Reply to Alphabetical order and ethnic segregation

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "Alphabetical order and ethnic segregation"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I'm wondering if anyone else sees an issue with this.  My son's high school is very large, and it's not unusual for kids to see completely different kids every hour and every year.  However, the school has one daily homeroom/study hall-type class that it keeps the same for all 4 years.  At orientation, they bragged about this great "community-building" feature.  These classes are made up by alphabetical order - they just divide them up into groups of about 25 by going down a giant alphabetical list.  The result is that my son's class consists almost entirely of one ethno-religious group, because surnames in that country commonly start with the same few letters.  We share that type of name because my husband's family is from the same country, but they are members of a minority that is heavily persecuted.  So heavily, that my son has to be cautious never to tell anyone at school about it, because it would not go over well with the other members of the class.

I see several problems with this alphabet method, from the obvious (albeit unintentional) segregation to the specific problem my son has.  I don't want to mention the specific countries/religions/ethnicities involved, but they are well known enough that it is completely obvious to the students and teacher that the class is all one group and also not possible that the enmity of that group toward the group we are associated with is not noticeable (the students in the class have been very vocal about it).

My son won't let me interfere, so I am not going to say anything.  Am I making too big a deal of this?  It just seems really surprising to me that the school would use alphabet order and not notice this consequence - or that they have, and they don't care.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics