
Copyright © 2004 Jane Jimenez
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for past editorials.
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