Black Kids Learn Differently

That is the basis of ethnomathematics, which I discussed here. The author of this article from Community Advocates, Inc, of Los Angeles shares my view that the White/Asian and Black/Hispanic achievement gap is not caused by racially- and culturally-insensitive white teachers, but on...actually, you go read it yourself :-) Here are a couple of my favorite paragraphs, though:

It has not been helpful that LAUSD officials, as well as members of the school board, have allowed the district to become a sounding board for all sorts of suspect theories related to children "of color." Just one of those theories that have gained traction is that "black learners" react in different and unique ways to teaching -- different, that is, from the way other students react. This argument makes the claim that black students think in ways that are distinct from ways white students, in particular, think.

But isn't this a twist on the pseudo-science of old, which claimed that efforts to educate blacks would be fruitless because their capacity to learn was different from that of whites? Why is this argument acceptable today simply because it is being advanced by minority "multiculturalists"? The view that blacks and whites somehow interpret learning differently is -- in part -- a holdover from the silly debates surrounding "ebonics" that raged throughout the 1990s and that continue to handicap discussions of urban education to this very day.

Can I have an "amen!"?