This may be a bit of a tangent, but about a week ago I received "sensitivity training" for my job. It wasn't quite what I expected, though.
It was conducted by a black woman who teaches in my district to predominantly poor minorities of color. The crux of her lecture was that teachers have essentially become too scared to teach, that a lot of the "feel good, multicultural" liberalism that has dominated educational theory over the past decade or so has only hurt poor minorities, particularly African-Americans.
What was interesting about her is that she conducted her 4th grade class much like a bilingual spanish class. She herself grew up in poverty, and knew how to speak what she called "the black english." So she will say things to her kids like "boy, you go get you this," or "go use it," but then she'll make a point to create distinctions between "black english" and proper grammar. It seems to work, because she kills all the testing standards each year.
Anyway, I guess parts of this article reminded me of that. I always start to cringe however when a debate on education turns into a stump speech for "educational choice." I think our educational issues transcend merely that debate, and while it might work in case studies here and there, I think a full shift over towards that direction would merely result in a similar mess, yet only privatized.
BTW, there was an interesting Op/Ed today in the NY Times pertaining to another signifigant race case from the 1950s-- Hernandez vs. Texas. A good read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/opinion/22LOPE.html
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