RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109835072262577869
Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
Feb 9: Education
Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school, or in subjects like Math and Science?
A: This is only true in extremely racist countries. A racist person cannot teach a Black child effectively. It's not race. It's racism.
Read the whole thread.
Related: Many of you were horrified to see that a kindergarten teacher would call ICE on her own 6 year old Hispanic student.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/116010708111794832
For some reason this is more shocking for US folk than the fact that there are cops stationed *in elementary schools*, to quickly arrest Black children at teachers' requests.
30,000 kids under 7 have been arrested. Of course they are disproportionately Black. Because racism.
Kindergarten teacher called a prank ICE hotline thinking it was real. She called to report her 6 year old student to ICE to try to get them and their family deported. 6 years old. She does not enjoy hearing her own words and actions played back to her. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJnkikcrHA0
If I told you that a formerly straight-A student whose dad was detained by ICE at gunpoint, was now food insecure, housing insecure, traumatized, and not doing as well in school? That would make sense to you.
There are ~100K people in ICE detention.
There are ~400K people in pretrial detention.
Again, all of the people in pretrial detention are legally innocent, and most of them are actually innocent.
Being in pretrial detention usually means that you are innocent, have been accused of a crime that you didn't do, but are too poor to post bail before your trial, which can be years away.
Think of how cruel and evil it would be to wait until ICE detention warehouses reach a capacity of 400,000 people, with ICE officers stationed in elementary schools, and then started a campaign of "Where are all the immigrant dads?! They just don't want to be around! No family values!🤡"
Without the racism, Black kids do as well in school as everyone else.
As a reminder, all Nigerian school kids can not only do algebra and basic statistics by 7th grade, they can convert numbers from decimal to binary and hexadecimal, setting a good foundation for a computer science education later.
I can improve academic performance in a school district, as measured by performance above baseline on standardized tests, just by:
1) Offering free meals to all students
2) increasing the numbers of Black men teachers
3) removing "School Resource Officers"
Because all 3 of these things focus on *reducing racism*.
If I were a white supremacist race scientist who truly believed that Black kids were not as smart as white kids? Then out of curiousity, I would want to see the playing field leveled, so that I could see the difference without confounders.
But that would be disappointing. Because as you remove the racism, the difference in academic performance fades to nothing.🤷🏿♂️
The US education system sucks at educating Black boys, because there are armed cops in the hallways, and because teachers spend time looking at Black boys like this.
We need to get to a point where this isn't true.
In the UK (and in other European countres), black kids tend to do better than white. Nobody could claim there's no racism in the UK - but I'm sure it's less prevalent than in the US.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/628f39518fa8f5039a1bd625/Ethnicity_Schools_Note.pdf
@geonz @davidnjoku @mekkaokereke
The research report I linked earlier gives quite a detailed breakdown - eg. it distinguishes 'Black African' and 'Black Cabribean' - but not generational differences.
There is though I know plenty of evidence from other sources that immigrants tend to be industrious - especially (in my own professional field) more entrepreneurial. This seems to be colour-blind (eg. it's true of white Irish and other white European immigrants to the UK) - and indeed it's true of other 'outsider' groups, eg. religious Quakers in 19th century England, who were barred from the usual comfortable middle-class professions - clergy, military, legal - but set up many of the UK's most successful businesses. For much longer, such influences also no doubt shaped European jewish history.
@mekkaokereke I’ve written code for 59 years. I _can_ convert between decimal, binary, and hex but I don’t do it well in my head, and if it matters I do it on a computer. That kids can do this by 7th grade is quite impressive.
Also, the racism thing is quite real. For people who struggle with understanding race issues: substitute girls or women for black and brown people. Study after study shows that girls are just as capable as boys in STEM subjects but expectations of others hold them back.
@mekkaokereke Shout out to the teachers that deal with disruptive students but refuse to get them arrested. One might think that such a low bar isn't worthy of praise, but anyone enduring personal effort/frustration in the name of simple basic decency is a model to follow, particularly when so many others are unwilling to.
I'm sure schools using such agents likely aren't providing any better alternatives, making the effort harder.
@mekkaokereke
From personal expecrience: it doesn't seem to be black kids (or other minority) who do poorly in school per se.
Rather it is those from poorer families who struggle the most.
There is a rather disproportional number of poor black families compared to white.
So we are unfortunately back to the vicous cycle of racism.
For reference: my upbringin is in southerm Brazil, which does not have that a high black population WHEN compared to the other regions.
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