Once again, our school systems work to ghettoize African-Americans

Just when you thought the whole stupid ebonics thing was dead, San Bernardino County gives it renewed life:

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. *** Mary Texeira, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, commended the San Bernardino Board of Education for approving the policy in June. Texeira suggested that including Ebonics in the program would be beneficial for students. Ebonics, a dialect of American English that is spoken by many blacks throughout the country, was recognized as a separate language in 1996 by the Oakland school board. "Ebonics is a different language, it's not slang as many believe,' Texeira said. "For many of these students Ebonics is their language, and it should be considered a foreign language. These students should be taught like other students who speak a foreign language.' *** Len Cooper, who is coordinating the pilot program at the two city schools, said San Bernardino district officials do not plan to incorporate Ebonics into the program. "Because Ebonics can have a negative stigma, we're not focusing on that,' Cooper said. "We are affirming and recognizing Ebonics through supplemental reading books (for students).' Beginning in the 2005-06 school year, teachers will receive training on black culture and customs. District curriculum will now include information on the historical, cultural and social impact of blacks in society. Although the program is aimed at black students, other students can choose to participate.

Aaaargh! If it's a wonderful, rich, cultural language, let African-Americans speak it at home, just as generations of German and Irish and Jewish and Russion and Polish and Italian and Irish and Chinese and Vietnamese and Japanese communities have kept their languages alive -- or not, depending on their interest in assimilating. The purpose of schools is to enable students to function well (and, one hopes, profitably) in the larger culture. To teach these children a community dialect is to confine them endless to that community and deny them entirely access to broader opportunities. These morally-blinkered multiculturalists ought to be locked up in a room and left to practice their evil good intentions on each other, without visiting these horrors on students trapped in poor school districts. Hat tip: Drudge Report