I can only shake my head

[novapsyche]

I'm on a completely different question/project (but still scoring the same population of students). I'm really concerned now about the good number of Michigan middle schoolers who have no idea that slavery and the Jim Crow era are different. One child actually believes that MLK and Lincoln were contemporaries. Another thought Harriet Tubman lived in the 1920s.

I want to write a letter, but I don't know to whom. In public school there were no history electives--I took only what the state required. Still, I came out with a chronologically accurate timeline of race relations in America. Somehow, somewhen, someone stopped teaching these students. If no one at higher levels of administration even know about these gaping holes in students' knowledge, how can anyone address the problem?

Comments

Jim Crow during the slavery era

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that Jim Crow predated the abolition of slavery until I read Frederick Douglass' account of fighting Jim Crow policies on northern railroad cars in his youth.

[simianpower.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine teaches astronomy at EMU and says that a significant fraction of the college students in his class either can't read or can barely read. This is a skill taught in first grade; I was reading full-length novels by first or second grade. Parents need to do their part if they expect their kids to make it. And they need to stop hobbling teachers by telling school boards that the fourth-graders are getting "too much" homework.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

There are on-going problems in schools; that's not news.

If you want to do something meaningful, pick a school and go volunteer to be a teacher's aide. Some schools have requirements about their teacher's aides (e.g. you have to have a education degree) but most don't, and generally stay-at-home moms do this. (It's another way that 'rich' schools are even richer: they have this pool of unpaid labor to draw on.)

Improvement in schools happens one child at a time, and requires a lot of one-on-one intervention. Usually parents do this, but if they don't, Someone Else has to do it.

[pigfish.livejournal.com]

Alternatively to what rmeidaking suggested, pick a school and offer to teach a class (a one-hour mini-class) on the subject. My grandmother is part of a speaking group of little old Jewish ladies who go to high schools and talk about their experiences during WWII, and she finds it really rewarding, and the kids at least SEEM engaged. Even if you can't really engage every student, you'll probably capture a few kids' attention.