Posted on 01/23/2003 7:41:08 AM PST by conservativecorner
This so laughable. Gotta love it.
Yesterday I told you about the New Jersey Education Associations website. I first read about this situation in JamesTarantos WSJ column and brought it to you.
The NJEA web site has some downloads for parents on how they could get involved with their childs school. There were three different downloads available. One was labeled A parents resource. Another was labeled Spanish version. The third version of this download was labled African-American version.
The difference between the parents resource and Spanish version downloads were obvious. One was in English, one in Spanish. But what about the difference between the parents resource download and the African-American version? Well, here Ill let you read for yourself.
First two paragraphs from the parents resource version:
Today, there is an increasing emphasis on individualized instruction--fitting the curriculum to the child. Teachers want to employ new methods and materials to give each child personal guidance.
When you assist teachers with growing paperwork, make instructional materials, or conduct a science experiment, you give them more time for planning activities, for trying new teaching strategies, and for working directly with children. As a parent volunteer, you allow them to be more effective teachers--and the school obtains your skills and services that might be unavailable due to financial limitations.
OK .. now the same two paragraphs from the African-American version:
Today, teachers want to use new methods and materials to give each child personal guidance.
When you assist teachers, you give them more time to work with children. You allow them to be more effective teachers.
You see the difference, dont you? The African-American version is clearly dumbed-down. No other way to describe it. The NJEA decided that they had to dumb-down the language --- make it simpler for black parents to be able to grasp it.
Well, shortly after Tarantos Best of the Web column appeared in the WSJ the NJEA acted quickly to calm things down. They first changed their website to change the African-American version label to Ethnically-diverse version. Oh yeah, that certainly took care of things, didnt it?
Evidently not. By this morning the NJEA website had dropped the third version altogether and only included the parents resource version and Spanish version. Whats more --- the NJEA is now using the language in the former African-American version for the parents resource version. In other words they took the dumbed-down language they had prepared for black parents and are now submitting that language for all English-speaking parents. Draw your own conclusions.
OK .. There were a lot of e-mails this morning from folks who, for some reason or another, think I may be trying to pull one over on them. So, I have included two links for you to peruse. First, a link to a cached version of the web page as it existed at the beginning of the week:
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:DiDSmzh-fV4C:www.njea.org/FamilyCircle/default.asp+Good+news+about+New+Jersey%27s+public+schools&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Second, this is how that web page looks this morning. http://www.njea.org/FamilyCircle/
Enjoy! And remember --- these people are teaching your kids. If they dumb-down material for black parents, just what do you think they are doing for your children?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.