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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here are a few ideas:

1. Strong girls sports, such as soccer, swimming, softball, and volleyball, not just basketball and bowling (seriously, this is offered in DCPS)

2. English/literature classes that don't JUST focus on authors of color, which must be the new way to supposedly get students of color to read. However,an sole focus on this can become off-putting to white students, as they are always in a bad light. There should be a variety of books read and discussed.

3. No social promotion in any grade. Nothing like accountability to get all students up to speed.

4. Foreign language classes daily. [/quote]

I wanted to speak a bit to your second point.

I agree that variety is the spice of life. However, please keep in mind that it is helpful for kids to read things that they relate to. As a white parent, I am glad to see brown faces in the books my white daughter brings home. I am glad that the books she is reading in class reflect her life experiences and those of her friends. There are are more than enough books about blonde haired blue eyed girls. What books, specifically, do you believe put white students "in a bad light"? By "in a bad light" do you mean that the books address racism (a historical and contemporary reality that many students from various ethnic backgrounds experience)?[/quote]

pp here -- I didn't say that they should only rad a books about "blonde haired blue eyed girls" (and really, what work of literature has that in the first place?), but I don't think that a steady diet of of only authors of color is right, either. Of course racism is to be discussed and understood, but not necessarily in EVERY book read by the class.[/quote]

I completely agree with #2 and my kids are Hispanic.  The mix of the population at BASIS (child #1 started when it was still a Title 1 school, still does not have very many Hispanic kids) combined with [b]book after book in grade after grade about the experience of black oppression from "To Kill a Mockingbird" (which I also read in school) to a book about a black boycott of a store that was owned by member of the KKK to "As I Lay Dying," not only precludes any reading of the classics but also makes every other minority invisible and creates a kind of hierarchy of victimization which in this house has resulted in extremely cynical children[/b].  When they hear kids play the race card (like when the applications for National Junior Honor Society were being handed out which require a certain GPA) they come home and tell us (in this case my child overheard two girls saying it was racist) and they now view it as a pitiful excuse whatever the circumstances - [b]even when it might be valid[/b] - even when it does not come from the kids with $500 dollar Jordans or the girls who say "I'm so ghetto" who are usually gone after 6th grade. My son does not yet understand that the police may put him in the same category, that when he gets to college the shopkeepers may follow him around thinking he will shoplift (happened to my friends).  My kids have yet to feel the sting of discrimination.

I was raised in a white family in Washington DC to believe that the only kind of elitism that was acceptable was intellectual and moral - not the color of someone's skin but the content of their character, and while my parents may have been shocked that I ended up coming home from my Ivy League University with a boyfriend who was definitely not white, and definitely could not pass, he was definitely smart, had with help pulled himself out of an inner city to an Ivy, and they never said anything even when we decided to marry.  Compared to me and my parents my kids are racist and all of this has to do with their experience at BASIS, and I don't feel like I have anything to say about it because I went to private school here and by the time I met a poor non-white kid I was in college.  And my kids feel this way even though the majority of their friends are black and two of their favorite teachers are black - cognitive dissonance anyone?  Makes no sense to me except that some AA kids have learned to cry racism at every turn to blame teachers (the excellent new British Latin teacher got fired early in the term because of such unfounded accusations) and my kids are learning from them - and the books they are reading just make it worse because it sounds like yes there was a time..... but no longer.  And they see what I saw in DC - only black and white.  I don't think it has ever even occurred to them that they are a minority, or to think about where they fit in, because they are top of their class and that is the way they choose their friends - in THAT they are colorblind.  But the troublemakers tend to be AA and someone has taught them to cry racism, which makes all claims sound false to them at least at school, and they are learning that the AA kids are the troublemakers.  Every time they hear about the oppression of African Americans in church they squirm, and I squirm for them.  The police are not going to be friendly to my son.  Finally I am in absolute agreement with #3, no social promotion, but BASIS takes care of that starting in 6th.[/quote]

Thanks PP. This is both scary and plain stupid. I wasn't aware that [b]BASIS [/b]had descended into such myopic policies.[/quote]
BASIS parent here. AFAIK, the books are the teacher's discretion. Any blame for the terrible books picked is the fault of the teachers.[/quote]

Thanks for the clarification (but, of course, it is the school that hires and retains teachers)[/quote]

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