Meh, sounds Afro-centric education, which would be intriguing. For years education has been The History of the West...and the Rest so it could have potential. Better yet why don't we just include an African focus in education, and how about an Asian focus in education, and then a Latin American focus and then... Nah that would solve our problems too easily. But I'm not Canadian, so it's up to them!

Team America World Police, aw shucks, here we go again...

What sort of things? My kids go to a magnet school and it rocks. The only problem is bussing -becasue it is a public school, they are entitled to be bussed there, but because kids are scattered over the entire school district, that's a logiostical and financial nightmare and some journeys are over an hour long.

Oh and we have fewer black kids than we should. Demographically speaking. Why? Well, the families we have spoken to -who have left the school or got a place then decided not to come- say that they are happier to have their kids in school where there are more black kids. We are too white/asian. Vicious circle.

If you think there isn't enough asia-centric education... you must not have been to an asian school.
Schools are going to focus on the history of where they are, through the bias of where they are. Simple fact of life. Should americans complain that their revolution takes a much smaller seat in british education than british history does in american education? No, because until there was an america, british and american history are the same (not counting native americans).

I'm working on an Indian Reservation this week and three of the schools are tribal schools. I don't know if non-Indians, or non-tribal members, are allowed to attend.

I haven't been to an Asian school because I live in America.

And to answer the rest of what you said: no shit.

Then what's the problem you have, again?

This country is moving backwards.

Canada?

Yes, but what if black students drop out for a combination of the overall poor culture and a rejection of euro-centric material? If this could help a little it might have some potential.

Now that is a strawman....

I'm not exactly sure but I have a friend that went to a magnet school and he absolutely hated it. He may have just gone to a really bad one too. I'll ask him more about it if you want?

We've got a magnet school two blocks from our house. The parents of the kids who attend it love it.

We (the neighborhood) don't care for it too much. You have to enter a lottery to get in and there is only something like a 30% acceptance rate. (We chose not to apply, because we wanted our kids to have friends in the neighborhood instead random connections all over the county. Also, all the schools around us are good, so we saw no need to get into this "good" school.) What ends up happening is that everyone in our neighborhood gets bussed to another (good) neighborhood school a few miles away, and there's a large influx of strangers zooming into our neighborhood every morning to drop their kids off at the magnet school. It's not thier neighborhood, so they don't care about the people who live there or obeying the speed limit. On some occasions, late parents dropping their kids off at the magnet school have blown past our school bus stop as our kids are climbing onto the bus with its lights flashing.

Every couple of years, they look at the enrollments for all the neighborhood schools and shift the boundaries around to get rid of overcrowding in some of them. Since our neighborhood has no school to call its own, we are the ones who always end up getting moved around in order to make things even at all the schools.

So I am bitter at the elitist magnet school families here. I take a skeptical view of magnet schools in general. They are self selecting, so any heightened test scores they have is really just because the best students were removed from the other schools and pooled in one location. This lowers the scores of the other schools and heightens the score at the magnet school.

If you have a kid in a magnet school, it is probably a good thing for them, because they are surrounded by the "best and the brightest," but I think magnet schools may be bad for the school system overall, and there is little or no proof that they offer a better education in an area with already decent schools.

Our magnet schools are listed as the schools that sceialize in one area or two like math and such. Math genuises go there, etc

Every school district uses the concept differently. Mine had the innovative idea of magically declaring the worst schools to be "magnet schools," but with a strong preference for kids in the neighborhood--so that the worst students would be forced to go somewhere else, and there would be an influx of good students to raise the average test scores in the bad schools. Made for a whole lot of mediocre schools, which I suppose is success from the superintendant's point of view.

For the afro-centric school, here is what I assume is the logic for it. The numbers mean nothing and are just there because they are easy.

Lets say we have an "integrated" school where 100 black students attend. 50 of them graduate and 10 of them go onto college. More than likely even though we have an "integrated" school, the inner city will remain segregated because the black students that did not go onto college will probably remain in the inner city. There will be little to none integration of the inner city because no one will want to live there.

Let say we take those 100 students and move them to an afro-centric school where the graduation rate jumps to 75 and 20 of those move onto college. That means the 10 extra students will be able to integrate much better economically since they will most likely make more money and be able to move elsewhere. Also, if the graduation rate jumps, it will most likely mean the whole area will enjoy a better standard of living and other people may move into that area, making it more integrated.


If that is the case, I will support this. If afro-centric schools don't prove to raise the graduation and going onto college rate, I will probably have to go against this idea. I have said in the past, the only way, besides everyone becoming one skin tone, to eliminate racism is for full economic integration and I think this has potential to achieve that much quicker than what we have now.

Oh, for the magnet school thing, I misunderstood. He said he liked it but just hated the social environment. My bad.

In defence, any school where pupils come in from a different catchment area has the potential to annoy residents. Mostly it is inconsiderate parents, with a little NIMBYism from the residents.

When I went to Grammar school (ages 12-18, exam passed to attend) the local community complained about us non-stop. In those days parents rarely dropped their children off by car but they complained about the buses, the coaches, the amount of children crossing the road - you name it. We were on the same site as the College (16-18) which probably didn't help.

My sister's children both went to the same school (not above) across town - it was her local Catholic school, but again with the complaints. I picked the kids up with her a handful of times when I was visiting and the parking of the parents took my breath away. We'd parked streets away (my niece & nephew have never been afraid of walking) but some were up on curbs, blocking driveways, kids being allowed to cut across gardens - way to piss off the natives!

Anyway, niece is now in her second year at my Grammar. Whaddya know - the site is complete traffic gridlock and the school is hated mre than ever. Why? Because parents now won't let their children take 10-12 mile bus rides, but amend their working hours and drop them off. And Upper VIth formers now have their own cars as soon as they hit 17 and drive in.

Can't remember where I was going with this! But if adults behaved with a bit more respect then children would learn it and schools might integrate into their environs more easily.