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Alert Run Date: 12/23/2009 02:01:44 04
Alert Name: International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism
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Record Results
1. Childhood academic language environments of Japanese sojourners: a
principal components analysis study. By: Langager, Mark. International
Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1,
p1-22, 22p; DOI: 10.1080/13670050902741229; (AN 46838028)
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2. Language ideology and identity in transnational space: globalization,
migration, and bilingualism among Korean families in the USA. By: Song,
Juyoung. International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism,
2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p23-42, 20p; DOI: 10.1080/13670050902748778; (AN
46838027)
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3. Achievement in predominantly low SES/Hispanic dual language schools.
By: Lindholm-Leary, Kathryn; Block, Nicholas. International Journal of
Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p43-60, 18p;
DOI: 10.1080/13670050902777546; (AN 46838026)
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4. Implementational and ideological spaces in bilingual education
language policy. By: Johnson, David Cassels. International Journal of
Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p61-79, 19p;
DOI: 10.1080/13670050902780706; (AN 46838025)
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5. Interaction in bilingual phonological acquisition: evidence from
phonetic inventories. By: Fabiano-Smith, Leah; Barlow, Jessica A..
International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol.
13 Issue 1, p81-97, 17p; DOI: 10.1080/13670050902783528; (AN 46838024)
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6. Religious and self-generated Quechua literacy practices in the
Peruvian Andes. By: de la Piedra, Maria Teresa. International Journal
of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p99-113,
15p; DOI: 10.1080/13670050902807525; (AN 46838034)
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7. The bilingual edge: why, when, and how to teach your child a second
language. By: Piller, Ingrid. International Journal of Bilingual
Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p115-118, 4p; DOI:
10.1080/13670050802645942; (AN 46838033)
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8. Language and education in Japan: unequal access to bilingualism. By:
Ohara, Yumiko. International Journal of Bilingual Education &
Bilingualism, 2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p118-121, 4p; DOI:
10.1080/13670050802645934; (AN 46838032)
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9. Advocating for English learners: selected essays. By: Talmy, Steven.
International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol.
13 Issue 1, p122-125, 4p; DOI: 10.1080/13670050802645967; (AN
46838031)
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10. Multilingual learning: stories from schools and communities in
Britain. By: Kenner, Charmian. International Journal of Bilingual
Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p125-128, 4p; DOI:
10.1080/13670050802670783; (AN 46838030)
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11. Reversing language shift: the social identity and role of Scottish
Gaelic learners. By: Jones, Bryn. International Journal of Bilingual
Education & Bilingualism, 2010, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p128-130, 3p; DOI:
10.1080/13670050902742029; (AN 46838029)
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Texas Mexican Secret Spanish Jews Today
Texas Mexican Secret Spanish Jews Today
Posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009
By: Anne DeSola Cardoza
>Jewish food, oral traditions, culture, and
>secret, religious customs are showing up today
>in the folklore, habits and practices of the
>descendants of early settlers in southern Texas
>and the surrounding areas of Mexico. In northern
>Mexico and what today is Texas, the Jews of
>Nuevo Leon and its capital, Monterrey, Mexico,
>lived without fear of harassment from the Holy
>Office of the 1640's and beyond.
>Many of the leading non Jewish families today of
>that area are descended from secret Jewish
>ancestors, according to scholar, Richard G.
>Santos.
>
>Santos states there are hundreds, if not
>thousands of descendants of Spanish and
>Portuguese Jews living today in San Antonio,
>Texas, USA and throughout South Texas. Not all
>are aware of their Jewish heritage. Santos is a
>renowned San Antonio, Texas scholar in ethnic
>studies of South Texas secret Spanish Jewry.
>
>He presented a paper to the Interfaith Institute
>at the Chapman Graduate Center of Trinity
>University on May 23, 1973 on secret Sephardic
>Jewish customs in today's Texas and nearby
>Mexican areas.
>
>Here's how we know a lot of Tex-Mex Hispanics
>today are of Jewish ancestry. It's a well
>accepted fact that the founding families of
>Monterrey and the nearby Mexican border area,
>"Nuevo Reyno de Leon" are of Sephardic Jewish
>origin.
>If we go back to The Diccionario Porrua de
>Historia Geografia y Biografia, it states that
>Luis de Carvajal y de a Cueva brought a shipload
>of Jews to settle his Mexican colony - with some
>Jews being converts to Catholicism from Judaism
>and others "openly addicted to their (Jewish)
>doctrine".
>
>According to the late Seymour Liebman, a scholar
>on Mexican colonial secret Jews, in his book
>"Jews in New Spain", explained why Jews settled
>in areas far away from Mexico City in order to
>escape the long arm of the Inquisition in the
>sixteenth century.
>There's an old, universally known anti-Semitic
>Mexican joke, one-liner that says, "la gente de
>Monterrey son muy judios ... son muy codos". In
>English it translates, "The people of Monterrey
>are very Jewish ... very tightwad".
>
>Secret Jews colonized the states of Nuevo Leon,
>Coahuila, Tamualipas and good old Texas, USA in
>the 1640's-1680s and thereafter. The majority of
>Texas's Spanish-speaking immigrants came from
>Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and Coahuila (the old
>Neuvo Reyno de Leon) beginning in the 1680s.
>
>Seventeenth century secret Jews who settled in
>what is today southern Texas, particularly
>around San Antonio took with them their Jewish
>foods, particularly what they call "Semitic
>bread" or pan de semita ...
> Sephardic Jewish foods in old Texas.
>
>Why do Mexican Americans in Texas and in the
>Mexican province of nearby Monterrey eat
>"Semitic bread" on Passover/Lent? According to
>scholar Richard G. Santos, Tex-Mex pastries such
>as pan dulce, pan de semita, trenzas, cuernos,
>pan de hero, and pan de los protestantes
>(Protestant's bread) are similar to familiar
>Jewish pastries eaten by Sephardic Jews today in
>many other parts of the world.
>
>Pan de semita was eaten in pre-inquisition Spain
>by a Jew or an Arab Moor. Today, it's popular in
>Texas and in that part of Mexico bordering
>Texas. It translates into English as "Semitic
>bread". It's a Mexican-American custom in the
>Texas and Tex-Mex border area today to eat pan
>de semita during Lent which occurs on or around
>the Jewish Passover.
>You bake pan de semita by combining two cups of
>flour, one half to two-thirds cup of water, a
>few tablespoons of butter or olive oil, mix and
>bake unleavened. Even among the devout Catholic
>Mexicans pork lard is never used, that's why
>it's called Semitic bread. Pan de semita is
>really the recipe for 17th century secret Jewish
>Matzoth, and it's eaten by all Mexicans today in
>the north Mexican/Texas border area, regardless
>of religion.
>
>Only in Texas and along the Texas-Mexican border
>is a special type of pan de semita baked,
>according to Dr. Santos, who himself is
>descended from secret Spanish Jews of the area
>who've lived in that part of Texas and Monterrey
>since colonial times.
>
>The special Texas pan de semita of the border
>has special ingredients: only vegetable oil,
>flour raisins, nuts, and water. The raisins,
>pecans, and vegetable oil were identified,
>according to Dr. Santos, as selected ingredients
>of secret Jews of New Spain.
>You take two cups of flour, a cup or less of
>water, a handful olive oil and mix with a half
>cup to two thirds cup each of raisins and
>pecans. Then you knead and bake at 350 degrees
>until lightly browned and easy to chew.
>
>This pan de semita is only found in the
>Texas/Mexico border area and in Texas. Pastry
>bakers from Mexico claim this type of pan de
>semita is unknown in central Mexico. Other pan
>de semitas are found in Guadalajara made from
>wheat (Semita de trigo) in which milk is
>substituted for the water. In Texas and also in
>Guadalajara, one also finds Semita de aniz
>(anis). However, semita de trigo and semita de
>aniz never include raisins and pecans, and to
>use pork lard is forbidden. Only olive oil or
>butter can be used to make Semitic bread.
>
>In addition to the Mexican matzo makers of Texas
>and Monterrey, Mexico, chicken is slaughtered in
>a special way. In Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas,
>Coahuila, and among Mexican Americans in Texas,
>two ways of butchering fowl is performed.
>Chickens can only be slaughtered by either
>wringing the neck by hand or by taking the head
>off with only one stroke of a sharp knife, and
>immediately all blood must be removed from the
>chicken into a container. The fowl is next
>plunged into hot water to get rid of any blood.
>
>This method is the same today as the crypto Jews
>performed in the 17th century in Mexico as
>described by scholar Seymour Liebman. The secret
>Jews of Mexico in the 1640s decapitated their
>chickens and hung them on a clothesline so the
>blood would drain into a container of water.
>Then the fowl was soaked in hot water and washed
>long enough to remove all the blood.
>
>In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, there's a
>ritual today of using this method of butchering
>chickens with an added gesture of drawing a
>cross on the ground and placing the chicken at
>the center of intersecting lines.
>
>Eating cactus and egg omelets is a custom during
>the Passover week/Lent of secret Jews of the
>17th century and of Mexican Americans from Texas
>and northern Mexico today. The omelets are
>called nopalitos lampreados. It's a custom to
>eat only this food during Lent. Is this and old
>Passover rite of secret Jews as well?
>
>No other bread except pan de semita was allowed
>during Lent, and pan de semita is unleavened and
>contains the same ingredients as Matzoh.
>
>Rural Mexican Americans in Texas also drink mint
>tea, fruit juices, or chocolate during Easter
>week. There's much evidence in the foods that
>these people were also observing Passover in
>addition to Lent and Easter, although many
>didn't know it until it was pointed out that
>they were eating traditional 16th century
>Sephardic foods, especially the bitter herbs
>added to the meal.
>Mexican Americans in Texas cast the first piece
>of the 'masa' (dough, sounds like Matzoh) into
>the fire - before cooking up a batch of corn
>tortillas or bread. These same people also do
>not eat pork on Fridays. Some Mexican Americans
>don't eat pork after 6 p.m. or sundown on Friday.
>
>Another Lenten/Passover food is 'capirotada'.
>It's wheat bread (pilon-cillo) to which raw
>sugar, cinnamon, cheese, butter, pecans, peanuts
>and raisins are added. These are identical
>ingredients to those used by secret Spanish Jews
>in the New Spain of 1640 to make their breads
>and cakes. Even the ingredients and recipes have
>been recorded by the Holy Office of the
>Inquisition and saved to this day in the
>archives.
>
>Mexican Americans from Texas don't practice
>abstaining from meat on Fridays, long before the
>Catholic Church relaxed the rule of not eating
>meat on Fridays. Also older women cover their
>hands while praying in the same manner as Jewish
>women cover their heads. The Holy Office never
>extended its long arm to the area known today as
>Texas. Descendants of Canary Islanders, 16
>families who came to Texas in 1731 established
>the township of San Fernando de Bexar which
>today is San Antonio.
>
>These families intermarried wit the local
>population of nearby Nuevo Reyno de Leon, many
>of whom were Spanish and Portuguese secret Jews
>who moved tot he area specifically because the
>Holy Office of the Inquisition didn't operate in
>18th century 'Texas'. All Mexicans of the area
>today are not of Sephardic descent.
>
>However, a large number still use the oral
>traditions which are eminently of Sephardic
>origin. Historical exposure to and intermarriage
>with Sephardic secret Jews has occurred in the
>parts of Mexico that were "safer havens" for
>secret Jewish settlement, and those havens
>happen to be southern Texas and the surrounding
>Mexican border and adjacent areas. Today, Texans
>in the San Antonio area are giving celebration
>to the secret Jewish origin of some of their
>foods, culture, and oral traditions.
Posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009
By: Anne DeSola Cardoza
>Jewish food, oral traditions, culture, and
>secret, religious customs are showing up today
>in the folklore, habits and practices of the
>descendants of early settlers in southern Texas
>and the surrounding areas of Mexico. In northern
>Mexico and what today is Texas, the Jews of
>Nuevo Leon and its capital, Monterrey, Mexico,
>lived without fear of harassment from the Holy
>Office of the 1640's and beyond.
>Many of the leading non Jewish families today of
>that area are descended from secret Jewish
>ancestors, according to scholar, Richard G.
>Santos.
>
>Santos states there are hundreds, if not
>thousands of descendants of Spanish and
>Portuguese Jews living today in San Antonio,
>Texas, USA and throughout South Texas. Not all
>are aware of their Jewish heritage. Santos is a
>renowned San Antonio, Texas scholar in ethnic
>studies of South Texas secret Spanish Jewry.
>
>He presented a paper to the Interfaith Institute
>at the Chapman Graduate Center of Trinity
>University on May 23, 1973 on secret Sephardic
>Jewish customs in today's Texas and nearby
>Mexican areas.
>
>Here's how we know a lot of Tex-Mex Hispanics
>today are of Jewish ancestry. It's a well
>accepted fact that the founding families of
>Monterrey and the nearby Mexican border area,
>"Nuevo Reyno de Leon" are of Sephardic Jewish
>origin.
>If we go back to The Diccionario Porrua de
>Historia Geografia y Biografia, it states that
>Luis de Carvajal y de a Cueva brought a shipload
>of Jews to settle his Mexican colony - with some
>Jews being converts to Catholicism from Judaism
>and others "openly addicted to their (Jewish)
>doctrine".
>
>According to the late Seymour Liebman, a scholar
>on Mexican colonial secret Jews, in his book
>"Jews in New Spain", explained why Jews settled
>in areas far away from Mexico City in order to
>escape the long arm of the Inquisition in the
>sixteenth century.
>There's an old, universally known anti-Semitic
>Mexican joke, one-liner that says, "la gente de
>Monterrey son muy judios ... son muy codos". In
>English it translates, "The people of Monterrey
>are very Jewish ... very tightwad".
>
>Secret Jews colonized the states of Nuevo Leon,
>Coahuila, Tamualipas and good old Texas, USA in
>the 1640's-1680s and thereafter. The majority of
>Texas's Spanish-speaking immigrants came from
>Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and Coahuila (the old
>Neuvo Reyno de Leon) beginning in the 1680s.
>
>Seventeenth century secret Jews who settled in
>what is today southern Texas, particularly
>around San Antonio took with them their Jewish
>foods, particularly what they call "Semitic
>bread" or pan de semita ...
> Sephardic Jewish foods in old Texas.
>
>Why do Mexican Americans in Texas and in the
>Mexican province of nearby Monterrey eat
>"Semitic bread" on Passover/Lent? According to
>scholar Richard G. Santos, Tex-Mex pastries such
>as pan dulce, pan de semita, trenzas, cuernos,
>pan de hero, and pan de los protestantes
>(Protestant's bread) are similar to familiar
>Jewish pastries eaten by Sephardic Jews today in
>many other parts of the world.
>
>Pan de semita was eaten in pre-inquisition Spain
>by a Jew or an Arab Moor. Today, it's popular in
>Texas and in that part of Mexico bordering
>Texas. It translates into English as "Semitic
>bread". It's a Mexican-American custom in the
>Texas and Tex-Mex border area today to eat pan
>de semita during Lent which occurs on or around
>the Jewish Passover.
>You bake pan de semita by combining two cups of
>flour, one half to two-thirds cup of water, a
>few tablespoons of butter or olive oil, mix and
>bake unleavened. Even among the devout Catholic
>Mexicans pork lard is never used, that's why
>it's called Semitic bread. Pan de semita is
>really the recipe for 17th century secret Jewish
>Matzoth, and it's eaten by all Mexicans today in
>the north Mexican/Texas border area, regardless
>of religion.
>
>Only in Texas and along the Texas-Mexican border
>is a special type of pan de semita baked,
>according to Dr. Santos, who himself is
>descended from secret Spanish Jews of the area
>who've lived in that part of Texas and Monterrey
>since colonial times.
>
>The special Texas pan de semita of the border
>has special ingredients: only vegetable oil,
>flour raisins, nuts, and water. The raisins,
>pecans, and vegetable oil were identified,
>according to Dr. Santos, as selected ingredients
>of secret Jews of New Spain.
>You take two cups of flour, a cup or less of
>water, a handful olive oil and mix with a half
>cup to two thirds cup each of raisins and
>pecans. Then you knead and bake at 350 degrees
>until lightly browned and easy to chew.
>
>This pan de semita is only found in the
>Texas/Mexico border area and in Texas. Pastry
>bakers from Mexico claim this type of pan de
>semita is unknown in central Mexico. Other pan
>de semitas are found in Guadalajara made from
>wheat (Semita de trigo) in which milk is
>substituted for the water. In Texas and also in
>Guadalajara, one also finds Semita de aniz
>(anis). However, semita de trigo and semita de
>aniz never include raisins and pecans, and to
>use pork lard is forbidden. Only olive oil or
>butter can be used to make Semitic bread.
>
>In addition to the Mexican matzo makers of Texas
>and Monterrey, Mexico, chicken is slaughtered in
>a special way. In Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas,
>Coahuila, and among Mexican Americans in Texas,
>two ways of butchering fowl is performed.
>Chickens can only be slaughtered by either
>wringing the neck by hand or by taking the head
>off with only one stroke of a sharp knife, and
>immediately all blood must be removed from the
>chicken into a container. The fowl is next
>plunged into hot water to get rid of any blood.
>
>This method is the same today as the crypto Jews
>performed in the 17th century in Mexico as
>described by scholar Seymour Liebman. The secret
>Jews of Mexico in the 1640s decapitated their
>chickens and hung them on a clothesline so the
>blood would drain into a container of water.
>Then the fowl was soaked in hot water and washed
>long enough to remove all the blood.
>
>In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, there's a
>ritual today of using this method of butchering
>chickens with an added gesture of drawing a
>cross on the ground and placing the chicken at
>the center of intersecting lines.
>
>Eating cactus and egg omelets is a custom during
>the Passover week/Lent of secret Jews of the
>17th century and of Mexican Americans from Texas
>and northern Mexico today. The omelets are
>called nopalitos lampreados. It's a custom to
>eat only this food during Lent. Is this and old
>Passover rite of secret Jews as well?
>
>No other bread except pan de semita was allowed
>during Lent, and pan de semita is unleavened and
>contains the same ingredients as Matzoh.
>
>Rural Mexican Americans in Texas also drink mint
>tea, fruit juices, or chocolate during Easter
>week. There's much evidence in the foods that
>these people were also observing Passover in
>addition to Lent and Easter, although many
>didn't know it until it was pointed out that
>they were eating traditional 16th century
>Sephardic foods, especially the bitter herbs
>added to the meal.
>Mexican Americans in Texas cast the first piece
>of the 'masa' (dough, sounds like Matzoh) into
>the fire - before cooking up a batch of corn
>tortillas or bread. These same people also do
>not eat pork on Fridays. Some Mexican Americans
>don't eat pork after 6 p.m. or sundown on Friday.
>
>Another Lenten/Passover food is 'capirotada'.
>It's wheat bread (pilon-cillo) to which raw
>sugar, cinnamon, cheese, butter, pecans, peanuts
>and raisins are added. These are identical
>ingredients to those used by secret Spanish Jews
>in the New Spain of 1640 to make their breads
>and cakes. Even the ingredients and recipes have
>been recorded by the Holy Office of the
>Inquisition and saved to this day in the
>archives.
>
>Mexican Americans from Texas don't practice
>abstaining from meat on Fridays, long before the
>Catholic Church relaxed the rule of not eating
>meat on Fridays. Also older women cover their
>hands while praying in the same manner as Jewish
>women cover their heads. The Holy Office never
>extended its long arm to the area known today as
>Texas. Descendants of Canary Islanders, 16
>families who came to Texas in 1731 established
>the township of San Fernando de Bexar which
>today is San Antonio.
>
>These families intermarried wit the local
>population of nearby Nuevo Reyno de Leon, many
>of whom were Spanish and Portuguese secret Jews
>who moved tot he area specifically because the
>Holy Office of the Inquisition didn't operate in
>18th century 'Texas'. All Mexicans of the area
>today are not of Sephardic descent.
>
>However, a large number still use the oral
>traditions which are eminently of Sephardic
>origin. Historical exposure to and intermarriage
>with Sephardic secret Jews has occurred in the
>parts of Mexico that were "safer havens" for
>secret Jewish settlement, and those havens
>happen to be southern Texas and the surrounding
>Mexican border and adjacent areas. Today, Texans
>in the San Antonio area are giving celebration
>to the secret Jewish origin of some of their
>foods, culture, and oral traditions.
Shades of Prejudice
January 19, 2010
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Shades of Prejudice
By SHANKAR VEDANTAM
Cambridge, Mass.
LAST week, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, found himself in trouble for once suggesting that Barack Obama had a political edge over other African-American candidates because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Mr. Reid was not expressing sadness but a gleeful opportunism that Americans were still judging one another by the color of their skin, rather than — as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy we commemorated on Monday, dreamed — by the content of their character.
The Senate leader’s choice of words was flawed, but positing that black candidates who look “less black” have a leg up is hardly more controversial than saying wealthy people have an advantage in elections. Dozens of research studies have shown that skin tone and other racial features play powerful roles in who gets ahead and who does not. These factors regularly determine who gets hired, who gets convicted and who gets elected.
Consider: Lighter-skinned Latinos in the United States make $5,000 more on average than darker-skinned Latinos. The education test-score gap between light-skinned and dark-skinned African-Americans is nearly as large as the gap between whites and blacks.
The Harvard neuroscientist Allen Counter has found that in Arizona, California and Texas, hundreds of Mexican-American women have suffered mercury poisoning as a result of the use of skin-whitening creams. In India, where I was born, a best-selling line of women’s cosmetics called Fair and Lovely has recently been supplemented by a product aimed at men called Fair and Handsome.
This isn’t racism, per se: it’s colorism, an unconscious prejudice that isn’t focused on a single group like blacks so much as on blackness itself. Our brains, shaped by culture and history, create intricate caste hierarchies that privilege those who are physically and culturally whiter and punish those who are darker.
Colorism is an intraracial problem as well as an interracial problem. Racial minorities who are alert to white-black or white-brown issues often remain silent about a colorism that asks “how black” or “how brown” someone is within their own communities.
If colorism lives underground, its effects are very real. Darker-skinned African-American defendants are more than twice as likely to receive the death penalty as lighter-skinned African-American defendants for crimes of equivalent seriousness involving white victims. This was proven in rigorous, peer-reviewed research into hundreds of capital punishment-worthy cases by the Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt.
Take, for instance, two of Dr. Eberhadt’s murder cases, in Philadelphia, involving black defendants — one light-skinned, the other dark. The lighter-skinned defendant, Arthur Hawthorne, ransacked a drug store for money and narcotics. The pharmacist had complied with every demand, yet Mr. Hawthorne shot him when he was lying face down. Mr. Hawthorne was independently identified as the killer by multiple witnesses, a family member and an accomplice.
The darker-skinned defendant, Ernest Porter, pleaded not guilty to the murder of a beautician, a crime that he was linked to only through a circuitous chain of evidence. A central witness later said that prosecutors forced him to finger Mr. Porter even though he was sure that he was the wrong man. Two people who provided an alibi for Mr. Porter were mysteriously never called to testify. During his trial, Mr. Porter revealed that the police had even gotten his name wrong — his real name was Theodore Wilson — but the court stuck to the wrong name in the interest of convenience.
Both men were convicted. But the lighter-skinned Mr. Hawthorne was given a life sentence, while the dark-skinned Mr. Porter has spent more than a quarter-century on Pennsylvania’s death row.
Colorism also influenced the 2008 presidential race. In an experiment that fall, Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory, and other researchers shot different versions of a political advertisement in support of Mr. Obama. One version showed a light-skinned black family. Another version had the same script, but used a darker-skinned black family. Voters, at an unconscious level, were less inclined to support Mr. Obama after watching the ad featuring the darker-skinned family than were those who watched the ad with the lighter-skinned family.
Political operatives are certainly aware of this dynamic. During the campaign, a conservative group created attack ads linking Mr. Obama with Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced former mayor of Detroit, which darkened Mr. Kilpatrick’s skin to have a more persuasive effect. Though there can be little doubt that as a candidate Mr. Obama faced voters’ conscious and unconscious prejudices, it is simultaneously true that unconscious colorism subtly advantaged him over darker-skinned politicians.
In highlighting how Mr. Obama benefited from his links to whiteness, Harry Reid punctured the myth that Mr. Obama’s election signaled the completion of the Rev. King’s dream. Americans may like to believe that we are now color-blind, that we can consciously choose not to use race when making judgments about other people. It remains a worthy aspiration. But this belief rests on a profound misunderstanding about how our minds work and perversely limits our ability to discuss prejudice honestly.
Shankar Vedantam, a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and a reporter for The Washington Post, is the author of the book “The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives.”
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
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OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Shades of Prejudice
By SHANKAR VEDANTAM
Cambridge, Mass.
LAST week, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, found himself in trouble for once suggesting that Barack Obama had a political edge over other African-American candidates because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Mr. Reid was not expressing sadness but a gleeful opportunism that Americans were still judging one another by the color of their skin, rather than — as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy we commemorated on Monday, dreamed — by the content of their character.
The Senate leader’s choice of words was flawed, but positing that black candidates who look “less black” have a leg up is hardly more controversial than saying wealthy people have an advantage in elections. Dozens of research studies have shown that skin tone and other racial features play powerful roles in who gets ahead and who does not. These factors regularly determine who gets hired, who gets convicted and who gets elected.
Consider: Lighter-skinned Latinos in the United States make $5,000 more on average than darker-skinned Latinos. The education test-score gap between light-skinned and dark-skinned African-Americans is nearly as large as the gap between whites and blacks.
The Harvard neuroscientist Allen Counter has found that in Arizona, California and Texas, hundreds of Mexican-American women have suffered mercury poisoning as a result of the use of skin-whitening creams. In India, where I was born, a best-selling line of women’s cosmetics called Fair and Lovely has recently been supplemented by a product aimed at men called Fair and Handsome.
This isn’t racism, per se: it’s colorism, an unconscious prejudice that isn’t focused on a single group like blacks so much as on blackness itself. Our brains, shaped by culture and history, create intricate caste hierarchies that privilege those who are physically and culturally whiter and punish those who are darker.
Colorism is an intraracial problem as well as an interracial problem. Racial minorities who are alert to white-black or white-brown issues often remain silent about a colorism that asks “how black” or “how brown” someone is within their own communities.
If colorism lives underground, its effects are very real. Darker-skinned African-American defendants are more than twice as likely to receive the death penalty as lighter-skinned African-American defendants for crimes of equivalent seriousness involving white victims. This was proven in rigorous, peer-reviewed research into hundreds of capital punishment-worthy cases by the Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt.
Take, for instance, two of Dr. Eberhadt’s murder cases, in Philadelphia, involving black defendants — one light-skinned, the other dark. The lighter-skinned defendant, Arthur Hawthorne, ransacked a drug store for money and narcotics. The pharmacist had complied with every demand, yet Mr. Hawthorne shot him when he was lying face down. Mr. Hawthorne was independently identified as the killer by multiple witnesses, a family member and an accomplice.
The darker-skinned defendant, Ernest Porter, pleaded not guilty to the murder of a beautician, a crime that he was linked to only through a circuitous chain of evidence. A central witness later said that prosecutors forced him to finger Mr. Porter even though he was sure that he was the wrong man. Two people who provided an alibi for Mr. Porter were mysteriously never called to testify. During his trial, Mr. Porter revealed that the police had even gotten his name wrong — his real name was Theodore Wilson — but the court stuck to the wrong name in the interest of convenience.
Both men were convicted. But the lighter-skinned Mr. Hawthorne was given a life sentence, while the dark-skinned Mr. Porter has spent more than a quarter-century on Pennsylvania’s death row.
Colorism also influenced the 2008 presidential race. In an experiment that fall, Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory, and other researchers shot different versions of a political advertisement in support of Mr. Obama. One version showed a light-skinned black family. Another version had the same script, but used a darker-skinned black family. Voters, at an unconscious level, were less inclined to support Mr. Obama after watching the ad featuring the darker-skinned family than were those who watched the ad with the lighter-skinned family.
Political operatives are certainly aware of this dynamic. During the campaign, a conservative group created attack ads linking Mr. Obama with Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced former mayor of Detroit, which darkened Mr. Kilpatrick’s skin to have a more persuasive effect. Though there can be little doubt that as a candidate Mr. Obama faced voters’ conscious and unconscious prejudices, it is simultaneously true that unconscious colorism subtly advantaged him over darker-skinned politicians.
In highlighting how Mr. Obama benefited from his links to whiteness, Harry Reid punctured the myth that Mr. Obama’s election signaled the completion of the Rev. King’s dream. Americans may like to believe that we are now color-blind, that we can consciously choose not to use race when making judgments about other people. It remains a worthy aspiration. But this belief rests on a profound misunderstanding about how our minds work and perversely limits our ability to discuss prejudice honestly.
Shankar Vedantam, a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and a reporter for The Washington Post, is the author of the book “The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives.”
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
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UT Division of Diversity and Community Engagement Impact Report
We are pleased to announce that the DDCE 2009 Impact Report is now online at http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/pdf/DDCE_ImpactReport.pdf.
The report captures the spirit of DDCE as well as the work and tangible results from our many partnerships. Please feel free to share the report with others and use it to help spread the word about the depth and breadth of the division’s work. Each of you should be proud of the accomplishments the division has made in such a short time. Our progress has been a team effort, and I thank each of you for your contribution.
The printed version of the report will be available late next week, and you will receive a copy through campus mail with additional information about distribution options.
Best wishes,
Dr. Gregory J. Vincent
The report captures the spirit of DDCE as well as the work and tangible results from our many partnerships. Please feel free to share the report with others and use it to help spread the word about the depth and breadth of the division’s work. Each of you should be proud of the accomplishments the division has made in such a short time. Our progress has been a team effort, and I thank each of you for your contribution.
The printed version of the report will be available late next week, and you will receive a copy through campus mail with additional information about distribution options.
Best wishes,
Dr. Gregory J. Vincent
Data debunks Bloomberg administration claims of school failure and success
Monday, January 18, 2010
Data debunks Bloomberg administration claims of school failure and success
The New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg / Schools Chancellor Joel Klein administration is in an unprecedented fury to close down large high schools, called comprehensive high schools in the education field. The city is working to replace the schools with small schools, also called small learning communities. While the city has touted the small schools as the panacea for problems in education, academic studies and actual city data show that the city has not made improvements in students' performance.
The real "bible" for every education activist, whether the activist be a student, a parent or an educator should be NYC Schools Under Bloomberg, and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know. (Lulu, 2009, ISBN 978-1-56592-479-6) It has contributions by academics, education activists and journalists, Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier, Deycy Avitia, David C. Bloomfield, James F. Brennan, Hazel N. Dukes, Leonie Haimson, Emily Horowitz, Jennifer L. Jennings, Steve Koss, Maisie McAdoo, Udi Ofer, Aaron M. Pallas, Steven Sanders, Sol Stern, Patrick J. Sullivan and Andrew Wolf.
David C. Bloomfield, a professor of Education Leadership, Law & Policy at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, contributed Small Schools: Myth and Reality to the New York City Schools. The essay indicates how private foundation money has dictated public policy. During the 2000s the (Bill) Gates Foundation dispensed $100 million into the creation of small schools in New York City. That foundation has channeled money through intermediary private foundations, the largest of these being the New Visions Foundation, as the Gates Foundation channeled $61 million to the New Visions Foundation. (Bloomfield, p. 49, 50)
The city touted "college readiness" as the sure-fire product of these conversions. Yet, huge percentage of the school graduates require remediation courses when they enter CUNY schools. Bloomfield cited the following excerpt from a study, that shows that New Century High Schools (another of the private foundations that has reshaped New York City Schools):
Examination of the Class of 2006 graduates in the two groups of schools indicates that graduates of comparison-group schools were more likely to earn a Regents diploma or Advanced Regents diploma, however, than were NCHS graduates (67 percent versus 46 percent). When the unit of comparison is students rather than graduates, however, the difference is less stark, with 41 percent of comparison-group students and 36 percent of NCHS students earning a Regents or Advanced diploma. (Bloomfield, p. 53-54)
As Bloomfield noted, this difference indicates that the New Century school students performed worse than students in the traditional high school students, as measured by receiving a Regents diploma.
He added (p. 54):
Like their large-school colleagues, most New York City small schools graduates earned so-called "local Diplomas," rather than Regents diplomas; these are so deficient that New York Sate is eliminating them because they fail to meet accepted standards of college readiness. It appears that, counter to their stated mission, the small schools are putting graduation over education without the academic rigor that [small school] advocates claim.
Remember, we are ultimately concerned with the students' long-time interests; but Bloomberg / Klein have failed with these school conversions:
Small schools students, too, have suffered from their schools' focus on reaching the administration's self-defined benchmarks rather than providing a substantive, well rounded education preparatory to post-secondary [i.e., college] opportunities. (Bloomfield, p. 55)
From Diane Ravitch's introduction to the collection of essays:
In late 2008, the Gates Foundation announced that it was curtailing support for small high schools because its own research showed that students in these schools were mot making as much progress in reading or mathematics as their peers in large high schools.
(Ravitch, p. 3)
Bloomberg made the mission of transforming the schools with the goal of making students "college-ready." The facts show that his makeover of the schools has been a failure toward the goal of college preparedness.
Bloomfield noted a study indicating that the future of a new school school does not improve over the earlier large school "unless the academic profile of incoming students is improved, a DOE contrivance well documented by Jennifer Jennings [New York University sociology professor] and Aaron Pallas [Teachers College, Columbia University professor of sociology and education]." (Bloomfield, p. 55. He pointed to "Jennings writing as Eduwonkette, 'Why Has the Education Press Missed the Boat? The Case of Small Schools,' Education Week, vol. 27, no 39, June 4, 2008 and Jennifer L. Jennings and Aaron Pallas, 'Who Attends Small Schools?,' presented at the American Educational Research Association annual conference, San Diego, CA, April 13-17, 2009.")
The New York State Report cards indicate that small schools, broken from large schools do not perform better than the traditional large schools. I have presented performance on Regents tests. Now, I recognize that authentic sophisticated learning is more than performing well on a standardized test, the test performance comparisons provide a standard measure from school to school. It is interesting that the data of "the system" or "the education establishment" do not show the small schools as performing better than the larger traditional schools.
Let's focus on the two more difficult New York State Regents tests that are mandated for all students, the Global History test and the Living Environment test. The previous passing grade was 55; for the newest graduating cohorts of students the passing grad is 65. Students that entered the ninth grade in 2007 (the class of 2011) must pass four of the mandatory tests to receive Regents diplomas. (The mandated tests are English, Math, Global History, U.S. History and Living Environment.) Local diplomas will be eliminated, beginning with the cohort of students entering the ninth grade in 2008 (the class of 2012).
Let's look at a sample of schools that have been broken into smaller learning communities, and then let's look at larger, comprehensive schools:
(The New York State Regents test data come from: https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/Home.do?year=2008)
*Sampling of small schools, created in the 1990s and 2000s from large schools:
*Erasmus Campus (in the former Erasmus Hall High School, Flatbush, Brooklyn) Business/Technology:
(This small school-within-a-school academy is itself moving to closure; it does not have figures for the latest available year, 2007-2008)
percentages of students getting 55 and 65 scores, respectively, on tests:
Global History, 2006-2007: 66, 26
Living Environment, 2006-2007: 76, 35
*Erasmus Campus Humanities:
Global History, 2008-2008: 64, 18
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 60, 20
*(in Erasmus) Academy for Hospitality and Tourism:
Global History, 2007-2008: 60 48
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 63 37
*(in Erasmus) High School for Service and Learning:
Global History, 2007-2008: 65 48
Living Environment: 80 62
*(in the former Andrew Jackson High School, Cambria Heights, Queens) *Business/Computer Application High School:
Global History, 2007-2008: 49 29
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 85 57
*Humanities and the Arts:
Global History, 2007-2008: 80 66
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 73 46
*Traditional, larger, "comprehensive high schools" in comparable communities, central Brooklyn and east-central Queens:
*Boys and Girls High School, Bedford-Stuyvesant:
Global History, 2007-2008: 69 62
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 76 44
*Clara Barton High School, Crown Heights:
Global History, 2007-2008: 68 35
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 75 56
*Jamaica High School:
Global History, 2007-2008: 66 52
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 71 48
So this settles the issue. It will be necessary to pass four of the Regents exams with at least 65 to get high school diplomas in a few years. By New York State's own requirements, the performance scores in the small schools are not stronger than those in comprehensive high schools in comparable neighborhoods. The small schools are not meeting the challenge. So, why is there the tremendous urgency to shut down comprehensive schools and replace them with small schools? The city is publicizing so-called failures of the comprehensive schools. Why are large schools over-whelmingly the targets? Why are they not treating the small-schools or the academies-within-the schools not receiving comparable scrutiny? As I have just documented, the small schools are "failing" by New York State's own Regents requirements. Even the private foundation that engineered the makeover for small schools (the Gates Foundation) has abandoned the trend of breaking apart large comprehensive high schools.
As I have noted elsewhere on this blog, large schools afford benefits of economies of scale: music, art, performing arts, physical education facilities, including full size basketball courts or competition-ready pools, diversity of foreign languages of study, electives in English and senior year social studies, honors classes and advanced placement classes. Conversely, as Bloomfield noted, "Because of their size, small schools usually lack diverse curricula; depth in specialized faculty, particularly in math and sciences; professional guidance and college counseling; another strengths of comprehensive schools." The break-up of schools entails undue uneconomical duplication of administrative staff, not the least of which is the hiring of multiple $100,000+ principals per school building.
This break-up of comprehensive high schools is a civil rights issue; the break-up of schools has not been forced upon white or Asian communities. These school-break-ups are not happening in Forest Hills, Bayside or Midwood. These school break-ups are exclusively in African-American and Latino neighborhoods: eastern Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.
Posted by NY_I at 8:33 AM
Data debunks Bloomberg administration claims of school failure and success
The New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg / Schools Chancellor Joel Klein administration is in an unprecedented fury to close down large high schools, called comprehensive high schools in the education field. The city is working to replace the schools with small schools, also called small learning communities. While the city has touted the small schools as the panacea for problems in education, academic studies and actual city data show that the city has not made improvements in students' performance.
The real "bible" for every education activist, whether the activist be a student, a parent or an educator should be NYC Schools Under Bloomberg, and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know. (Lulu, 2009, ISBN 978-1-56592-479-6) It has contributions by academics, education activists and journalists, Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier, Deycy Avitia, David C. Bloomfield, James F. Brennan, Hazel N. Dukes, Leonie Haimson, Emily Horowitz, Jennifer L. Jennings, Steve Koss, Maisie McAdoo, Udi Ofer, Aaron M. Pallas, Steven Sanders, Sol Stern, Patrick J. Sullivan and Andrew Wolf.
David C. Bloomfield, a professor of Education Leadership, Law & Policy at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, contributed Small Schools: Myth and Reality to the New York City Schools. The essay indicates how private foundation money has dictated public policy. During the 2000s the (Bill) Gates Foundation dispensed $100 million into the creation of small schools in New York City. That foundation has channeled money through intermediary private foundations, the largest of these being the New Visions Foundation, as the Gates Foundation channeled $61 million to the New Visions Foundation. (Bloomfield, p. 49, 50)
The city touted "college readiness" as the sure-fire product of these conversions. Yet, huge percentage of the school graduates require remediation courses when they enter CUNY schools. Bloomfield cited the following excerpt from a study, that shows that New Century High Schools (another of the private foundations that has reshaped New York City Schools):
Examination of the Class of 2006 graduates in the two groups of schools indicates that graduates of comparison-group schools were more likely to earn a Regents diploma or Advanced Regents diploma, however, than were NCHS graduates (67 percent versus 46 percent). When the unit of comparison is students rather than graduates, however, the difference is less stark, with 41 percent of comparison-group students and 36 percent of NCHS students earning a Regents or Advanced diploma. (Bloomfield, p. 53-54)
As Bloomfield noted, this difference indicates that the New Century school students performed worse than students in the traditional high school students, as measured by receiving a Regents diploma.
He added (p. 54):
Like their large-school colleagues, most New York City small schools graduates earned so-called "local Diplomas," rather than Regents diplomas; these are so deficient that New York Sate is eliminating them because they fail to meet accepted standards of college readiness. It appears that, counter to their stated mission, the small schools are putting graduation over education without the academic rigor that [small school] advocates claim.
Remember, we are ultimately concerned with the students' long-time interests; but Bloomberg / Klein have failed with these school conversions:
Small schools students, too, have suffered from their schools' focus on reaching the administration's self-defined benchmarks rather than providing a substantive, well rounded education preparatory to post-secondary [i.e., college] opportunities. (Bloomfield, p. 55)
From Diane Ravitch's introduction to the collection of essays:
In late 2008, the Gates Foundation announced that it was curtailing support for small high schools because its own research showed that students in these schools were mot making as much progress in reading or mathematics as their peers in large high schools.
(Ravitch, p. 3)
Bloomberg made the mission of transforming the schools with the goal of making students "college-ready." The facts show that his makeover of the schools has been a failure toward the goal of college preparedness.
Bloomfield noted a study indicating that the future of a new school school does not improve over the earlier large school "unless the academic profile of incoming students is improved, a DOE contrivance well documented by Jennifer Jennings [New York University sociology professor] and Aaron Pallas [Teachers College, Columbia University professor of sociology and education]." (Bloomfield, p. 55. He pointed to "Jennings writing as Eduwonkette, 'Why Has the Education Press Missed the Boat? The Case of Small Schools,' Education Week, vol. 27, no 39, June 4, 2008 and Jennifer L. Jennings and Aaron Pallas, 'Who Attends Small Schools?,' presented at the American Educational Research Association annual conference, San Diego, CA, April 13-17, 2009.")
The New York State Report cards indicate that small schools, broken from large schools do not perform better than the traditional large schools. I have presented performance on Regents tests. Now, I recognize that authentic sophisticated learning is more than performing well on a standardized test, the test performance comparisons provide a standard measure from school to school. It is interesting that the data of "the system" or "the education establishment" do not show the small schools as performing better than the larger traditional schools.
Let's focus on the two more difficult New York State Regents tests
Let's look at a sample of schools that have been broken into smaller learning communities, and then let's look at larger, comprehensive schools:
(The New York State Regents test data come from: https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/Home.do?year=2008)
*Sampling of small schools, created in the 1990s and 2000s from large schools:
*Erasmus Campus (in the former Erasmus Hall High School, Flatbush, Brooklyn) Business/Technology:
(This small school-within-a-school academy is itself moving to closure; it does not have figures for the latest available year, 2007-2008)
percentages of students getting 55 and 65 scores, respectively, on tests:
Global History, 2006-2007: 66, 26
Living Environment, 2006-2007: 76, 35
*Erasmus Campus Humanities:
Global History, 2008-2008: 64, 18
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 60, 20
*(in Erasmus) Academy for Hospitality and Tourism:
Global History, 2007-2008: 60 48
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 63 37
*(in Erasmus) High School for Service and Learning:
Global History, 2007-2008: 65 48
Living Environment: 80 62
*(in the former Andrew Jackson High School, Cambria Heights, Queens) *Business/Computer Application High School:
Global History, 2007-2008: 49 29
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 85 57
*Humanities and the Arts:
Global History, 2007-2008: 80 66
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 73 46
*Traditional, larger, "comprehensive high schools" in comparable communities, central Brooklyn and east-central Queens:
*Boys and Girls High School, Bedford-Stuyvesant:
Global History, 2007-2008: 69 62
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 76 44
*Clara Barton High School, Crown Heights:
Global History, 2007-2008: 68 35
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 75 56
*Jamaica High School:
Global History, 2007-2008: 66 52
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 71 48
So this settles the issue. It will be necessary to pass four of the Regents exams with at least 65 to get high school diplomas in a few years. By New York State's own requirements, the performance scores in the small schools are not stronger than those in comprehensive high schools in comparable neighborhoods. The small schools are not meeting the challenge. So, why is there the tremendous urgency to shut down comprehensive schools and replace them with small schools? The city is publicizing so-called failures of the comprehensive schools. Why are large schools over-whelmingly the targets? Why are they not treating the small-schools or the academies-within-the schools not receiving comparable scrutiny? As I have just documented, the small schools are "failing" by New York State's own Regents requirements. Even the private foundation that engineered the makeover for small schools (the Gates Foundation) has abandoned the trend of breaking apart large comprehensive high schools.
As I have noted elsewhere on this blog, large schools afford benefits of economies of scale: music, art, performing arts, physical education facilities, including full size basketball courts or competition-ready pools, diversity of foreign languages of study, electives in English and senior year social studies, honors classes and advanced placement classes. Conversely, as Bloomfield noted, "Because of their size, small schools usually lack diverse curricula; depth in specialized faculty, particularly in math and sciences; professional guidance and college counseling; another strengths of comprehensive schools." The break-up of schools entails undue uneconomical duplication of administrative staff, not the least of which is the hiring of multiple $100,000+ principals per school building.
This break-up of comprehensive high schools is a civil rights issue; the break-up of schools has not been forced upon white or Asian communities. These school-break-ups are not happening in Forest Hills, Bayside or Midwood. These school break-ups are exclusively in African-American and Latino neighborhoods: eastern Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.
Posted by NY_I at 8:33 AM
Test, Punish, and Push Out: How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline
January 20, 2010
Dear Friends and Advocates for Educational Justice,
Today, Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, released a first-of-its-kind report, “Test, Punish, and Push Out: How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline.” The report shows that together, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have turned schools into hostile and alienating environments for many youth, effectively treating them as dropouts-in-waiting.
“Test, Punish, and Push Out” provides an overview of zero-tolerance school discipline and high-stakes testing, how they relate to each other, how laws and policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have made school discipline even more punitive, and the risk faced if these devastating policies are not reformed. The report explores:
The common origins and ideological roots of zero tolerance and high-stakes testing;
The current state of zero-tolerance school discipline across the country, including local, state, and national data;
How high-stakes testing affects students, educators, and schools;
How zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have become mutually reinforcing, combining to push huge numbers of students out of school; and Successful grassroots efforts to eliminate harmful discipline and testing practices.
Also in the report are detailed recommendations for replacing zero-tolerance and high-stakes testing policies with those that will allow all young people to receive a high-quality pre-K-12 education. Included are steps that can be taken at the local, state, and federal levels, such as through the reauthorization process of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) and the implementation of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the “stimulus”).
Click here to download a PDF copy of the report.
Dear Friends and Advocates for Educational Justice,
Today, Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, released a first-of-its-kind report, “Test, Punish, and Push Out: How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline.” The report shows that together, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have turned schools into hostile and alienating environments for many youth, effectively treating them as dropouts-in-waiting.
“Test, Punish, and Push Out” provides an overview of zero-tolerance school discipline and high-stakes testing, how they relate to each other, how laws and policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have made school discipline even more punitive, and the risk faced if these devastating policies are not reformed. The report explores:
The common origins and ideological roots of zero tolerance and high-stakes testing;
The current state of zero-tolerance school discipline across the country, including local, state, and national data;
How high-stakes testing affects students, educators, and schools;
How zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have become mutually reinforcing, combining to push huge numbers of students out of school; and Successful grassroots efforts to eliminate harmful discipline and testing practices.
Also in the report are detailed recommendations for replacing zero-tolerance and high-stakes testing policies with those that will allow all young people to receive a high-quality pre-K-12 education. Included are steps that can be taken at the local, state, and federal levels, such as through the reauthorization process of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) and the implementation of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the “stimulus”).
Click here to download a PDF copy of the report.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Four schools picked for Austin's dual-language pilot; input sought on special education programs
Four schools picked for Austin's dual-language pilot; input sought on special education programs
COMPILED FROM STAFF REPORTS
Published: 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010
AUSTIN
Schools picked for pilot dual-language program
Becker, Perez, Ridgetop and Wooten elementary schools have been chosen to pilot a dual-language program in the fall.
In dual-language classrooms, students are taught in English and a second language, becoming fluent in both. Dual language differs from traditional bilingual or English as a Second Language programs, which aim to teach English to the nonnative speakers. Spanish will be the second language in the district's dual-language program, though district officials have said other languages could be added in the future.
The program will cost $600,000 a year for the four schools. An advisory committee chose the four schools out of nine that applied. However, Ridgetop's participation will hinge on its ability to recruit prospective students, among other factors, district officials said. And Becker's participation is contingent upon improved academic performance.
Brentwood, Blanton, Oak Hill, Odom and Travis Heights elementary schools will be considered for the second school year of the dual-language pilot in 2011.
Special ed forums planned
The district will hold two discussion sessions this month on special education services for families of students with disabilities and interested community members.
The forums are being held for participants to share their recommendations, thoughts and concerns. Information gathered at these forums will be shared with Superintendent Meria Carstarphen at a meeting in February. The forums will be held:
• 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the St. Ignatius, Martyr, School Family Center, 126 W. Oltorf St.
• 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 28 at the Region XIII Education Service Center, 5701 Springdale Road.
Pizza, child care and translation services will be provided. For more information, call 414-1731.
ROUND ROCK
District seeks volunteers
The district's School Health Advisory Council is looking for parents and community members to volunteer as advisory council members. Council members advise district officials and trustees on issues relating to the health, wellness and safety of students.
The next health advisory council meeting will be from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday in the district's Central Kitchen conference room, 16255 Great Oaks Drive, Suite 100. Those interested in serving on the advisory council are encouraged to attend and must RSVP with Michele Schoppe at 464-8386 or michele_schoppe@roundrockisd.org. Lunch will be provided.
Those interested may also contact Assistant Athletic Director Susan Nix at 464-5486.
HAYS
3 Trustee seats up for election
Three seats on the district's Board of Trustees will be up for election May 8: Ralph Pfluger's District 4 seat, Chip DuPont's District 5 seat and Willie Tenorio Jr.'s District 2 spot. Pfluger and DuPont have announced that they will not seek another term.
Trustees appointed Tenorio in October after then-trustee Joe Muñoz moved outside of his district's boundaries.
Candidate application packets are available at the Central Administration Office, 21003 Interstate 35 in Kyle, or may be downloaded at www.sos.state.tx.us . The first day to file for a place on the ballot is Feb. 8; the filing deadline is 4:30 p.m. March 12. Applications should be filed at the Central Administration Office.
A map of Hays single-member districts is available on the district Web site, www.hayscisd.net , or at the Central Administration Office.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/four-schools-picked-for-austin-s-dual-language-186460.html
COMPILED FROM STAFF REPORTS
Published: 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010
AUSTIN
Schools picked for pilot dual-language program
Becker, Perez, Ridgetop and Wooten elementary schools have been chosen to pilot a dual-language program in the fall.
In dual-language classrooms, students are taught in English and a second language, becoming fluent in both. Dual language differs from traditional bilingual or English as a Second Language programs, which aim to teach English to the nonnative speakers. Spanish will be the second language in the district's dual-language program, though district officials have said other languages could be added in the future.
The program will cost $600,000 a year for the four schools. An advisory committee chose the four schools out of nine that applied. However, Ridgetop's participation will hinge on its ability to recruit prospective students, among other factors, district officials said. And Becker's participation is contingent upon improved academic performance.
Brentwood, Blanton, Oak Hill, Odom and Travis Heights elementary schools will be considered for the second school year of the dual-language pilot in 2011.
Special ed forums planned
The district will hold two discussion sessions this month on special education services for families of students with disabilities and interested community members.
The forums are being held for participants to share their recommendations, thoughts and concerns. Information gathered at these forums will be shared with Superintendent Meria Carstarphen at a meeting in February. The forums will be held:
• 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the St. Ignatius, Martyr, School Family Center, 126 W. Oltorf St.
• 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 28 at the Region XIII Education Service Center, 5701 Springdale Road.
Pizza, child care and translation services will be provided. For more information, call 414-1731.
ROUND ROCK
District seeks volunteers
The district's School Health Advisory Council is looking for parents and community members to volunteer as advisory council members. Council members advise district officials and trustees on issues relating to the health, wellness and safety of students.
The next health advisory council meeting will be from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday in the district's Central Kitchen conference room, 16255 Great Oaks Drive, Suite 100. Those interested in serving on the advisory council are encouraged to attend and must RSVP with Michele Schoppe at 464-8386 or michele_schoppe@roundrockisd.org. Lunch will be provided.
Those interested may also contact Assistant Athletic Director Susan Nix at 464-5486.
HAYS
3 Trustee seats up for election
Three seats on the district's Board of Trustees will be up for election May 8: Ralph Pfluger's District 4 seat, Chip DuPont's District 5 seat and Willie Tenorio Jr.'s District 2 spot. Pfluger and DuPont have announced that they will not seek another term.
Trustees appointed Tenorio in October after then-trustee Joe Muñoz moved outside of his district's boundaries.
Candidate application packets are available at the Central Administration Office, 21003 Interstate 35 in Kyle, or may be downloaded at www.sos.state.tx.us . The first day to file for a place on the ballot is Feb. 8; the filing deadline is 4:30 p.m. March 12. Applications should be filed at the Central Administration Office.
A map of Hays single-member districts is available on the district Web site, www.hayscisd.net , or at the Central Administration Office.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/four-schools-picked-for-austin-s-dual-language-186460.html
Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech, Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence
Delivered 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City
Hear the audio at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm <http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm>
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:
I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it's always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.
Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.
Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 19541; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954 -- in 1945 rather -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of -- in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.
Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.
Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.
How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.
Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred -- rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:
Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.
I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:
Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.
Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
Part of our ongoing -- Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile -- Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.
And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.
It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.
If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day all over America and all over the world when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream!
Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence
Delivered 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City
Hear the audio at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm <http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm>
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:
I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it's always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.
Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.
Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 19541; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954 -- in 1945 rather -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of -- in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.
Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.
Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.
How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.
Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred -- rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:
Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.
I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:
Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.
Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
Part of our ongoing -- Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile -- Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.
And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.
It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.
If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day all over America and all over the world when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream!
Monday, January 18, 2010
NCLR CALLS FOR EXTENSION OF TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS IN RESPONSE TO EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI
Contact:
Jackeline Stewart
(202) 785-1670
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan 14, 2010
NCLR CALLS FOR EXTENSION OF TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS IN RESPONSE TO EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI
Washington, DC-NCLR (National Council of La Raza) urges President Obama to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haitians. The January 12 earthquake, reaching a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale, has devastated an already struggling nation. Haiti applied for TPS status after crippling hurricanes and storms in 2008 and was denied despite unlivable conditions.
The Department of Homeland Security has already temporarily suspended deportations to Haiti. The next step to address this catastrophe would be to extend TPS. As the U.S. continues to carry on important and necessary relief efforts after this latest disaster, moving forward with the long-delayed TPS designation would truly demonstrate our country's humanitarian tradition.
"Helping our neighbors is a value that has defined our nation," said NCLR President and CEO Janet MurguÃa. "Our country's emergency response efforts are needed and appreciated, and they should be coupled with TPS designation. The extent of this earthquake calls for a bold federal response."
NCLR is working with civil rights and advocacy organizations to urge the president to extend TPS to Haitians.
For more information, visit www.nclr.org | http://www.facebook.com/nationalcounciloflaraza | http://www.myspace.com/nclr2008 | http://twitter.com/nclr.
###
All Content © 2010 NCLR. All Rights Reserved | Unsubscribe from NCLR's distribution lists
Jackeline Stewart
(202) 785-1670
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan 14, 2010
NCLR CALLS FOR EXTENSION OF TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS IN RESPONSE TO EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI
Washington, DC-NCLR (National Council of La Raza) urges President Obama to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haitians. The January 12 earthquake, reaching a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale, has devastated an already struggling nation. Haiti applied for TPS status after crippling hurricanes and storms in 2008 and was denied despite unlivable conditions.
The Department of Homeland Security has already temporarily suspended deportations to Haiti. The next step to address this catastrophe would be to extend TPS. As the U.S. continues to carry on important and necessary relief efforts after this latest disaster, moving forward with the long-delayed TPS designation would truly demonstrate our country's humanitarian tradition.
"Helping our neighbors is a value that has defined our nation," said NCLR President and CEO Janet MurguÃa. "Our country's emergency response efforts are needed and appreciated, and they should be coupled with TPS designation. The extent of this earthquake calls for a bold federal response."
NCLR is working with civil rights and advocacy organizations to urge the president to extend TPS to Haitians.
For more information, visit www.nclr.org | http://www.facebook.com/nationalcounciloflaraza | http://www.myspace.com/nclr2008 | http://twitter.com/nclr.
###
All Content © 2010 NCLR. All Rights Reserved | Unsubscribe from NCLR's distribution lists
Handbook of Latinos and Education: Theory, Research & Practice
Handbook of Latinos and Education:
Theory, Research & Practice
NOW AVAILABLE
Add to Cart - PB Add to Cart - HB
• ISBN PB: 978-0-8058-5840-2
• ISBN HB: 978-0-8058-5839-6
• Published by: Routledge
• Pages: 670
Please Join us for the National Book Launching at the inaugural LEAD Summit, Monday, March 29, 2010
About the Book
Providing a comprehensive review of rigorous, innovative, and critical scholarship relevant to educational issues which impact Latinos, this Handbook captures the field at this point in time. Its unique purpose and function is to profile the scope and terrain of academic inquiry on Latinos and education. Presenting the most significant and potentially influential work in the field in terms of its contributions to research, to professional practice, and to the emergence of related interdisciplinary studies and theory, the volume is organized around five themes:
• History, Theory, and Methodology
• Policies and Politics
• Language and Culture
• Teaching and Learning
• Resources and Information
The Handbook of Latinos and Education is a must-have resource for educational researchers, graduate students, teacher educators, and the broad spectrum of individuals, groups, agencies, organizations and institutions sharing a common interest in and commitment to the educational issues that impact Latinos.
Edited by Enrique G Murillo Jr., Sofia A Villenas, Ruth Trinidad Galván, Juan Sánchez Muñoz, Corinne MartÃnez, and Margarita Machado-Casas
Table of Contents
Foreword, José Salvador Hernández
Preface, Enrique G. Murillo, Jr.
SECTION I: History, Theory, and Methodology
1. History, Theory and Methodology: An Introduction, Sofia A. Villenas and Douglas E. Foley
2. The United Status of Latinos, Victoria-MarÃa MacDonald and Juan F. Carrillo
3. Latino Education in 20th Century America: A Brief History, Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr. and Rubén Donato
4. Latina/o Education and the Reciprocal Relationship between Theory and Practice: Four Theories Informed by the Experiential Knowledge of Marginalized Communities, C. Alejandra Elenes and Dolores Delgado Bernal
5. Contemporary and Critical Methodological Shifts in Research on Latino Education, MarÃa Estela Zarate and Gilberto Q. Conchas
6. Latino/a Theoretical Contributions to Educational Praxis: Abriendo Caminos, Construyendo Puentes, Jason G. Irizarry and Sonia Nieto
SECTION II: Policies and Politics
7. Policies and Politics: An Introduction, Ruth Trinidad Galván and Norma E. González
8. The Effects of Globalization and Transnationalism on Policies and Practices in the Education of Latinos in the U. S. and Latin Americans in Spain, Martha Montero-Sieburth, Lidia Cabrera Pérez, and Celoni EspÃnola Mesa
9. Education in the New Latino Diaspora, Edmund T. Hamann and Linda Harklau
10. Construction of Race and Ethnicity for and by Latinos, Edward Fergus, Pedro Noguera and Margary Martin
11. Monoglossic Ideologies and Language Policies in the Education of U.S. Latinas/os, Ofelia GarcÃa and Rosario Torres-Guevara
12. The Role of High Stakes Testing and Accountability in Educating Latinos, Frances E. Contreras
13. Assessing the Higher Education Opportunity Structure for Latino Students: Research and Policy Trends at the Turn of the Century, Stella M. Flores
14. Latina/o Faculty in Academelandia, Luis Urrieta, Jr. and Rudolfo Chávez Chávez
15. Latinas/os in Higher Education: Eligibility, Enrollment, and Educational Attainment, Octavio Villalpando
16. Latino Community Activism in the 21st Century: Confronting the Future, Learning from the Past, Carmen I. Mercado and Luis O. Reyes
17. When Stepping to College is Stepping to Consciousness: Critical Pedagogy, Transformational Resistance, and Community Building with Urban Latina/o and African-American Youth, Nicole D. Hidalgo and Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade
SECTION III: Language and Culture
18. Language and Culture: An Introduction, Juan Sánchez Muñoz and Eugene GarcÃa
19. Infinite Possibilities, Many Obstacles: Language, Culture, Identity and Latino/a Educational Achievement, AÃda Hurtado, Karina Cervantez, and Michael Eccleston
20. Misrepresentations of Language and Culture, Language and Culture as Proxies for Marginalization: Debunking the Arguments, Angela E. Arzubiaga and Jennifer Adair
21. Bilingualism: An Overview of the Linguistic Research, Kellie Rolstad and Jeff MacSwan
22. Language, Culture, and Cognition: from Research to Improving Educational Practice for Latino Students, Virginia González
23. Language Socialization among Latinos: Theory, Method and Approaches, Patricia Baquedano-López, Jorge SolÃs, and Gabino Arredondo
24. Latino Families: Culture and Schooling, Flora V. RodrÃguez-Brown
25. Latinos in Special Education: Equity Issues at the Intersection of Language, Culture, and Ability Differences, Alfredo J. Artiles, Amanda L. Sullivan, Federico R. Waitoller, and Rebecca A. Neal
26. Effective Practices that Matter for Latino Children, Teresa M. Huerta and Carmina M. Brittain
27. Language, Culture, Policy and the Law: Issues for Latino Students, Tom Stritikus and Bonnie English
SECTION IV: Teaching and Learning
28. Teaching and Learning: An Introduction, Corinne MartÃnez and Esteban DÃaz
29. Going Back to the Headwaters: Examining Latina/o Educational Attainment and Achievement through a Framework of Hope, Rebeca Burciaga, Lindsay Pérez Huber and Daniel G. Solórzano
30. Dismantling Group-Based Inequality in a NCLB Era, Effective Practices, and Latino Students Placed and Left at Risk, Pedro R. Portes, Margaret A. Gallego and Spencer Salas
31. "Who are These Kids, Rejects from Hell?" Analyzing Hollywood Distortions of Latina/o High School Students, Tara J. Yosso and David G. GarcÃa
32. Latinas/os in Early Childhood Education: Issues, Practices, and Future Directions, Verónica E. Valdez and MarÃa E. Fránquiz
33. Best Practices for Teaching Latino English Learners in U.S. Schools, Josefina Villamil Tinajero, Judith Hope Munter and Blanca Araujo
34. Accountability and Educational Assessment for Latino, English Language Learning Students: Improving Practices through Multidisciplinary Approaches, Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz and Guillermo Solano-Flores
35. Boosting the Professional Development of Teachers of Latino English Learners, Liliana Minya-Rowe and José A. Ortiz
SECTION V: Resources and Information
36. Resources and Information: An Introduction, Margarita Machado-Casas
37. Adult/Continuing Education, Carlos MartÃn Vélez
38. Commercial Products, Minda López
39. Demographics/Statistics and Government, Norma A. Guzmán
40. Events, Victor A. Castillo and Sonia N. Sánchez
41. Groups, Silvia Cristina Bettez
42. Higher Education, Belinda Treviño Schouten and Katherine Graves-Talati
43. Internet Tools/Technology, Victor H. Pérez
44. Libraries/Galleries/Museums, Belinda Treviño Schouten
45. Non-Print Media, Grisel Y. Acosta
46. Parents and Teachers, Esther Garza and Keren Zuniga-McDowell
47. Periodicals, Evelyn M. Gordon and Daniella Ann Cook
48. Publications, Norma A. Guzmán, Janet K. López and Mary Ruth Fernández
Bio
Enrique G. Murillo, Jr. is Associate Professor in the Department of Language, Literacy, and Culture at California State University, San Bernardino.
Sofia A. Villenas is Associate Professor of Education and Director of the Latino/a Studies Program at Cornell University.
Ruth Trinidad Galván is Assistant Professor in the Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies Department at the University of New Mexico.
Juan Sánchez Muñoz is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Director of the Center for Research in Leadership and Education, in the College of Education, Texas Tech University.
Corinne MartÃnez is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at California State University, Long Beach.
Margarita Machado-Casas is Assistant Professor in the Department of Bicultural Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Register Here for the LEAD Summit
Other Ways to Participate
Want to participate but can't attend the summit...view or host your own local “town hall” viewing event..see our list of Townhall Viewing Event Locations .
You can also find us on the Internet
Theory, Research & Practice
NOW AVAILABLE
Add to Cart - PB Add to Cart - HB
• ISBN PB: 978-0-8058-5840-2
• ISBN HB: 978-0-8058-5839-6
• Published by: Routledge
• Pages: 670
Please Join us for the National Book Launching at the inaugural LEAD Summit, Monday, March 29, 2010
About the Book
Providing a comprehensive review of rigorous, innovative, and critical scholarship relevant to educational issues which impact Latinos, this Handbook captures the field at this point in time. Its unique purpose and function is to profile the scope and terrain of academic inquiry on Latinos and education. Presenting the most significant and potentially influential work in the field in terms of its contributions to research, to professional practice, and to the emergence of related interdisciplinary studies and theory, the volume is organized around five themes:
• History, Theory, and Methodology
• Policies and Politics
• Language and Culture
• Teaching and Learning
• Resources and Information
The Handbook of Latinos and Education is a must-have resource for educational researchers, graduate students, teacher educators, and the broad spectrum of individuals, groups, agencies, organizations and institutions sharing a common interest in and commitment to the educational issues that impact Latinos.
Edited by Enrique G Murillo Jr., Sofia A Villenas, Ruth Trinidad Galván, Juan Sánchez Muñoz, Corinne MartÃnez, and Margarita Machado-Casas
Table of Contents
Foreword, José Salvador Hernández
Preface, Enrique G. Murillo, Jr.
SECTION I: History, Theory, and Methodology
1. History, Theory and Methodology: An Introduction, Sofia A. Villenas and Douglas E. Foley
2. The United Status of Latinos, Victoria-MarÃa MacDonald and Juan F. Carrillo
3. Latino Education in 20th Century America: A Brief History, Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr. and Rubén Donato
4. Latina/o Education and the Reciprocal Relationship between Theory and Practice: Four Theories Informed by the Experiential Knowledge of Marginalized Communities, C. Alejandra Elenes and Dolores Delgado Bernal
5. Contemporary and Critical Methodological Shifts in Research on Latino Education, MarÃa Estela Zarate and Gilberto Q. Conchas
6. Latino/a Theoretical Contributions to Educational Praxis: Abriendo Caminos, Construyendo Puentes, Jason G. Irizarry and Sonia Nieto
SECTION II: Policies and Politics
7. Policies and Politics: An Introduction, Ruth Trinidad Galván and Norma E. González
8. The Effects of Globalization and Transnationalism on Policies and Practices in the Education of Latinos in the U. S. and Latin Americans in Spain, Martha Montero-Sieburth, Lidia Cabrera Pérez, and Celoni EspÃnola Mesa
9. Education in the New Latino Diaspora, Edmund T. Hamann and Linda Harklau
10. Construction of Race and Ethnicity for and by Latinos, Edward Fergus, Pedro Noguera and Margary Martin
11. Monoglossic Ideologies and Language Policies in the Education of U.S. Latinas/os, Ofelia GarcÃa and Rosario Torres-Guevara
12. The Role of High Stakes Testing and Accountability in Educating Latinos, Frances E. Contreras
13. Assessing the Higher Education Opportunity Structure for Latino Students: Research and Policy Trends at the Turn of the Century, Stella M. Flores
14. Latina/o Faculty in Academelandia, Luis Urrieta, Jr. and Rudolfo Chávez Chávez
15. Latinas/os in Higher Education: Eligibility, Enrollment, and Educational Attainment, Octavio Villalpando
16. Latino Community Activism in the 21st Century: Confronting the Future, Learning from the Past, Carmen I. Mercado and Luis O. Reyes
17. When Stepping to College is Stepping to Consciousness: Critical Pedagogy, Transformational Resistance, and Community Building with Urban Latina/o and African-American Youth, Nicole D. Hidalgo and Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade
SECTION III: Language and Culture
18. Language and Culture: An Introduction, Juan Sánchez Muñoz and Eugene GarcÃa
19. Infinite Possibilities, Many Obstacles: Language, Culture, Identity and Latino/a Educational Achievement, AÃda Hurtado, Karina Cervantez, and Michael Eccleston
20. Misrepresentations of Language and Culture, Language and Culture as Proxies for Marginalization: Debunking the Arguments, Angela E. Arzubiaga and Jennifer Adair
21. Bilingualism: An Overview of the Linguistic Research, Kellie Rolstad and Jeff MacSwan
22. Language, Culture, and Cognition: from Research to Improving Educational Practice for Latino Students, Virginia González
23. Language Socialization among Latinos: Theory, Method and Approaches, Patricia Baquedano-López, Jorge SolÃs, and Gabino Arredondo
24. Latino Families: Culture and Schooling, Flora V. RodrÃguez-Brown
25. Latinos in Special Education: Equity Issues at the Intersection of Language, Culture, and Ability Differences, Alfredo J. Artiles, Amanda L. Sullivan, Federico R. Waitoller, and Rebecca A. Neal
26. Effective Practices that Matter for Latino Children, Teresa M. Huerta and Carmina M. Brittain
27. Language, Culture, Policy and the Law: Issues for Latino Students, Tom Stritikus and Bonnie English
SECTION IV: Teaching and Learning
28. Teaching and Learning: An Introduction, Corinne MartÃnez and Esteban DÃaz
29. Going Back to the Headwaters: Examining Latina/o Educational Attainment and Achievement through a Framework of Hope, Rebeca Burciaga, Lindsay Pérez Huber and Daniel G. Solórzano
30. Dismantling Group-Based Inequality in a NCLB Era, Effective Practices, and Latino Students Placed and Left at Risk, Pedro R. Portes, Margaret A. Gallego and Spencer Salas
31. "Who are These Kids, Rejects from Hell?" Analyzing Hollywood Distortions of Latina/o High School Students, Tara J. Yosso and David G. GarcÃa
32. Latinas/os in Early Childhood Education: Issues, Practices, and Future Directions, Verónica E. Valdez and MarÃa E. Fránquiz
33. Best Practices for Teaching Latino English Learners in U.S. Schools, Josefina Villamil Tinajero, Judith Hope Munter and Blanca Araujo
34. Accountability and Educational Assessment for Latino, English Language Learning Students: Improving Practices through Multidisciplinary Approaches, Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz and Guillermo Solano-Flores
35. Boosting the Professional Development of Teachers of Latino English Learners, Liliana Minya-Rowe and José A. Ortiz
SECTION V: Resources and Information
36. Resources and Information: An Introduction, Margarita Machado-Casas
37. Adult/Continuing Education, Carlos MartÃn Vélez
38. Commercial Products, Minda López
39. Demographics/Statistics and Government, Norma A. Guzmán
40. Events, Victor A. Castillo and Sonia N. Sánchez
41. Groups, Silvia Cristina Bettez
42. Higher Education, Belinda Treviño Schouten and Katherine Graves-Talati
43. Internet Tools/Technology, Victor H. Pérez
44. Libraries/Galleries/Museums, Belinda Treviño Schouten
45. Non-Print Media, Grisel Y. Acosta
46. Parents and Teachers, Esther Garza and Keren Zuniga-McDowell
47. Periodicals, Evelyn M. Gordon and Daniella Ann Cook
48. Publications, Norma A. Guzmán, Janet K. López and Mary Ruth Fernández
Bio
Enrique G. Murillo, Jr. is Associate Professor in the Department of Language, Literacy, and Culture at California State University, San Bernardino.
Sofia A. Villenas is Associate Professor of Education and Director of the Latino/a Studies Program at Cornell University.
Ruth Trinidad Galván is Assistant Professor in the Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies Department at the University of New Mexico.
Juan Sánchez Muñoz is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Director of the Center for Research in Leadership and Education, in the College of Education, Texas Tech University.
Corinne MartÃnez is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at California State University, Long Beach.
Margarita Machado-Casas is Assistant Professor in the Department of Bicultural Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Register Here for the LEAD Summit
Other Ways to Participate
Want to participate but can't attend the summit...view or host your own local “town hall” viewing event..see our list of Townhall Viewing Event Locations .
You can also find us on the Internet
Friday, January 15, 2010
A Couple of Good Resources for Language Teaching and Education
from Stephen Krashen. Thanks for letting me know about these. I like your idea that we be much more inquiry based about these things than we often are. Seems we're always looking for new orthodoxies rather than taking stock of existing knowledge, particularly in an area that is so sensitive and deeply personal as language learning.
-Angela
Letter published in Language Magazine, December 2009
Not Just the Ivory Tower
Doug Evans ("Methodology is dead," November 2009) argues that we
should not blindly adhere to the tenets of any single language
teaching methodology. Agreed. I have argued that we should also
consider theory, attempts to explain why some practices work and
others do not, based on research, observation, and personal
experience.
I have also argued that we should not blindly adhere to the tenets of
any single theory, but should consider the progress of language
acquisition theory in general, continuing attempts to make sense of
language acquisition and language education.
This is, however, hard to do. Journal papers and technical books are
typically unnecessarily long and unnecessarily dense, and usually
expensive and inaccessible. The good news is that there are
publications contributing to a solution to this serious problem. The
International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching (ijflt.com) is a
free, on-line journal that encourages short, clearly written reports
of research and practice, and, of course, Language Magazine helps keep
language educators and enthusiasts up to date in all areas of language
education.
These publications make it easier to keep up with progress in theory
and practice, and make it easier for a wider group of experts
(teachers, experienced language acquirers) to contribute to this
progress. Reading and writing about language acquisition and language
education should not be limited to ivory-tower researchers like me.
Stephen Krashen
-Angela
Letter published in Language Magazine, December 2009
Not Just the Ivory Tower
Doug Evans ("Methodology is dead," November 2009) argues that we
should not blindly adhere to the tenets of any single language
teaching methodology. Agreed. I have argued that we should also
consider theory, attempts to explain why some practices work and
others do not, based on research, observation, and personal
experience.
I have also argued that we should not blindly adhere to the tenets of
any single theory, but should consider the progress of language
acquisition theory in general, continuing attempts to make sense of
language acquisition and language education.
This is, however, hard to do. Journal papers and technical books are
typically unnecessarily long and unnecessarily dense, and usually
expensive and inaccessible. The good news is that there are
publications contributing to a solution to this serious problem. The
International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching (ijflt.com) is a
free, on-line journal that encourages short, clearly written reports
of research and practice, and, of course, Language Magazine helps keep
language educators and enthusiasts up to date in all areas of language
education.
These publications make it easier to keep up with progress in theory
and practice, and make it easier for a wider group of experts
(teachers, experienced language acquirers) to contribute to this
progress. Reading and writing about language acquisition and language
education should not be limited to ivory-tower researchers like me.
Stephen Krashen
The Secrets of Charter School Success
Healthy debate on charters. -Angela
The Secrets of Charter School Success
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2010/01/the_secrets_of_charter_school.html
Dear Deborah,
In my new book, coming out in early March,* I devote a chapter to examining the research about choice from a historical perspective. Leave aside vouchers for now, and let's look at charters, which are all the rage among the movers and shakers, including President Obama, Secretary Duncan, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and business leaders.
The charter idea was born in 1988, when two men—unknown to one another—converged on the idea. One was an education professor in Massachusetts named Ray Budde. The other was Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Both saw charter schools as a sort of R&D program to help public education. Neither saw charters as competition for public schools. They thought that the lessons learned from charters would help to solve difficult problems of curriculum and instruction, while shedding light on issues of organization and student motivation.
As we both know, the founders' vision has been replaced by a totally different conception of charters. Now they are the leading edge of an effort to replace public schools and to oust teachers' unions. Knowledgeable insiders have told me that more than 90 percent—possibly 98 percent—of the nation's 5,000 charters do not have unions. Most are staffed by young teachers who work 50-60 hours a week and burn out after a few years.
There have been many research studies about charters and there will, of course, be more as they expand in number. Last fall, a study by Caroline Hoxby <http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/09/22/05charter.h29.html?tkn=PNOFL6O3EutDM1KkM0LoKCxpsktYYm1ClUdV> captured the media's attention by claiming that students who spent nine years in a New York City charter school would close the achievement gap between those in the poorest and the wealthiest districts. Now comes another New York City charter study, this one by Margaret Raymond of CREDO at Stanford University. Last spring, CREDO released a national study showing that only 17 percent of charter schools had better results than traditional public schools; 83 percent of charters produced gains that were no different or significantly worse. This study sent shock waves through the charter school world.
But now Raymond has produced a study of NYC charters <http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/NYC%202009%20_CREDO.pdf> that presents a far brighter picture than her national study. In contrast to Hoxby's NYC study, which seemed to suggest that any charter school was superior to any public school, Raymond's study is positive, but nuanced. She matched students in charter schools with students in traditional public schools by gender, grade, race/ethnicity, free-reduced price lunch status (a proxy for poverty), prior year test score, grade repeater, special-education status, and English-language learner. Raymond found that 51 percent of NYC charters produced significant gains in math, but only 29 percent did so in reading.
Since Raymond's 2009 national charter study was so bleak, charter advocates pounced on the NYC findings and celebrated. But a closer look should moderate the cheering.
Aside from the fact that Raymond's study showed that 49 percent of charter schools produced no significant gains in math, and 71 percent produced no significant gains in reading, she also reported that students who were in special education or who were English-language learners experienced no significant gains or losses in charters. She also found that charter students who had been retained in grade made no gains in reading and were outperformed in math by their peers in traditional public schools.
Neither Hoxby nor Raymond—both brilliant economists and leaders in their field—factored in the contextual factors that affect whether students perform well on tests of reading and math.
Charters in NYC may get better results than charters nationally because many or most have rich sponsors, hedge-fund managers or philanthropists with deep pockets who donate millions of dollars to their schools, enabling them to have smaller classes and more resources than the local public schools. (Tom Toch noted in an article
> in the December/January Kappan that the SEED charter school in Washington, D.C., which has been hailed as a national model, spends $35,000 per student yearly.)
Another important factor in the success of New York City's charters is that Chancellor Joel Klein has placed 70 of the city's 99 charters in public school space, subsidizing the charters' facilities, utilities, transportation, custodial services, food services, and whatever else is provided to the regular public school. This policy has ignited angry battles between the parents of charter school students and those at public schools that lose their computer room, their art room, their dance room, and classroom space to the favored charters. Parents and teachers in New York City public schools grumble about "academic apartheid" and "separate but equal" when they see the care and attention showered on charters located inside public schools that have long been neglected.
Then, too, most charters in New York City have lotteries for admission. The least informed parents never apply for a lottery, so the lottery acts as a screening mechanism. (Hoxby eliminated this factor by comparing students who won the lottery with students who lost it.) Thus, charters enroll few homeless students; there are some 50,000 homeless students in New York City's public schools, but only about 100 are enrolled in charters. When charters admit special education students, they tend to be those with the mildest disabilities because charters are not equipped to meet the needs of those with extreme disabilities. In addition, charters are able to "counsel out" students who are "not a good fit," who then return to the traditional public schools.
The United Federation of Teachers of New York City reported that charters serve less than 4 percent of English-language learners <http://www.uft.org/news/issues/uft_report-separate_and_unequal.pdf> , compared with a citywide average of 14 percent; that less than 10 percent of charter students require special education, compared with a citywide average of 16 percent; that charters enroll fewer Hispanic or immigrant students than the regular public schools; and that while they have the same proportion of students receiving "free and reduced-price lunch," they have about 10 percentage points fewer of students eligible for free lunch (that is, the poorest students). The gaps are even larger when charter schools are compared with their neighborhood public schools, rather than citywide averages.
As one considers studies like those of Hoxby and Raymond, it is important to bear in mind that students in charter schools and public schools are not on a level playing field. Those in charters attend school with small classes and other motivated students, while those in public schools attend schools in overcrowded classrooms with a full range of students, including those who left charters. Charters demonstrate that "peer effects" matter.
If charters are going to be the models for public education in the future, we may have to roll back many civil rights laws and court decisions that prevent schools from excluding or limiting certain types of students. Or, charter schools should be required to accept the same range of students who attend regular public schools. Or, in return for their unusual freedom, some of them might dedicate themselves to educating the neediest students instead of avoiding them.
With the Race to the Top, the Obama administration is pushing states to remove all limits on the number of charter schools. Is this a signal that the equity agenda of the past half-century is dead?
Diane
*The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books).
Mary-Ellen Deily
Editorial Director, Education Week Press
(301)280-3100 n Fax: (301) 280-3200
Editorial Projects in Education, Inc.
Home of Education Week, Teacher Sourcebook,
Digital Directions, EPE Research Center, Education Week Press,
edweek.org
http://www.edweek.org
Take a look: "The Last Word: The Best Commentary and Controversy in American Education ," co-published by Education Week Press and Jossey-Bass.
The Secrets of Charter School Success
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2010/01/the_secrets_of_charter_school.html
Dear Deborah,
In my new book, coming out in early March,* I devote a chapter to examining the research about choice from a historical perspective. Leave aside vouchers for now, and let's look at charters, which are all the rage among the movers and shakers, including President Obama, Secretary Duncan, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and business leaders.
The charter idea was born in 1988, when two men—unknown to one another—converged on the idea. One was an education professor in Massachusetts named Ray Budde. The other was Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Both saw charter schools as a sort of R&D program to help public education. Neither saw charters as competition for public schools. They thought that the lessons learned from charters would help to solve difficult problems of curriculum and instruction, while shedding light on issues of organization and student motivation.
As we both know, the founders' vision has been replaced by a totally different conception of charters. Now they are the leading edge of an effort to replace public schools and to oust teachers' unions. Knowledgeable insiders have told me that more than 90 percent—possibly 98 percent—of the nation's 5,000 charters do not have unions. Most are staffed by young teachers who work 50-60 hours a week and burn out after a few years.
There have been many research studies about charters and there will, of course, be more as they expand in number. Last fall, a study by Caroline Hoxby <http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/09/22/05charter.h29.html?tkn=PNOFL6O3EutDM1KkM0LoKCxpsktYYm1ClUdV> captured the media's attention by claiming that students who spent nine years in a New York City charter school would close the achievement gap between those in the poorest and the wealthiest districts. Now comes another New York City charter study, this one by Margaret Raymond of CREDO at Stanford University. Last spring, CREDO released a national study
But now Raymond has produced a study of NYC charters <http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/NYC%202009%20_CREDO.pdf> that presents a far brighter picture than her national study. In contrast to Hoxby's NYC study, which seemed to suggest that any charter school was superior to any public school, Raymond's study is positive, but nuanced. She matched students in charter schools with students in traditional public schools by gender, grade, race/ethnicity, free-reduced price lunch status (a proxy for poverty), prior year test score, grade repeater, special-education status, and English-language learner. Raymond found that 51 percent of NYC charters produced significant gains in math, but only 29 percent did so in reading.
Since Raymond's 2009 national charter study was so bleak, charter advocates pounced on the NYC findings and celebrated. But a closer look should moderate the cheering.
Aside from the fact that Raymond's study showed that 49 percent of charter schools produced no significant gains in math, and 71 percent produced no significant gains in reading, she also reported that students who were in special education or who were English-language learners experienced no significant gains or losses in charters. She also found that charter students who had been retained in grade made no gains in reading and were outperformed in math by their peers in traditional public schools.
Neither Hoxby nor Raymond—both brilliant economists and leaders in their field—factored in the contextual factors that affect whether students perform well on tests of reading and math.
Charters in NYC may get better results than charters nationally because many or most have rich sponsors, hedge-fund managers or philanthropists with deep pockets who donate millions of dollars to their schools, enabling them to have smaller classes and more resources than the local public schools. (Tom Toch noted in an article
> in the December/January Kappan that the SEED charter school in Washington, D.C., which has been hailed as a national model, spends $35,000 per student yearly.)
Another important factor in the success of New York City's charters is that Chancellor Joel Klein has placed 70 of the city's 99 charters in public school space, subsidizing the charters' facilities, utilities, transportation, custodial services, food services, and whatever else is provided to the regular public school. This policy has ignited angry battles between the parents of charter school students and those at public schools that lose their computer room, their art room, their dance room, and classroom space to the favored charters. Parents and teachers in New York City public schools grumble about "academic apartheid" and "separate but equal" when they see the care and attention showered on charters located inside public schools that have long been neglected.
Then, too, most charters in New York City have lotteries for admission. The least informed parents never apply for a lottery, so the lottery acts as a screening mechanism. (Hoxby eliminated this factor by comparing students who won the lottery with students who lost it.) Thus, charters enroll few homeless students; there are some 50,000 homeless students in New York City's public schools, but only about 100 are enrolled in charters. When charters admit special education students, they tend to be those with the mildest disabilities because charters are not equipped to meet the needs of those with extreme disabilities. In addition, charters are able to "counsel out" students who are "not a good fit," who then return to the traditional public schools.
The United Federation of Teachers of New York City reported that charters serve less than 4 percent of English-language learners <http://www.uft.org/news/issues/uft_report-separate_and_unequal.pdf> , compared with a citywide average of 14 percent; that less than 10 percent of charter students require special education, compared with a citywide average of 16 percent; that charters enroll fewer Hispanic or immigrant students than the regular public schools; and that while they have the same proportion of students receiving "free and reduced-price lunch," they have about 10 percentage points fewer of students eligible for free lunch (that is, the poorest students). The gaps are even larger when charter schools are compared with their neighborhood public schools, rather than citywide averages.
As one considers studies like those of Hoxby and Raymond, it is important to bear in mind that students in charter schools and public schools are not on a level playing field. Those in charters attend school with small classes and other motivated students, while those in public schools attend schools in overcrowded classrooms with a full range of students, including those who left charters. Charters demonstrate that "peer effects" matter.
If charters are going to be the models for public education in the future, we may have to roll back many civil rights laws and court decisions that prevent schools from excluding or limiting certain types of students. Or, charter schools should be required to accept the same range of students who attend regular public schools. Or, in return for their unusual freedom, some of them might dedicate themselves to educating the neediest students instead of avoiding them.
With the Race to the Top, the Obama administration is pushing states to remove all limits on the number of charter schools. Is this a signal that the equity agenda of the past half-century is dead?
Diane
*The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books).
Mary-Ellen Deily
Editorial Director, Education Week Press
(301)280-3100 n Fax: (301) 280-3200
Editorial Projects in Education, Inc.
Home of Education Week, Teacher Sourcebook,
Digital Directions, EPE Research Center, Education Week Press,
edweek.org
http://www.edweek.org
Take a look: "The Last Word: The Best Commentary and Controversy in American Education
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