A low-performing school by any different name is stil a low-performing school
on March 30th, 2009 at 3:01 amIf a simple name change of a school could inspire pride and the willingness to do better, streets named after Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn’t be synonymous with crime.
These kids need SUBSTANCE, not symbolism.
From Oakland, CA.
“To graduate from Barack Obama Academy (BOA) means I am part of history in the making, and I want to be a part of history,” eighth-grader Mikela Mosely said in a statement released by the district on Wednesday. “This is an inspiration to me and for many generations to come.”
District officials said costs related to the name change would be negligible, mainly related to a couple of signs.
The school, which opened in 2007, enrolls primarily African American and low-income students.
Many of the students have had poor grades, lax attendance and suspensions in the past. (more…)
History has taught this generation NOTHING! Get ready to repeat it.
From Wikipedia. One of MANY schools out there named after MLK.
Martin Luther King, Jr. High School was a public secondary school located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, near Lincoln Center.
The school, which originally opened in 1975 to be named after civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was subsequently closed by the New York City Department of Education in 2005 due to a history of low academic performance, as part of Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education reform policy.
The decision to close the school was made after two Grade 10 students were shot at King in January 2002. (more…)
Then there is King-Harbor hospital in Los Angeles. One of the worst in the state.
Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital (MLK-Harbor or King-Harbor), formerly known as Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center (King/Drew), is a public hospital in Willowbrook, an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County, California, north of the city of Compton and south of the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The hospital shut down in August 2007, due to substandard conditions outlined over several years…(more…)
Mansfield B. Frazier warned us about this back in December of last year.
Comedian Chris Rock used to do a routine that questioned why, in most cities with a substantial black population, the most crime-ridden street is virtually always named after Martin Luther King Jr. The answer, of course, is that black folks, in our rush to honor our great civil rights leader, usually picked the most high-profile, well-traversed thoroughfare in the urban community to rename – not pausing long enough to realize there could be a downside: that the busiest street in black neighborhoods is often the most crime-ridden. Call it the Law of Unintended Consequences, and it’s about to rear its ugly head once again – this time in regard to President-elect Barack Obama.
[...]
Nonetheless, when Obama asked us to get involved, I think he was asking us to do something more substantial, like going into the schools and helping by tutoring, not just taking the easy, cheap and hollow shot of naming a school after him. I can see a future headline now: “Reading and math scores at Barack Obama Elementary School in Cleveland among the lowest in the state.”
[...]
Black folks, please, I’m begging on bended knee, let’s not do this. You know we African-Americans have a tendency to take the joke past Broadway, but if we don’t get a grip early on and nip this madness in the bud, we’ll soon be seeing our kids walking to school in the morning, eating a bag of Obama Potato Chips, washing them down with a can of Barack Red Pop, while carrying – what else? – a Barack Obama backpack. (more…)
This stuff is no longer funny to me. In fact, I find it sad and somewhat offensive. In towns all across So. Cal, you will find pockets of schools that are heavily attended by Asians. To my knowledge, I have never heard them make the call for more Asian teachers or a school name change to instill a sense of pride in their children. According to most critics out there, the only way we can convince our Black children to stay in school and do their work is to plug in more Black teachers, rename the school, teach them more Black history, recognize “ebonics” as an official dialect, symbolism, symbolism and more symbolism. Successful kids OF ALL RACES, on the other hand rely less on these symbols and more on the stability that can only be provided by a family that cares and a school system that works with them.
Is there a fundamental need for poor White children who live the Ozarks or Appalachia to have White teachers or to have their schools renamed to famed members of the Confederate Army? Or how about the children of poor Vietnamese families who make their livelihood off of fishing along the Gulf Coast region? Any national calls out there for these children to have teachers to look like them in order to succeed? You will not find it. Why? Because we expect these children to have the inner-fortitude to overcome life’s challenges without dangling symbolic trinkets in front of them. On the other hand, Black children are believed to be a bunch of ignoramuses in a perpetual need to be coddled into success. The worse thing about this is that the Black community has been one of the largest purveyors of this narrative regarding our own children.
When are we going to say “enough is enough” with the soft bigotry of low expectations of our children?
