Liberal racism in Berkeley: Cut h.s. science labs for “diversity’s” sake
Berkeley’s “progressive” educrats give us another perfect illustration of Diversity Uber Alles run amok. Because the government schools have failed to close the “racial achievement gap,” they’ve proposed cutting science labs and teaching staff from the high school curriculum because those resources benefit too many white students.
Via the East Bay Express (hat tip: Adam Baldwin):
Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.
The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley’s dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.
Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.
Science teachers were understandably horrified by the proposal. “The majority of the science department believes that this major policy decision affecting the entire student body, the faculty, and the community has been made without any notification, without a hearing,” said Mardi Sicular-Mertens, the senior member of Berkeley High School’s science department, at last week’s school board meeting.
Sincular-Mertens, who has taught science at BHS for 24 years, said the possible cuts will impact her black students as well. She says there are twelve African-American males in her AP classes and that her four environmental science classes are 17.5 percent African American and 13.9 percent Latino. “As teachers, we are greatly saddened at the thought of losing the opportunity to help all of our students master the skills they need to find satisfaction and success in their education,” she told the board.
Such are the wages of political correctness and social justice.
Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker notes:
Aside from the repulsive racism of this move, the broader issue to be considered is whether society is better-served by cutting down the achievers and investing in the stragglers — or whether everyone benefits from the achievements of those who apply themselves enough to excel. I have no hesitation in saying that I am in the latter camp. How does it benefit anyone to have an America made up of mediocre minds?
As a matter of simple justice, it makes no sense to favor those who do not adapt to the norms and expectations of schooling and persist in behaviors that lead to failure. Berkeley High’s worse-than-average performance among black and Latino students almost certainly has something to do with the ideology informing its approach to racial problems. Teaching people that they are victims does nothing to encourage excellence. But rather than reconsider its failing efforts, Berkeley High is doubling the dosage of a medicine that isn’t working, and which carries bad side effects.
If the Berkeley public schools go ahead with this plan, they deserve condemnation and ridicule on a national scale.
While the Obama administration holds a “Race to the Top” education charade, the racial parity enforcers of the Left push academic achievers of all coloros to the bottom for diversity’s sake.
See what others have said
Note from Michelle: This section is for comments from michellemalkin.com's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that I agree with or endorse any particular comment just because I let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with my terms of use may lose his or her posting privilege.
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
 |
High school fined $15,000 for… selling soda pop during lunch
May 19, 2012 01:29 PM by Doug Powers
101 Comments
1997 Fordham Law Review article: Elizabeth Warren was Harvard’s ‘first woman of color’
May 15, 2012 11:38 PM by Doug Powers
83 Comments
The latest green energy experiment to receive taxpayer dollars is…
April 25, 2012 03:28 PM by Doug Powers
36 Comments
Obama asks for an amen from students racking up loan debt
April 24, 2012 04:51 PM by Doug Powers
74 Comments
Where’s the DOJ? Twitter lynch mob thirsts for Zimmerman’s blood
April 23, 2012 10:58 AM by Michelle Malkin
93 CommentsEnvironmental Protection Agency fines school bus contractor almost $500,000 for ‘excessive idling’
April 11, 2012 04:35 PM by Doug Powers
66 Comments
WaPo: Florida special prosecutor to charge George Zimmerman; Update: 2nd degree murder
April 11, 2012 02:28 PM by Doug Powers
302 CommentsDon’t do business with progressive appeasers
April 11, 2012 09:24 AM by Michelle Malkin
294 CommentsMediaTakeout.com embarrasses itself in attempt to paint me as a raaaaacist
April 10, 2012 08:42 PM by Michelle Malkin
65 Comments
Categories: Berkeley,Education,Race relations
Nice Deb
» The Organized Left Now Stalking RomneyNice Deb
» Uncovered Ad Shows Obama Appeared At 1996 Event Hosted By Democratic Socialists of AmericaNice Deb
» Uncovered Ad Shows Obama Appeared At 1996 Event Hosted By Democratic Socialists of AmericaNewsBusters.org
» Reuters's Freeland: 'Anorexic' Americans Think Tax Bite Too Heavy When In Fact It's Dangerously Thin
Unbelieveable.
Our immigration policies are similar – keep out the PhDs, heavily import gardeners.
what happened to the requirement that everyone must take science classes???
Science?? We don’t need no stinkon Science!!
Dangerous America-hating idiots – once again demanding, and screaming for, more gasoline to be poured on the fire that they themselves started.
The danger with an educated citizenry is it becomes harder to find stooges to buy into Man-made Global Warming and other science myths that live off your tax money.
Too bad there is not a HS class on race-baiting extortionism to cut, you know, for diversity’s sake!
I wonder if those five science teachers whose jobs are going to be eliminated were, at one time, Berkeley leftists. They may be re-thinking their politics.
Who needs to study science when you can attend the Church of Gore. What Berkeley wants is to produce more Democrat voters. It’s a sewer teeming with parasites.
I’m no fan of Kurt Vonnegut but….Harrison Bergeron.
Now you know why I kept all my old science and math texts! My daughter will not be hobbled by politically correct “science” like the AGW fraud.
She will be taught critical thinking, and be head and shoulders above her “peers”.
Just another nail in the exceptionalism of America. The enemy within…
these people need to see Mike Judge’s movie Idiocracy. It’s a stupid movie, but the point is that our society devolves into a stupid mess because intelligence is not rewarded. Stupidity ends up prevailing. Seems like removing science from the classrooms is a good first step towards that reality.
Another reason to home school your kids in CA. Gads, what are they going to add instead of science? I doubt it is math, history, social science, or anything else that might help someone get a job or get into a college. What in the world are kids being taught in school now? Little or nothing it seems.
L
Michelle,
You should prolly fix that first sentence.
Makes you wonder what they’re smoking at Berkeley. I can imagine Cheech and Chong sitting at this Council; Cheech says: Man lets get rid of science classes because my cousin got an F. Chong goes: Science is cool man. Cheech: Yeah, lets go score some weed. Everyone at the table votes unanimously. The next morning: What the heck did we vote for?
California Red, I am living that movie every day in NYC. Idiocracy is already here.
There are two ways to close the achievement gap. You can either bring those on the bottom up, or you can cut those on the top down. The Berkeley educrats have demonstrated that they are incapable of doing the former, so it is no surprise they are going to try the latter.
Once all students, of whatever ethnicity, score below the state average, they will have at last achieved their goal of equality.
Except that every parent with two nickels to rub together will have long since pulled their children out of the Berkeley school system, allowing these students to continue to succeed… But they’ll come up with a plan for that, soon enough…
“Makes you wonder what they’re smoking at Berkeley.”
I wish I could say it was something. The sad and disturbing news is they are smoking nothing. You see IF they were smoking something they could stop smoking it and there’d be a chance the way the are thinking would clear and they’d see how screwed up their world view is.
In other words we could have some hope they’d wake up.
They aren’t smoking anything. These kinds of actions are evidence of the way they think and see the world and its not going to change.
Its why keeping them out of power is so important.
Expect cuts any second now…
Anyone still living in California should do one thing……MOVE OUT NOW!!!!!!
Closing science labs helps keep the masses ignorant. It also frees up assets to teach such courses as “The Greatest Liberal Presidents Alive Today”, or perhaps “Socialism, Progressivism and Communism: Which is More Perfect”?
I guess there are no Asian students in Berkeley. They tend to REALLY raise the curve.
Perhaps they should just let someone steal the bar, rather than keep lowering it.
I should also add, don’t come to NC. Go to Washington State, Oregon, Nevada, wherever, just don’t come to NC. You already screwed up one state.
I was under the impression, that most colleges require science credits to get in?
dumbing down education to the lowest common denominator. don’t remove the troublemakers, don’t hold back the stupid and lazy, IGNORE THE GOOD AND SMART KIDS SO THEY TOO CAN FAIL IN LIFE!
The wrong ones are leaving, that’s the problem.
First Kitsap county and the area north of Seattle, and now the Dallas-Fort Worth (know locally as “Foat Wuth”) and Houston. Practically the whole South Bay area in California has moved to Texas, and now the liberal infection is spreading to Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Amarillo…….
Can you believe that Oklahoma City now has a “gay section?” When I lived there (back when I had hair on my head and gas was less than 50 cents/gallon) your hair had better not touch your ears or eyebrows. Girls wouldn’t have sex with you unless you went to the same church.
Unbelievable. Let’s continue to drag kids to the lowest denominator, and most ignorant students in the free world, while welcoming Chinese domination.
They need to take the science labs away or else some of the kids may figure out that global warming is a farse and evolution is only a theory.
Cook the meat to an internal temperature of 155 degrees F before flipping it.
It’s liberal racist logic. Make the white kids fail so the black and latino kids feel equal.
They would have you believe the classes are segregated. They want you to think the best teachers and resources are only used on the white kids. Nobody wants to say it but the reason a kid fails usually has more to do with what is going on at home than what is going on in the class.
Aloha, not quite.
The kids are taught that they have been victimized by the evil white man. They are taught that they deserve to be taken care of by the government. They are taught to be slaves.
Old style science and math books go for a premium at the used book store here. My daughters and daughter in law buy their text books from a Home School co-op. There are several.
I guess Berkley teachers tutoring students and helping them with math and science is out of the question. Odd how when edukators talk of ‘minorty’ students the Japanese, Chinese and Asian Indians become white? Is that what they mean by colorblind?
Once again, you have summarized the argument to its lowest common denominator. Calvin Coolidge would be proud.
Is there a “Calvin” or something I can take home?
Heh. Liberal racism in Berkeley. Imagine that!
And I’ll bet that this school is pumping out failure at several times the price that a private school produces success.
In a sane world, this gov’t school would be out of business by now.
I disagree. 155 degrees F might require some thought. I think the LCD is:
“Would you like fries with that?”
Is it okay if Brooke Shields is wearing it?
Not only ok, but heavily encouraged.
It benefits Democrats.
The school board in my town has rejected Race to the Top. Too much federal control and it infects good schools with bad students.
Science is racist…it has to go.
Sure, maybe back in the eighties. Now, it’s:
Bing means flip the burgers.
Beep means fries are done.
Sorry to be O/T, but have y’all heard Sarah is going to be an analyst on Fox news? She has signed a multi-year deal per HA. I AM so happy, you go girl!
L
Not going to ask how you know this!
Wow,
Change Science to Basketball, and white to black and see how far that would go.
Repeat after me. Racism is bad.
Enjoy it while they still let us eat burgers.
Before long it will all be soy-burgers and yogurt shakes.
Yechh!
No, No, No! We here in Oregon have already reached our quota of transplanted Californians and we don’t want or need anymore. Californians need to stay put and figure out how to clean up their own state.
But are they light-skinned, and do they use the Negro dialect?
No, you deserve a Nobel Peace Prize!
Q: How many Californians does it take to screw in a light-bulb?
A: 31. One to insert and twist the bulb, with 30 to hold hands and “share” the experience, relating to the meta-physical oneness of it all.
Hnagfire, don’t worry so much about soy products. Soon we will all eat Soylent Green wafers. Can you say Baaaaaa?
More so than the CinC. (Communist-in- Chief)
Is Brooke Shields still part of the deal?
California doesn’t need any science teachers. Silicon Valley is an old concept anyway.
Future Nobel prize winner:
“How to cook man.”
Sorry, all I’ve got is a Foster Brooks. Will that work?
Why not stop teaching altogether, that ought to close the “racial achievement gap”.
Dad: What’s this EF on your report card son?
Son: It’s kewl! That stands for ‘Epic Fail!’ The whole class got one, so now we get to go on a field trip! We get a choice of either Museum of Science or watch some kids play street bsketball!
Is that Brooke Shields behind those Foster Grants?
I know…I’m dating myself.
Sorry vcallaway, I didn’t mean to steal from your thought bubble.
I wonder what Benjamin Bannekar, Thomas L. Jennings, Percy L. Julian and many more would think of this? We are ruled by buffoons!
They had better not be teaching Ebonics or there will be hell to pay – or maybe not.
Sorry, my bad.
It’s a six pack of Foster’s and a picture of Brooke Burke.
Not quite the same, I’d prefer some woman off the street
“As honorary chairman of the welcoming committee, it’s my privilege to present a laurel and hearty handshake to our new… AlohaGuy”
LOL. Typical reaction from liberals. “Look, whites excel in this course or activity, therefore, it’s racccissssst”. What’s next, mathematics? Heck, why don’t we jsut do away with the 3 R’s and just have athletics. Surely, that would appease.
…there goes the chess club…
This is degenerating into a ‘Crabs in a bucket’ scenario.
I’ve posted this comment elsewhere, but it bears repeating. I work in Berkeley and my leftie, activist coworkers who have kids attending Berkeley High are all blaming this situation on Bush and No Child Left Behind. According to them, the Berkeley School District would rather jettison the science program than be penalized under NCLB for the racial disparities.
Well, if BHS just put a “tax” on test scores over 80% they could redistribute the “wealth of correct answers” to students who were testing below average. Then, everyone could get a passing grade until the A students stopped studying, that is…
I wonder how many kids at BHS know who “John Galt” is…
I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that 50% of the “white” science students are actually Asian.
You know the people who came to this country with not only a different language but with completely different writing notation, but despite those basic disadvantages are out achieving the white and black Americans who grew up here.
How dare they! /sarc
That’s the complaint I keep repeating to my doctor, dentist and attorney! And all three are women to boot!
Pardon my ignorance – what’s an alternate parent?
Just going by titles, it probably wouldn’t be all that bad to get rid of the “environmental science” classes and get back to chemistry, physics, biology and geology. “Environmental science” sounds a little too….. green.
I have never, ever seen anyone abuse poor, un-educated Blacks…
…like a Black SgtMajor drill instructor.
Good one!
Deserves a rimshot!
A parent from the Castro district?
Berkeley HS
Look Here – oops. African American Studies!!!
Uh-oh. Their rowing Crew is pretty light in color. They gotta go.
Do’t look now but their Cross Country team is pale.
UHHHHH – holy crap. Take a look at their mountain bike team!
Home school people! That way every class benefits every student.
Do you realize that the secret to California’s budget crisis is to defund their public education system? Vouchers for private schools only. Removes yet another Leftist weapon/beachhead against America.
Caddo Parish, Louisiana, has decided to opt out of the “Race to the Top”.
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20100111/NEWS01/100111019/1060/NEWS01
Opting out has to begin somewhere.
What’s the big problem? These kids will just get their science from Al Gore, Richard Dawkins, et.al. You know, stories without any science or scientific proof.
How bad can this be?
/sarc
It’s a shame, but one of the few useful functions of The Department of Education in DC would be to threaten these Trogs with loss of Federal Funding.
Now Soap, not so fast. Only if they’re winning!
Great. Now you want them to have no appreciation for diversity and sit around getting fat.
You heartless bastard!
We can surely thank Tiger Woods for doubling the number of famous Black yachtsmen.
As I get older, I can’t seem to care anymore. What we used, worked. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You younger people screwed it up, you fix it. Reap what you sow.
Done.
Now, now guys. I am just pointing out how Bush is the cause of their lack of diversity!
How could we have forgeotten this obvious fact?
Ohhhh. OK then.
Crew, cross country and the mountain bike team may be pale but I bet that is balanced out by the rappers, hookers and pimps; parity as it were.
But this is California, nobody needs to work, just ask Arnold. Worse comes to worse there is Bama’s stash.
Unsustainable ideology is what killed the Soviet Union. We simply need to go back to having the states provide EVERYTHING not specified by the enumerated powers. Those states with unsustainable ideologies will fail and the rest will excel. Self-regulation works in all things, not just a free-market economy. Everywhere things are failing it can be traced back to meddling by politicians.
Q: What’s is an alternative parent.
A: It is that creepy looking dude without kids, who hangs around the play ground. I guess he represents the child molesters and drug dealers.
I love the kids at Berkeley HS. I pray they all succeed – every last light green one of them!
Don’t be outraged yet. This is minor. Wait until the rest of us are TOLD that we are bailing out California. Outrage will then be more than appropriate.
I tend to shy away from absolutes, because that is having-to-prove-a-negative territory.
That is, a troll, finding the single exception out of the rule of 500 examples, will mindnumbingly threadjack, using that exception.
Having said that, I “essentially”, “virtually” 100% agree with your comment
Socialist and socialist-lite politicans have screwed up so many things – have started so many fires;
then, they brazenly, incredibly, arrogantly claim that only they have the solution(s) to the problem(s) that they created in the first place…and their solution for everything is to pour even more gasoline onto the fire(s)/problem(s).
Dangerous idiots….
I concur heartily, Granite. (Not that you need my Roger.)
Something else the Socialists have done is push me farther to the Right than I would probably be if not for the tyranny of the Left.
Not sure how to explain it, but I would most likely be more moderate if I weren’t pushed into a corner.
that it’s ok to do it in the butt if you put on a condom.
OK people, if we are going to do this, LETS’S DO IT RIGHT!!!!!!
Forget cutting labs. That’s for idiots. Why don’t we just cut out the frontal lobe of white and asian students so the achievement gap can be permanently closed. This way all students: black, white, asian and hispanic will be on an even playing field.
Or… lets just handicap tests for minorities against those students that actually give a chit about school and study their brains out..you know like we do in golf!! If you are white or asian, you automatically start with zero, but can go no higher than 75, and if you are black or hispanic, your lowest score is automatically a 65.
Or…. lets have a moratorium on hiring of whites and asians, for ..hmmm… 5 years! The only people that can be hired in any job, private or public sector, are blacks and hispanics, and at no less than $20 an hour. How’s that for social justice?
And while we are at it, the living conditions of minorities are not up to snuff. From now on, through a doctrine we shall now call “racial eminent domain”, all families (except blacks and hispanics) earning in excess of $75,000 and owning a home, shall immediately be evicted, and families from ghettos shall be able to move in right away. The evicted families shall be moved to replace the families from the ghettos.
Well that should get us started. No time for weak-kneed half measures, that will just slow us down.
Instead of encouraging people to move out of that wretched state, let’s just fence it off and let it go it’s own way.
Remember we are trying to get away from the “too big to fail” mentality.
Tell me again which side of the aisle is racist. I’m a slow learner.
I think I know what you mean.
We are locked in an existential struggle for the survival of our nation / society / culture…hell, even for our own survival, and for that of civilization itself.
There is no place for “moderation” when one’s opponent is trying to kill one, destroy one, destroy one’s culture, etc, etc.
One can be moderate (e.g., spend $65.00) when the point of difference is about whether to spend $50.00 (cheap) or spend $80.00 (extravagant) on something (for example’s sake – work with me here!).
One can compromise and “meet halfway” in an example such as that above, where the two sides have the same worldview, are of the same kind (i.e., are qualitatively the same), and differ slightly, quantitatively, a bit, only in degree.
However, when one’s opponent sees everything in an irreconcilably different, 180-degree opposite, qualitatively different way from one, that is, different in kind; there is no possibility of compromise; there is, in that instance, no place for a “moderate”.
Does one want to have one’s nation / society / culture only “moderately” destroyed?
Does one want individual, private enterpise and capitalism only “moderately” destroyed?
Does one want civilization only “moderately” destroyed?
Does one want to be only “moderately” killed?
I do not believe compromise nor “moderation” is possible with such opponents – foreign and domestic – as traditionalist Americans are now confronted with.
March to the beat of the slowest drummer. I guess we won’t be seeing many more future doctors or scientists or engineers etc. from BHS huh?
Great legacy… /sarc