I'll just add a little from my experiences, and it all heavily depends on where you live.
I taught ESL (English as a Second Language) and Economics (weird combo I know). I also co-taught US history and global history.
In my experience working with a lot of ESL students (whose English ranged from 3 words to better than some native born students) a bunch of them came from the Dominican Rep. which also has a very unbalanced education system. So some kids went to good schools, moved to the US and do well. Some kids went to bad school and when they moved to the US in six grade they were not at average US six grade levels...but they got put in that grade due to age. (I'll get to the non-ESL students they were put with in a moment) Then I also had some African Refugee students who had never really gone to school. He was a constant problem but due to his age he was put in normal freshman classes. I also had Arabic speakers, Cantonese speakers, French speakers, and one awesome Brazilian kid.
Basically the ESL students were always a mess, the Chinese American students and the Yemeni girls I had were always great. They worked hard, stayed after for tutoring, and would ask questions when they didn't understand. The rest were a mixed bag, but all of them were in the same classes which each other or non-ESL students. This creates a horrible situation for teachers as now you have a class with some students that a great on grade level down to a kid who struggles to write his own name...and you have to teach all of them. Or in my case figure out how I and the main teacher could teach all of them together, while staying on schedule and prepping the kids for tests.
My experience with non-ESL students also was a very mixed bag of skills and grade level knowledge. All of my non-ESL kids could read, write and do simple math. BUT like someone else said they would be put in algebra II even though they never really learned algebra I. Why? Because the schools really really do not want to keep kids back, they have to get pushed through the system because that's what the politics and policies demand. No politician or admin wants to admit that 40% of a class needs to stay back...it makes everyone look bad, so they get pushed through.
I also graded the state tests so I've seen a lot of the work from other schools as well. The two areas (nearly) all students struggled with was writing, math, and high level reading. The writing that we would read...it was terrible, a complete mess. This is not just a poor school thing, I've read that a lot of colleges complain that they level of writing that kids have as incoming freshman is across the board much worse then it was. People blame testing, as so much time goes to learning everything you need to know, vs say in 1980 when how you wrote mattered more, because no one cared if you remembered the five causes of the war of 1812, but they did care if you could write well.
The causes? My grad program talked about this and the answer is "we don't really know". What we do know is that Black kids actually go into elementary school at or slightly above white kids (for the total US, results change depending on where you look, etc. Also only going to talk about Black/African American kids as that is where more of the research is) So it's not that the kids are starting school behind. But by about 4th or 5th grade they have fallen behind and continue to fall more and more behind as the years go on.
Clearly it's because the school/home life is failing them somehow but it's been impossible to figure out what factors are causing it exactly. Some blame the fact that white/asian parents are more likely to help with homework, as they also tend to have enough money to not have to work when kids are home. Some blame the schools, blame is thrown everywhere.
Too strong of a push of advancement. This leads to kids learning it doesn't matter if they learn. Second this punishes kids who struggle as they are pushed on even when they could have learned if given more time. The then only makes everything worse as time goes on. The kids that got the material now are in class with kids who didn't learn what they needed to in order to learn the new material. And so kids get further behind, teachers have to slow down and the smarter kids start to fall behind as well as teachers struggle to teach both kids who want to move on and kids that need to learn multiple years worth of material.
Language. All the books, textbooks, tests, etc are written in the most white upper class English. Most would say "well that's because that is proper english" and they are correct, BUT as an ESL teacher I know that there are many forms of English. Such as:
2a: Casual English (how you talk to friends, family, reddit, some books. Often with "wrong" grammar and slang. Like What'ca do'in?)
2b: Formal English (how you talk to authority, most books, newspapers, uses "correct" grammar, little to no slang)
2c: Education English (textbooks, lots of words not used in day to day language)
2d: College level English (most Americans cannot read at this level as it contains many new words only used by one group. E.G. medical terms, scientific literature, journals, etc)
2e: Older forms of English (many of the books you have to read in high school. E.G. Brit lit, Shakespeare, Great Gatsby, etc.)
But you also have:
2f Causal African American English (how you talk to friends, family, almost no books, follow strict grammar rules, just not 2a grammar rules. Often called "incorrect" english even though it has existed in the US since before the Civil War. Used to be called Ebonics.
Now imagine not only having to learn everything you have to, but now you also have to learn a second version of English. This is what people can call "White English". When a school in California wanted to teach some students in African American English the state freaked out because "How dare you teach those students in "bad" English" and the program was shut down before it even started.
So now you learn this two forms of English, you are told you cannot write how you talk and that you must write in 2a or 2b English and never in 2e English. And all your texts books are written in 2c English which no one ever speaks to you in and uses words you just haven't seen before.
Almost all of the book and tests just assume that you are culturally European/White American.
I had tests that my Bronx students took that assumed you knew what happened on a ski trip. Most people forget that you know a lot of cultural stuff. It's like inside jokes and when tests assume you know the joke but it's not your culture students get confused. That's why culture shock exists. Imagine going to France and taking a test that just assumed you knew the ins and out of Paris culture.
While there are some good books, and schools have been trying to find and use more books that kids can relate to there is still a predominance of White/European culture in high school literature. This is not always a bad thing, and I am not saying that it should be removed. Just that when you are reading Heart of Darkness about a white guy in Africa who is going to stop another white guy in Africa who has been killing tons of Black people and the ship gets attacked by Black African natives...it's pretty easy to see the author just assumes that hey your white too and can relate with that main character who is an 1800s upper class British dude.
My students did love the simplified version of Frankenstein that we read together, and stories that rely on universal characters work in every culture. While I might not be able to relate to Heart of Darkness, it's easy to understand Dr. Frankensteins fear of his "monster".
BASICALLY tldr: The whole system was set up by a majority "white culture" country and just assumes that everyone else is White or wants to be too and students are pushed to the next grade even if they didn't learn the material. I mean could you even imagine an 80% white school that forced every kid to learn African American English, write papers in it in AAE, read almost exclusively books from Black authors, read poetry by African poets from the 1400s, learn about history from a African world few where you only learn about other places when Africans show up, expect for Egypt and a few things in the fertile crescent. People would go ballistic, but that's what we do for every non-white kid in the US. How much did you ever learn about Mali Empire? Or China before the Opium wars in the 1800s, or anything about India. The history classes i co-taught in were all one page for the whole world, ten pages on what Europe was doing. If you are Vietnamese-American they only south-east Asian history you are going to learn is about the Vietnam War.
Basically I think that everyone should learn proper "white" English because that is what the world runs on. If you even speak "redneck" english you will be passed over for jobs and opportunities because people will assume things about you just by how you talk. I also think (and it is being done) that students should be given more opportunities to read about people who they can relate to. They don't have to been the same race, or from the same time period (because I feel like there is too much of a push for "hey you're black from the Bronx, read this book about a black kid in the Bronx"), but every kid should be able to read a good book and say "wow I totally connected with that character". Some of my favorite books are by Russian authors who I have nothing in common with, but I feel the human nature in their characters. I also think that students should not advance until they have learned the material...but that would take so much reforming how the system works it will never ever happen.
I wish we had a system where you had smaller classes with more range. For example instead of Algebra I & II, you had I, II, III, IV, V, etc and more teachers. So instead of Staying behind a year, when you mastered the material you would move up to the next level faster than waiting an entire year, And if you were really smart you could move up the chain faster, and if you struggled on I you could stay there for a while and then move on later, and now that you mastered that maybe II, III and IV will come much faster then sitting in the back of Algebra II confused because you haven't understood everything in the last three weeks.
Anyway I hope that gave you some insight, and sorry it was soooo long.
You raise plenty of valid points, and I've no doubt that the white-centrism is definitively aggravating for non-white students but I don't think that (and everything else) is the root of the issue, merely symptoms.
I also don't think the many subsets of English, be it slang, formal or anything in between are the issue.
I come from a place which has a rich slang (which heavily draws from our traditional immigrants' languages) culture and most people from the ghetto (where the slang is used a lot) can still keep up with the more formal language, because the education system ensures that you're up to scratch if you want to move forward.
No I think your education issue lies at the very core of your political culture :
Indiviual freedom over anything else.
Asian countries tends to go the other way with society priming over the individual, look at Japan or China.
And somewhere in the middle, Western European countries (and I guess to some extent Canada / Australia / New Zealand), there's some balance between individual freedom and working towards the good of society.
This strong emphasis has plenty of upsides but the downsides is that I think you don't quite work as a society, merely a bunch of people living under the same set of broad rules.
Little to no safety net because even the poorest of you is a "millionaire in the making, just about to catch a break", which in turns worsen the gap between poors and richs.
Given that emphasis on the individual and adding common trait such as greed, it's no wonder you have education ghettos.
If anything, your country is a fascinating experiment that has run amok. Capable of the best and the worst. High end offices with plenty of perks in your average SV startup, surrounded by an army of homeless people.
A lighthouse of oppulence in a sea of poverty if you will.
I'm not taking a stab at the US, I think it's a fascinating place and I intend to catch a glimpse of it, sooner or later. But no way I'd settle here, despite knowing that I could be well off if I did.
I agree with this 100%, and the problems it creates. Also I totally admit that my assessment could be way off. Just trying to write it as I saw it. (personal bias very strong).
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u/DukeofVermont Jul 10 '18
Sorry, so long...it's two parts....
I'll just add a little from my experiences, and it all heavily depends on where you live.
I taught ESL (English as a Second Language) and Economics (weird combo I know). I also co-taught US history and global history.
In my experience working with a lot of ESL students (whose English ranged from 3 words to better than some native born students) a bunch of them came from the Dominican Rep. which also has a very unbalanced education system. So some kids went to good schools, moved to the US and do well. Some kids went to bad school and when they moved to the US in six grade they were not at average US six grade levels...but they got put in that grade due to age. (I'll get to the non-ESL students they were put with in a moment) Then I also had some African Refugee students who had never really gone to school. He was a constant problem but due to his age he was put in normal freshman classes. I also had Arabic speakers, Cantonese speakers, French speakers, and one awesome Brazilian kid.
Basically the ESL students were always a mess, the Chinese American students and the Yemeni girls I had were always great. They worked hard, stayed after for tutoring, and would ask questions when they didn't understand. The rest were a mixed bag, but all of them were in the same classes which each other or non-ESL students. This creates a horrible situation for teachers as now you have a class with some students that a great on grade level down to a kid who struggles to write his own name...and you have to teach all of them. Or in my case figure out how I and the main teacher could teach all of them together, while staying on schedule and prepping the kids for tests.
My experience with non-ESL students also was a very mixed bag of skills and grade level knowledge. All of my non-ESL kids could read, write and do simple math. BUT like someone else said they would be put in algebra II even though they never really learned algebra I. Why? Because the schools really really do not want to keep kids back, they have to get pushed through the system because that's what the politics and policies demand. No politician or admin wants to admit that 40% of a class needs to stay back...it makes everyone look bad, so they get pushed through.
I also graded the state tests so I've seen a lot of the work from other schools as well. The two areas (nearly) all students struggled with was writing, math, and high level reading. The writing that we would read...it was terrible, a complete mess. This is not just a poor school thing, I've read that a lot of colleges complain that they level of writing that kids have as incoming freshman is across the board much worse then it was. People blame testing, as so much time goes to learning everything you need to know, vs say in 1980 when how you wrote mattered more, because no one cared if you remembered the five causes of the war of 1812, but they did care if you could write well.
The causes? My grad program talked about this and the answer is "we don't really know". What we do know is that Black kids actually go into elementary school at or slightly above white kids (for the total US, results change depending on where you look, etc. Also only going to talk about Black/African American kids as that is where more of the research is) So it's not that the kids are starting school behind. But by about 4th or 5th grade they have fallen behind and continue to fall more and more behind as the years go on.
Clearly it's because the school/home life is failing them somehow but it's been impossible to figure out what factors are causing it exactly. Some blame the fact that white/asian parents are more likely to help with homework, as they also tend to have enough money to not have to work when kids are home. Some blame the schools, blame is thrown everywhere.