Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Monday, July 06, 2015

The English Discover Brown v Board

The Guardian reports on a discovery about English schools:
The education of white pupils is being hampered by increased school segregation on racial grounds, according to analysis by an influential think tank.

A study by Demos pointed out that many schools outside Britain’s big cities are becoming more segregated than the communities they serve.

Real quick note here. How does a country in which whites are the native population that is not a "colonial nation of immigrants" have a problem of segregation? And if it does have such a problem, it would seem to me that it is a problem of their own making. It would seem to me that the government ought not have let in so many non-English as to enable such a thing to happen in the first place.
Trevor Phillips, the chairman of Demos’s mapping integration project and former head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), warned this is dividing society and holding back white children who tend to do better when taught in racially mixed schools.
This reminds me of the Brown V Board decision but in reverse. In Brown V. Board it was argued that black children, in the absence of white children failed to perform because their self-esteem and academic performance depended on being in proximity with white students. Anyone who actually believes that also believes that black students (people) are inferior to whites (and others). What is most striking about this report is that it is using the reverse logic. Whites, who heretofore were considered The Master Race now suffers from lack of contact with his "inferiors" who are actually his inferiors. I know..very confusing.
Launching the report on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Phillips said: “To some extent, in London the clever thing for smart middle-class parents to do is to look for schools which have substantial numbers of Indian heritage children, because the statistics say that their child will benefit from sitting in the same class as those motivated kids.”
Indians you say?
He claimed that greater racial integration in schools would improve community cohesion and increase the educational attainment of ethnic groups, such as white children, who are currently falling behind.
Although studies have actually shown that non-homogenous communities actually have less cohesion. But never mind that. Why are whites (the natives of England) falling behind in education to people who are not natives of the country? I would think that issue would be most alarming.
“White children are the ones who are doing least well. Those white children who are in schools where there are a lot of high-performing minorities tend to do better. There is something about sitting in class with those kids that improves performance ... We are trying to prepare children for a diverse world – schools should reflect that.”
Yup. Someone read Brown v. Board. Odd thing about this claim is that in the US where the same claim was made, when you look at the broader data, the levels of academic achievement between groups is consistent regardless of school types. Asians are at the top, followed by whites with blacks usually trailing way behind.

It is interesting that there is no mention of black students.