Institutional racism keeps black teachers out of top posts

Read this in a teachers standard paper... wonder how they'll fix this one or if anything has changed with Obama in power... we all know from experience that the natives quite simply don't like working or being under a so called ethnic person, someone with a slave name might pass but a school headed by a Mr Adedremo or Mrs Shingvapatel will soon see that school become majority ethnic as the local natives attempt to find other schools for their children fearful they'll be culturally contaminated, that a school headed by an ethnic person will taint the white washing of their childs education and subsequent assumption of authority over his or her ethnic counterparts or some such... we then find groups of natives talking about how they voted BNP because the government "isn't listening" and about how their culture is being eroded when the truth is the same... that they tend to move out when a few ethnics move into an area, leaving it for others to move in as they take up residence away from places they now see as downgraded due to the residency of a few cultured folk only to sit in Essex, Barnet and elsewhere to continue to complain about a predicament brought on by themselves... in full and quite literally taking their explotitive migration causing foriegn policy to mind.

Oh... what a tangled web they weave.

Peace
.AM.

What the report actually says is a bit more complex than that article suggests - you might want to check it out here (last paragraph on page 77 gives a summary of the main barriers that people identified, and whilst discrimination is there, it's not the only or even the main factor):

The leadership aspirations and careers of black and minority ethnic teachers

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.....

Most of these black teachers are coconuts who dont have a clue anyway.

That is an interesting statement regardless of whether or not it is true.

Why can't Black people put together book lists that Black kids can use to self educate regardless of what is going on in the educational institutions. We should be looking for PUBLIC DOMAIN books that can be put on these NETBOOKS that can be given to kids. If books worth reading that once cost $1000 can be put on computers that cost less than $400 what is that as an educational bargain.

Here is something from 50 years ago that is relevant today:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of All Day September, by Roger Kuykendall.

NASA just bombed the Moon looking for water.

NASA's strike on moon worked, mission official says - CNN.com

um

A fair number are; as big if not a bigger problem is that there are too many that lack the confidence and courage to back themselves. The report picks up on this too.

[quote=umbrarchist;1513021][size=3]That is an interesting statement regardless of whether or not it is true.

Why can't Black people put together book lists that Black kids can use to self educate regardless of what is going on in the educational institutions.

Im my experience there is very little in the form of historical books about OUR history that can be easily digested for primary school children. And the only books you can generally get over here are books on African American history. Which is fine if your AA but AA history is not my legacy. Where are the children's books that explain the Maroon societies across the Americas, on Mali/ Ghana/ Zimbabwe/ Nile Valley civilisation. I cant find them.

I resorted to doing my own 5 page books with info off the internet and bind them up nice and pretty for my children to do as projects. And if you go to black countries in the Carribean or Africa the situation is dire.

Even commercially it is a good idea to produce this material but its lacking badly. I really dont understand it. In this information age.

I increasingly have no time for these black teachers over here. No point having black teachers if they are historically thick as two planks. I can understand lack of courage or confidence. Not everyone is a trailblazer. But ignorance as a teacher is unforgiveable.

Parents are supposed to "SUPPLEMENT" the education their children receive in school.


Individually, any parent or set of parents can look up and procure books about African and African diaspora history IF they are so inclined.


Where we get into trouble sometimes is thinking or expecting that "as a group" Black people should, could, or would do something....nah....nothing keeping individuals from doing certain things....


Those "hood books" sell like hotcakes over here.....often with NO national distribution......so if the purchasers of that crap can find THAT........they can find books for their children.

People don't care about playing an ACTIVE role in their children's education...in way too many cases.

Is history all that matters or even the most important?

I have been suggesting this:

Amazon.com: Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics (0639785330844): Stan Gibilisco; Stan Gibilisco, Stan Gibilisco: Books

I had a White man that hangs around a Black website tell me it's a great book but no Black people have said anything about it.

The history of the last 500 years has been a record of what people with technology can do to people without technology and the people without technology can't do a damn thing about it. This excess emphasis on Black history is a waste of time.

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Bredder Tukoma

They have to teach the national curriculum. Approved books.

Anything else is supplemental and could be found in after school or outside school classes. You can't rely on the British state to educate your kids about African history... that's ass backwards to begin with and teachers are legally required to teach what the state says.

Hardly fair to blame them. I know too many black teachers who are good friends of mine to let that go. Most of them are well aware of their history and would be willing to engage students on that level but as said above, it requires parents to drive that and ask for it.

A good comment, agree with you there although history is very important both to us as Africans culturally speaking, and in general... anything to do away with the disempowerment and self hatred the majority of us feel as a result of what we have faced over said period of time is a good thing and history does that well but it should be across board and include geography, architecture, art, language etc as well as recent history perhaps... kind of answers SoulRebels notice at the same time. Can't read the report as I'm on a mobile typing this but which of those conditions have to do with the confidence of those teachers facing a none too mentioned but all too there culture of non acceptance? Being offered a seat to the side and taking it knowing the likely outcome and stresses of their time as headmaster or mistress? Oppression has a psycology to it, doubt the statistics would have picked up on that.

Main thing is that it highlights what the youths are facing in those schools, if a silent culture is against an ethnic person running a school it says all too much about the system in general... and of course with Afro-Caribbean headmasters/mistresses we would be (much) better placed to press for a change in cirriculum, its one thing not including information on the contribution of others to world culture, technology and so on and another to blank it out completely... think its those gaps that have young people dropping out not feeling included but more suspisious and rejecting of the idea of education in general.

Did you know that the (asian) Indians have been practicing "plastic" surgery for thousands of years? The practice has its roots there;

The Ancient Origins of Plastic Surgery - Associated Content - associatedcontent.com

That's the truth.

Them hood chronicles are everywhere. It kills me a little bit every time I see somebody reading them on the train.

**

I quit teaching high-school out of sheer frustration.

My kids' parents parents were some of the laziest, blame-game playing, looking-for-a-handout fools I have ever known, and the sorriest thing is that they were all either Black or Puerta-Rican. But I taught in the hood, and that was the problem. If I had taught in other school districts in predominantly middle-class Black neighborhoods (where parents are all about supporting their kids), I might still be a teacher.

Initially, I tried hard to be some sort of 'Lean On Me' crusader but threw in the towel and walked away after repeatedly getting into it with some ignorant parents who would test the life out of me, the principle (a Black man who was just broken by those kids and turned into an alcoholic), and the other teachers who figured they might as well show up and get a check because they weren't gonna 'inspire' nobody in that damn school.


Fact One:

Any education system in a predominantly white country isn't about 'educating' Black children. Black folks need to accept this and move on. The system is not going to change.

Two:

You either create your own independently run schools with an African-centered syllabus, or you supplement this syllabus at home, as a committed parent, after school and on the weekends and school vacations. Because unless your child is touched by the Spirit and moved to search for the truth herself or himself, you're more than likely gonna raise a fool that's gonna be a cog in the system's wheel or more likely, another casualty harassing folks on the subway and mis-speaking, mis-spelling and misunderstanding their way through life and then blaming the system for not giving him/her a 'proper' education.

Three:

Any Black parent with children in the system's school has got to stay on top of it. You have to tell your kids that what they need to learn to do (in a white man's school), is memorize, not absorb. You memorize white folks education and use it to move on in their world. But you don't absorb and start believing it.

Parents have to teach their kids to approach school with two minds. The one that memorizes in order to pass the exams, and the other mind that goes home and sits down and learns the truth, hopefully with the Black parent leading the way.

That's what I think.

A child has to be motivated to learn, and motivation usually comes from some form of inspiration. i.e i want to learn the guitar because of the way my Uncle/ Jimmy Hendricks etc plays it.

So my view is an appreciation of what people who look and sound like you have acheived inculated from an early age, then provides the motivation for learning new things. Or emulating past acheivements. How many men and women in history across cultures are inspired by what their forebears have done. If there is little knowledge or appreciation then you have a problem of people not interested in learning new things or applying them to real life situations. Preceisely the state of affairs with most African youth in the West.

And just to clarify MM. My point is that no matter how constricting the National Curriculum is there are ways of introducing knowldge and to give a more balanced view of history using initiative. Unless black teachers are happy to receive a pay check and teach bullshit to children. If you have a love for teaching ( which most motivated teachers do) then I cant see how you cant perpectuate bullshit and know better at the same time. Teaching aint just any old profession. Not when it concerns people's children.