Thanks Wolfgang for that link.

I am taking the liberty to post a portion of that article here:

"What we do know is that boys of all races in the UK perform badly, but the biggest underachievement is by black Caribbean followed by black African. This is not a new phenomenon and was documented three decades ago by Bernard Coard, an Inner London Education Authority researcher, who put forward three reasons: low expectations and low aspirations by blacks boys and low expectations by schools. Two decades ago the Swann committee conducted a formal inquiry and reached the same conclusions, which were re-echoed last year by an education commission on London schools. Another black voice, Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, rightly insisted last year that the problem must not be swept under the carpet.

To their credit ministers have not been sitting on their hands. Extra money has been pumped into inner-city schools through such programmes as Excellence in the City and London Challenge. Both have begun reaping rewards. A new programme in 30 secondary schools, which is piloting new ways of helping under achievement, has a racial strand that includes black pupils. A new programme by the Teacher Training Agency to recruit more ethnic minority candidates into teaching is beginning to show results with a 12% increase in recruits last year pushing up their proportion to 9%. The recruitment of more black teachers was high up on Mr Phillips's priorities. "

end of quote.

It seems that a pilot study is proposed in the UK that is based on good preliminary results of a pilot study of a program in St Louis, Missouri. From that full article it appears that the Black boys in this pilor study would be pulled out of their integrated classes for specific "black strand" classes.

I hope they're not talking about Black history & culture 101 UK style and are offering this course [suspect as it might be] JUST for Black boys...

As somewhat of an aside, way back in the late 1960s when I was in college I took a Black history course. The teacher happened to be a Jewish woman whose mother was a survivor of Nazi Germany. I was one of few Black students in the class [actually I was one of few Black people-faculty or students-in the college, a bit of information that
I believe is pertinent to my main point]. This teacher seemed to have little experiental knowledge of Black folk. Futhermore, she constantly would vehemently state her opinion as fact that Jewish people 'had a worse time in history' than Black people. As you might expect, I didn't feel that her OPINION was pertinent to the course's subject and I made my feelings known-and in doing so probably scarificed an A in that subject..

Which brings me back to the subject of taking Black boys out of classes to teach them certain courses..Hasa any one considered the pyscho-social ramifications to these boys and the rest of the class for doing this?

Besides, I repeat my laundry list of concerns writing above with a few additions: Which courses are we talking about? Are these subsitutes or additions to the regular courses? When are they offered {for instance are seen as supplemental courses after school or when school is recessed in the summer months? And, given the paucity of Black teachers, who is going to teach these subjects?

I hasten to state the obvious-Black skin and male gender does not automatically make a person a skilled, sensitive, culturally competent teacher for Black boys-for any other students.

Even if school systems had money to burn-and I'm sure they don't-I would be wary of this project. It seems to me to be another one of those well meaning benefit-a-few-students-for-a-couple-of years short term simplistic solutions to a deeply complex long term problem.


Azizi