Berkeley High May Drop "White" Science Labs

[bijou]

On international science tests, American students perpetually lag behind their peers in other developed countries. A logical response might be to beef up science programs in government schools, but logic is hard to come by in skin-deep-only-diversity-obsessed bureaucracies.


One school seeks to do the opposite, and for the most insulting of reasons. Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students, proposes to eliminate before- and after-school science labs at Berkeley High School (BHS) and divert resources to narrowing the intractable racial academic achievement gap. According to the East Bay Express, an alternate parent representative on the council said "information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students," although black students take science classes. One teacher said she has 12 black male students in her Advanced Placement classes, and black and Hispanic students account for a third of her four environmental science classes.

BHS purportedly has the widest racial academic achievement gap in California, which the council deemed "unconscionable." Depriving students of science lab instruction because the labs benefit mostly white students apparently isn't unconscionable.  ...

http://townhall.com/columnists/LaShawnBarber/2009/12/31/berkeley_high_may_drop_white_science_labs?page=full&comments=true

Apart from the massive amount of stupid contained within this proposal, has it not occurred to BHS to wonder why the epicentre of liberalism does so badly in educating black and hispanic students?

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Why does Berkley hate Asian kids?

 

[NHSparky]

Gee, maybe because the black and Hispanic students don't take advantage of the opportunities offered as the same rate as white and Asian student?

[SVPete]

Keep in mind that the proposal is to eliminate optional supplemental labs, not the science classes. With that (possibly unnecessary) clarification, the race-baiting parents and educrats are asking the wrong question. They should be asking why ethnic minority students aren't taking the labs. Hands-on labs bridge the not tiny gap between textbooks and lectures and the real world. For example, in electronics, it's one thing to talk in the classroom about calculating voltages in circuits or theoretical ideal capacitors. It's something else altogether to try to measure the voltage across a 4.7M-Ohm resistor with a volt meter with a 10M-Ohm internal resistance or to use in a circuit a capacitor with a lousy temperature coefficient or an undesirably high internal series resistance.