Public Schools: Racist and Sexist... Against White Boys!

http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_schools_boys.html

Thanks to the Why Homeschool blog for posting this link. The article has some swear words in it, but I think you're mature enough to handle it and ponder the "meat" of the argument. Boys tend to be shunted for displaying "boy-like" behaviour, such as questioning the usefulness of assignments or being a bit sassy toward their teachers.

I saw a LOT of this with the Emperor. The child came to kindergarten knowing how to add and subtract columns of numbers WITH the borrowing and carrying, thank you. He could read tolerably well and knew a bit of multiplication. They had the boy COLOURING SHEETS and tracing giant P's all morning. They went over what a "square" and "triangle" looked like, and the sounds each letter makes. The poor child.

He has a hard time controlling his impulse to jump, roll and be silly as it is without being subjected to *that* all day. He would get into trouble constantly for not lining up properly or not obeying immediately. This six-year-old boy has a hard time being sent to the restroom under no supervision, with 20 other boys and a sink in the room. Imagine. I got phone calls and reports about his "bad choices" constantly. I felt like smacking each of these smug, young little female teachers upside the head by the time we pulled him out of public school.

But did any of the teachers bother to notice that the child was adept at mathmatics? That he could read well and recite long verses from the King James? No. They noticed when he needed a suspension for this or that, though.

One thing I'm not sure on is the argument that the public schools are racist only against WHITE children. Actually, in my extremely limited personal experience with black children, the ones who NEED special ed usually don't get it because schools are concerned with their racial ratios in these programs. Um, whatever happened to "put the kids in that need it"? I still remember one child who DEFINITELY needed some remedial lessons in Patrick's kindergarten class. The teachers just told me that her total lack of command of the English language, inability to write and ignorance even of the different letters of the alphabet was a "cultural difference" because she was black!! (Am I the only one who thinks such thoughts are racist in and of themselves??)

We have an older child with autism who is in public school special ed. They tried to reason that my child's poor grammar was due to a "cultural difference" as well. They're clever enough to act STUPID about the fact that my child has autism and until recently, not only would he use phrases like "don't got any," but he would also search for ways of communicating what he wanted to say by describing the object. "That thing that is cold and you open it and get food" would be the refridgerator. It's a symptom of AUTISM that these words would not be in his vocabulary at age nine, don't you think? (As an aside, thank God he can speak, because plenty of autistic children are non-verbal.)

In short, I *DO* see what a blessing the special ed programs are for kids who really need them. But I also agree with the article's general premise that schools are stacked against boys because of their innate nature.