Teaching Ebonics to school kids is indeed very controversial, but there’s no denying that it helped familiarize countless middle aged white guys with the internet and email. When the Ebonics issue surfaced round about ’96, Ebonics jokes quickly clogged inboxes everywhere. Prepare for a second wave:
Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a local sociologist. The goal of the district’s policy is to improve black students’ academic performance by keeping them interested in school. Compared with other racial groups in the district, black students go to college the least and have the most dropouts and suspensions. Blacks make up the second largest racial group in the district, trailing Latinos. A pilot of the policy, known as the Students Accumulating New Knowledge Optimizing Future Accomplishment Initiative [nothing Ebonics-like about that name], has been implemented at two city schools.
Meanwhile Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) has busied himself with this:
Tucked into a massive appropriations bill approved without fanfare late last year by Congress is the requirement that every one of the estimated 1.8 million federal employees in the executive branch receive “educational and training” materials about the charter on Constitution Day, a holiday celebrating the Sept. 17, 1787, signing that is so obscure that it, unlike Arbor Day, is left off many calendars. That’s not all: The law requires every school that receives federal funds — including universities — to show students a program on the Constitution, though it does not specify a particular one. The demand has proved unpopular with educators, who say that they don’t like the federal government telling them what to teach …
Yeah, the whole thing seems kind of anti-states’ rights and not exactly in the spirit of the Constitution. Maybe Byrd is trying to be ironic. (Via Sploid.)