The Omaha World Herald reported that OPS buys 8,000 diversity manuals. "The authors argue that public school teachers must raise their cultural awareness to better serve minority students and improve academic achievement" and in an 11-0 decision (with one abstention), the Omaha Public Schools school board voted in April 2011 to give a copy of The Cultural Proficiency Journey to each of its employees. Employees will read chapters as assigned and then meet in small groups to discuss it. Teachers will use part of their professional development time for this study.
We encourage cultural awareness within the teaching staff at my "somewhere in Central Asia" international school. Fact: the school is filled with 240 kids from more than 40 different countries. "Cultural sensitivity" means we learn about other governments and other flags, not just America's. It means we don't allow kids to insult each other's heritage and we require everyone to speak English unless they are in an ESL class or studying HS Spanish. However, we don't buy books with a thin veneer of respectability as a springboard to discuss cultural sensitivity; such books aren't needed. Common sense and human decency have already provided 99.9% of the adults in the OPS system with all the knowledge needed to treat students and families fairly and equitably.
According to the article, in the most recent school year "African-American", "Asian-American" and "American-Indian" populations combine for a third of the district's student population. According to page 10 of http://www.ops.org/District/Portals/0/District/StudentAssignmentPlan/full-plan.pdf, for the 1998-1999 school year, students were 56% “Caucasian-American”, 10% “Hispanic-American”, 31% “African-American”, 1.6% American Indian and 1.4% “Asian-American”. Yes, the demographics have changed. Notice though that 100% of the students are “American.” Page 53 of this .pdf from 2005 states that “LEP children vary considerably with regard to the languages they speak, posing special challenges faced by the larger cities such as Omaha where LEP children speak a total of 38 languages (OPS 2003). Despite such diversity, however, the majority of LEP children in Omaha and Nebraska as a whole are Spanish speaking.”
Indeed, the 2000 census found 95% of the Omaha MSA (metropolitan statistical area) population is American-born. (Table A3, page 188 of the .pdf) found that a fourth of the foreign-born population is from Asia, and nearly half are from Latin America, yet the largest non-Caucasian OPS group is Hispanic. Seems to lend credence to the idea that Spanish is the majority foreign language in OPS schools and homes. The same table continues on page 189, indicating that 92% speak “English only” at home. In 2009, this OPS data showed an increased percentage for the Hispanic-American population: 90% of OPS district's residents are native-born Americans, and 62.5% of those foreign-born are from Hispanic-American cultures. About 86% of the residents speak only English at home, while about 10% of the OPS district residents speak Spanish as the primary/sole language at home.
With such a high Hispanic-American, Spanish-speaking population, the other 92 languages in the OPS district are represented in far smaller numbers:a total of 4.1% of the residents. I would venture that school-to-school, especially for our size, my school with students from 40+ different passport countries is MUCH more culturally diverse than any one of the OPS locations. Yet our students get along well, even as their home countries fire rockets at each other, or have arguments over import/export policies. Our students are encouraged--taught by example--to respect people of all cultures.
This summer I am participating in an 8-week online class to examine, discuss, and practice creating authentic, real-world assessment opportunities for my 7th graders. I am being exposed to websites that assist teachers in creating online assessments and activities that students can use at school or at home. I am rewriting lesson plans to meet the needs of the advanced learners and those who struggle. I am networking with other teachers from around the state. How much does this opportunity cost me out-of-pocket? A whopping $30, just a little less than the OPS paid for TWO copies of this book. The OPS teachers could have participated in a class such as mine, or put that $130,000 to many other uses, providing a much greater benefit to their students. School board members could have provided training for writing across the curriculum, or purchased graphing calculators for middle-school math classrooms, or funded a state-of-the-art science lab. Rather than teaching teachers how to use technology more wisely, the district bought a book that has garnered only 4 reviews on amazon.com in 18 months; 3 of the ratings were 1-star. (Of course, the book is also for sale directly from the publisher; the CampbellJones's website misspelled the publisher's name in the above-the-fold links to Corwin.com's site.) At least OPS received a discount of nearly 50%; www.corwin.com and www.amazon.com both offer the paperback edition at a price of $28.95 per copy. Just because something is available at a discount does not mean it is worth the purchase. Don't overlook the fact that these books were paid for with federal stimulus funds. Federal stimulus funds--our tax dollars--were spent to purchase books that may be propaganda more than anything else.
This manual with a subtitle referencing “profound school change” isn't about cultural sensitivity; it's about indoctrinating teachers and eventually students in leftlibs' inane social justice. In my opinion, the OPS purchase--which included copies for the custodial staff--was about one thing: spreading the lie of moral relativism. A few selections from the World Herald article.
andThe authors assert that American government and institutions create advantages that “channel wealth and power to white people,” that color-blindness will not end racism and that educators should “take action for social justice.”
andThe book says that teachers should acknowledge historical systemic oppression in schools, including racism, sexism, homophobia and “ableism,” defined by the authors as discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities.
The authors ask readers to reflect on several hypothetical cases, including that of a gay “teacher of the year” afraid to post family photos of his male partner for his school's Family Day, an African-American parent upset by a sixth-grade Early-American Day because African-Americans were enslaved in those days, and a principal whose attempt to reach out to Muslim students backfires when he announces over the intercom that students should welcome Muslims though they “might believe in violence.”
The authors — Franklin and Brenda CampbellJones and Randall B. Lindsey — all former teachers, write that their intent in the book is “to prepare educators to unshackle themselves from tradition and become facilitators for reconciliation of historical injustices.”
Franklin CampbellJones said in an interview that although some issues in the book are considered “challenging” and “taboo,” discussing them is important to break down barriers to educating every child.
He said the book has been well-received by other school districts using it, including San Diego and Atlanta, and districts in Maryland and Canada.
The fact that this book combines moral relativism with “reconciliation”--simultaneously discouraging American citizens of all ethnic backgrounds from believing in American exceptionalism--was a tingle-inducing bonus for the liberal authors and purchasers. Educators are asked in this book to "acknowledge the existence of white privilege in America, that 'white' is a culture in America and that race 'is a definer for social and economic status' ” in order to reach cultural proficiency.
School Board president Sandra Jensen was quoted: “Recognition that one might have a certain perspective is critical to treating all people equally.”The article closes with a quote from Nancy Edick, dean of the College of Education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha: “The rich life experiences of a diverse classroom contribute to an excellent education. It's an education that helps prepare our kids for a world they're going to live in, an increasingly diverse world.” Both of those statements are true. Diversity is a reality: our global communications network brings news and ideas from place to place in a manner of milliseconds, not months. This book seems to do little to encourage intellectual diversity, but instead intends to foster divisiveness.
Not all historical or cultural perspectives are factual, or valid, or worthy of acceptance. People have value; their opinions and beliefs (including mine, perhaps) do not always have value. If a student in my classroom states that the shape on the board is a square because it looks like a square from his perspective, yet the measurements of all four sides are not equal, the student's perspective is incorrect. His perspective has little value beyond showing me how I can educate him to understand the correct mathematical perspective. The language the child speaks at home does not change the fact that the student's perspective was incorrect, as was the response he made based on that perspective.
The fact that the OPS district plans to "look for ways to apply some of the concepts in the classroom and workplace" should make us take notice. Moral relativism is not a concept that belongs in a federally-funded program as professional development for public school teachers; nor should American exceptionalism be discounted and discredited in that same venue.
