Affirmative Action, Version 3.9

Living here in Texas, being of Hispanic descent, I get to see a microcosm of Affirmative Action up close and personal. I hate it. All Affirmative Action has managed to do is further divide Americans into categories: those who ”need help to succeed” because they are an accepted minority, and those who don’t, because they are not. So, I was not completely surprised to see this pop up in my great state:

 Texas Group Seeks to Boost Number of Latino Teachers

Innocuous at first, isn’t it? It gets better:

Despite the fact that Hispanic students now make up more than half of all of the students in Texas’ public schools, there is a serious lack of Latino teachers, and the Texas Center for Education Policy is looking for ways to add to their number

Ahhh…the Center for Education Policy. To say it is left-of-center is to not give it enough Marxist credit. Ok, so what do they plan to do about the “shortage” of Latino teachers?

Angela Valenzuela of the Center says a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation aims to change those ratios.  

“An understanding of the community, what they can’t offer in universities, is the kind of knowledge that connects to English language development, to language acquisition, the particular challenges that language minorities face in our public school system,” she says.

A grant from the even-further-left Ford Foundation to…..do what, exactly? How can they change those ratios? By putting a gun to the Dean of Education in any university and forcing him/ her to graduate only Latinos? That’s not too far off…..they are going to re-assert Affirmative Action into the teacher hiring system, as if it weren’t there already. Imagine to what lengths they will go in order to be effective in raising the ratios.

Valenzuela says many scholars think one reason the Hispanic drop out rate remains high and other efforts to cut it haven’t borne much fruit can be traced to the lack of Hispanic teachers, especially in barrio schools. 

  “What we know from research is that if you go back to your community to teach, you are likely to go into a hard to staff school, and you are more likely to stay longer that school (if you’re Hispanic) because you can connect to the children, you share the same culture, you share a similar language.” 

BULL-FUCKING-SHIT. The only motivation I ever needed to learn English, and then do well in school, was my parents’ rather loving threat to send me back to Puerto Rico to live with my grandmother. End of fucking story. Whether these drop-out wannabes have a Latino teacher is beside the point. If the parental units are not involved/ present, it will affect the kid. I don’t need studies to tell me that. I have seen it, up close and personal. And this crap about sharing a common language is just that: CRAP. Any teacher that has to take time off her schedule to speak in Spanish to a kid that doesn’t know much English will not be an effective teacher. Again, up close and personal. As an afterthought, Ms. Valenzuela throws a bone to the rest of our non-Latino teachers:

She stresses Anglo and African-American teachers are very dedicated and in most cases they bring a huge amount of cultural sensitivity to Hispanic students. 

Oh yeah? If you believe that, then why the fuck do you need more Latino teachers??