School performance: are we asking the right questions?

Much ink has been spilled on school performance, but are we asking the right questions?

Most of it is directed to de facto segregation.  That is, schools with mostly minority students perform worse than schools with mostly white students.  But is that right question?

I think a better question is what is the balance of performers vs. disruptors.

I have been in public schools with majority white and I’ve been in schools with a big mix of students.  In both kinds of schools I have found performers of all kinds of backgrounds and disruptors of all kinds of backgrounds.  The success of the schools depends more on how the students and staff encourage the performers and minimize the impact of the disrupters.

If you move the performers to “better schools” will you deprive some of the remaining students of the “protection” and role models of the performers?

Race - the unenlightened Enlightenment

I’m cleaning out my attic of old Outlook messages.  One is a link to “The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and Ours”, Justin E. H. Smith, New York Times, 2013-02-10.

My note with it is “This is something for both racists and unfair-campaigners to think about.”

The basic thrust of this article is that it is environment that determines achievement and not an artificial construct such as “race”.

Interestingly, the Enlightenment was bracketed by the likes of Anton Wilhelm Amo and Alexandre Dumas, both famed writers with ancestors in Africa.

The idiocy of race and nationality

Several weeks ago a Duluth Fox news director caused quite a stir when he put on Facebook a derogatory, racist remark about somebody that was near his house.  I don't remember if he resigned or was fired.  He then said that his great-grandfather's great-grandfather was Indian or some such chain, and he claims he is Indian too.  He even was admitted into an Indian journalists' group.

Come on!  Just because you had an ancestor of a certain origin doesn't make you one of the group the ancestor belonged to.  Many people even one generation removed from some place have none of the language or culture of where their parents came from.

My surname is Irish, but I can find no ancestor that lived in Ireland.  The best I can tell is that my great-great-great grandfather, Vincent Magree, was probably born in Maryland.  I am assuming that Magree is Irish because several Australians named Magree trace their ancestry back to Kilkenny.

I have great-grandparents who were born in England and Germany.  I consider myself neither English or German.  When I was in England and Ireland, I was called a Yank.  When I was in Germany, I was called Amerikaner.  Some of my ancestors born in what was then Germany may have had Polish ancestors.  I do not consider myself Polish.

I consider myself an American because I was born in the U.S., had almost all of my education in the U.S., and except for some trips to Canada, never went outside the U.S. until I was 30.

So, if some ancestor long, long ago was from a certain group and some of that person's descendants claim they belong to that group, shouldn't we consider President Barack Obama a white man.  His mother was a white American and a long list of her ancestors were white.  Given the reasoning for people to claim Indian inheritance, then we can also say that Obama is white.

We're born here; we're Americans.  End of story.

What nationality are you? An irrelevant question!

Asking "What nationality are you" seems to be an American social game.  But is it really a relevant question?  When people ask me this, I answer, "I'm American."  How can I be anything else?

Three of my grandparents were born in the U.S. and one in a part of Germany now in Poland.  I hardly knew my German-born grandmother when I was growing up.  I certainly was not German when I went to Germany.

Four of my great-grandparents were born in Germany.  See above.  I never met any of them.  Three of my great-grandparents were born in England.  I only knew one of my great-grandmothers and about the only English custom observed when we visited her was drinking tea, with Carnation milk!  I certainly was not English when I went to England.

One of my great-grandfathers, the one with the "Irish" name, was born in Williamsburgh, New York, now a neighborhood of Brooklyn.  I never knew him, and I only drove through Brooklyn to get to JFK.  I doubt anybody anywhere would consider me a Brooklynite.

I've known several people who've called themselves Swedish or Italian, but I bet I've spent more time in those countries and know more of both languages than many of these people's parents.  Not all by any means, but enough to wonder why these people call themselves Swedish or Italian rather than Americans.

Ironically, Americans often consider Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander as nationalities.  But these countries are populated with people from all over the world, just like the United States.

Even more ironically, many of the "nationalities" represent nation-states that are themselves made of people with ancestors outside the borders of the nation states.  Consider the often beleaguered nation Poland.  Most of the people there have German, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Latvian, and other ancestors.  The French skier, Jean-Claude Killey's grandfather was a Kelly.  And what nationality is the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy?  According to American custom he is Hungarian-Greek-Jewish-Spanish-…  Are there any French "birthers" demanding to see Sarkozy's birth certificate?