Commentary: Racial Identity Initiatives in Schools Take Away from Basic Education
Date: Monday, July 25, 2005
By: Joseph C. Phillips, BlackAmericaWeb.com
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...
The San Bernardino County Sun recently reported that the San Bernardino school district would begin implementation of a pilot program of cultural enrichment that will incorporate Ebonics. The pilot curriculum, known as Students Accumulating New Knowledge Optimizing Future Accomplishment Initiative or SANKOFA (a Ghanaian word that means remembering the past), targets second, fourth, and seventh grade students in two schools and will include "information on the historical, cultural and social impact of blacks in society."
Mindful of the derision that greeted the Oakland California School board when they declared Ebonics the "genetically based" language of black students, the San Bernardino School board quickly issued a statement that denied Ebonics was part of the curriculum or that it was ever considered. Word clearly did not trickle down to Len Cooper, who is coordinating the program. He is quoted as saying, "Because Ebonics can have a negative stigma, we're not focusing on that ... we are affirming and recognizing Ebonics through supplemental reading books [for students]."
Cooper's double negative aside, whether the program uses Ebonics or not misses the point. SANKOFA is a cultural immersion program, and this is the greater issue. There are high school students in the district that are functionally illiterate, but rather than focus on the fundamentals of English, science and math, we have yet another program aimed at building self-esteem through a celebration of racial identity.
A healthy racial identity and self-esteem are important, but academic underachievement is not evidence of low self-esteem or a lack of cultural consciousness. The fact that many of the students in question are unable to write a complete sentence in standard English would seem an indication they have more than enough "culture." More significantly, self-esteem cannot be obtained through group pride or group identity. Self-esteem is built through individual accomplishment. Small personal successes build confidence; confidence leads to greater success, and with that success comes greater self-esteem. There is also ample evidence that suggests a student's belief in the importance of education is more crucial in determining academic success than is self-esteem. As well intentioned as these programs are, the only thing that will reverse the downward spiral of academic failure is to move away from racial identity education and focus on the basics.
The latest results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress give some credence to this judgment. In the five years since the implementation of No Child Left Behind and its emphasis on fundamentals, reading and math scores for African-American nine-year-olds are the highest they have been in the history of the test, and the achievement gap between black and white students has closed considerably.
Still, in San Bernardino, as in other parts of the country, black students are over-represented in special education classes and virtually absent in college preparatory courses. They have higher expulsion rates, higher drop-out rates and lower college attendance than any other ethnic group in the district.
I don't fault the San Bernardino school board. "Any boat in a storm," as the saying goes, and they are desperately grasping at any idea that might aid in turning the tide of black academic underachievement. However, sacrificing instruction in proper grammar in order to focus on racial identity and self-esteem is not the answer.
Cultural immersion may make everyone feel warm and cuddly inside, but if, at the end of the day, our children lack an understanding of the efficacy of education and aren't equipped with tools for academic success, we will have done them a terrible disservice.
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