SCHOLARSHIPS FOR THE NEW COLLEGE MINORITY: WHITE MALES

Minority Scholarships Today: Who Gets the Money?

If you think about it, white guys are right now the least likely to get most of the college scholarships—many are earmarked for women or minorities. The other outstanding scholarship criterion is “financial need.” So white males from really poor backgrounds have the most advantage, and considering the terms of quite a number of scholarships—economics do constitute a “minority” category.

The Era of Over-Compensation

“Underrepresented” and “minority” – both descriptive adjectives for the majority of scholarships, do not include white males. A number of years ago, in sync with the national outcry over a disparity between white males in jobs related to engineering, math and the sciences, there was an immediate reaction on the part of government and corporate America to remedy the gap. Scholarships that targeted females and minorities reproduced like rabbits. Now, according to a wide array of statistics the number of white males in engineering is declining, while the numbers that are female and minority continue to climb. Goal achieved, right?

Revamped: Minority Scholarships Must Include White and Male

Suddenly it must have occurred to some that if you dug down into the nitty-gritty of Civil Rights and analyzed the ills of Affirmative Action, you could make a good legal argument contesting the Constitutional validity of most scholarships today, particularly those offered through federally-funded institutions. Over the last five or six years conservative watchdog groups like the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) have called universities like the University of Michigan, Southern Illinois University, and SUNY on the carpet for racial discrimination in their admissions practices. At question are the scholarships restricted to minorities. In response to the threat of legal action, all have revamped their “minority” and female-focused scholarships to include white students and males. And it’s not just the CEO speaking out; charges emanate from an increasingly disgruntled applicant pool frustrated with access to college programs.

A New York Times article in early 2006 underscored the current tide of minority scholarship controversy. The allegations have drawn deep concern from the Department of Education and put the public university system at large on legal alert, many with changes swiftly afoot.

The Center for Equal Opportunity continues to verbally spar with the University of Michigan over allegations of “racial discrimination.” The CEO’s mission is to make sure higher education becomes a more equal proving ground, inclusive to all. This includes the increasingly excluded white male, who may be the next most “underrepresented.”

New Crop of Propositions

You’ve likely Heard of California’s Proposition 209, which in 1996 made it illegal for public colleges and universities in California to consider admissions on the basis of race, creed, sex or color. Michigan’s recent Proposition 2, a.k.a. Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, is cut from similar fabric. It was passed in early 2006 and makes the same educational admissions processes illegal as well.

Obviously the critics of such legal propositions argue that the educational process will only roll backwards, with scholastic and professional opportunities once again falling into the hands of a predominantly white male crowd, but for the moment, we’re hardly there. According to recent statistics 57% of the college crowd is female with a growing gender gap on American campuses. The problem is laced with a smorgasbord of potential reasons, say experts, only part of which is attached to scholarship money.

Political Fallout—the Satire of White Male Scholarships

All this hoopla over college scholarship dough draws a line in the sand between Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, college officials and student body. The Fall 2006 “Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship,” concocted by the Boston University College Republicans was intended to titillate the campus student body and open up communication on the issue of race in college admissions. Instead, it hit mainstream media like shotgun fire, where it fomented the controversy already in play. Eight students applied for the “satirical” $250 award that also required them to construct an essay on the meaning of being Caucasian.

White Male Looking for a Single Good-Looking Scholarship

Today’s white male college student may be suffering from the sins of the fathers. What were closely related outgrowths of equal rights, civil rights and affirmative action are now wreaking havoc on the ability for a white male to qualify for a scholarship of any kind unless he’s inordinately short, or can demonstrate some other idiosyncrasy that may be criterion for an oddball scholarship. Maybe white guys need to suffer a bit longer, eh? Maybe they need to have a history of oppression behind them first in order to feel privileged to gain some perks. Maybe they need to earn a lower station in life first.

Caucasian Scholarships at an HBCU-A Best Bet

Maybe one of the best places to shop for a “minority” scholarship aimed at white males is through one of the public Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The system of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) was established to provide African Americans with a viable place to secure a rightful college education, at a time when they were afforded the same legal rights to a higher education, but in many instances could find none. Now many HBCUs are scrambling to diversify—they have to, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which clearly states that any institution that receives federal aid may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed or sex. This means that public HBCUs must recruit students from all backgrounds.

If you read up on the minority and Affirmative Action issues, you might assume from various stats and editorial commentaries that white enrollment is on the increase at the HBCUs, but according to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, this so-called trend is nothing more than hot air. HBCUs remain predominantly black. And even in cases where there are now scholarship incentives for whites, “white students usually opt to go elsewhere.”

A few state’s public HBCU systems have been involved in bitter and lengthy legal battles over the issue of segregation. Various decisions have forced quite a few predominantly black institutions to begin aggressively marketing “minority” scholarships to white students:

• Tennessee State University is so down in its minority—white—population that the State is now funding “scholarships for Caucasian Tennessee residents.” These scholarships are rooted to the recent outcome of a lengthy court case known as the Geier case that has called over the last two decades for desegregation of Tennessee’s “dual educational” system of which TSU was a part. Long range plans for the desegregation have included assuring a balanced student body. During the mid-1980s the agreement put in motion a new system of other-race recruitment: black recruiters for white colleges and white recruiters for black. To those ends the Geier called for stepped up scholarships and financial aid to boost the process. In late 2006, the Geier case was finally dismissed on the grounds that the State had in fact effectively undone its dual system, thanks to the urgings of the Geier case over the years. The scholarships for whites cover room and board for eligible candidates.


• Diversity Scholarships for both undergraduate and graduate white students are a special program of Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University. The goal is to boost enrollment of those underrepresented in the school: whites and Native Americans, specifically at ASU and “Caucasians” at Alabama A&M. In fact as the result of a discrimination case, a federal court judge in 1995 commanded both ASU and Alabama A&M University to vigorously diversify.¹ The court case raised scrutiny over the fact that both schools had almost exclusive black student bodies and had been remiss in recruiting “other-race” students, especially whites. Since then large chunks of money have been earmarked each year to attract white students. Initially GPA requirements were set at 2.0, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, so low as to offend black students required to comply with a GPA minimum of 2.7. Since then, in response to threats of legal repercussions, the universities have raised GPA reqs for whites. Scholarships may cover full or partial tuition.


• Jackson State University in Mississippi has a student body composition of over 6,000 African Americans and about 200 Caucasians.² The university’s Diversity Scholarships are restricted to Caucasian applicants. Mississippi, like Alabama, has had to scramble to rollout diversity scholarships at its public HBCUs, following a landmark segregation case. Under terms of the settlement the state’s public HBCUs are required to bring levels of “non-black” students to 10 percent of their student body at which time they will receive critical funding to bring their programs up to speed with the other public universities in the state, the initial crux of the legal fight. In response JSU, along with Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley have all ramped up recruitment of their biggest minorities—whites. It’s not that they want to, but they now have a monetary carrot dangled before them.


• Diversity Scholarships through Alcorn State University in Mississippi are given to “non-black” applicants. Full and partial scholarships are awarded and candidates must have at least a 3.0 GPA to qualify.


• Mississippi Valley State University offers undergraduate and graduate Diversity Scholarships. Grad scholarships may cover a full tuition while the undergrad version awards $700. Applicants for both must be “non-black.”

Special Interest Private Colleges Not Offering Minority Scholarships for White Males

Good luck locating a minority scholarship exclusively for whites, much less white males, at any of the private HBCUs, including the prestigious Howard University, Morehouse College, and Tuskegee University (formerly Tuskegee Institute). This would likely be the one thing they would avoid at all costs.

Financially active and well-endowed alumni make sure their alma maters are able to remain true to their belief systems and core missions. You will find small, private HBCUs like Voorhees College in South Carolina that make every effort to promote themselves as non-discriminatory.

No, there are not any scholarships offered for “Caucasians” or “white males,” but Voorhees’ list of scholarships makes not one mention of race or gender. The school has a total enrollment of about 700, about 6 percent of which is white.

But without discriminating you also will not find scholarships for white males at any of the prestigious private women’s colleges, either. While some are now admitting males to graduate programs, they do not offer specific funding for any males--White, Hispanic, Black, Asian or purple. Legions of alumnae contribute annually to make sure they never have to. Like Blacks and other ethnic minorities, women as well have suffered under the weight of a traditionally white, male-centric university system.

You might think that even those traditionally women’s colleges with a recent history of coeducation might offer a minority scholarship for males. Hood College in Maryland turned to a coeducational platform in 2003, but still makes its “minority” scholarships exclusively available to applicants “traditionally underserved” in higher education.

Forget About Hispanic-Serving and Tribal Colleges

Tribal colleges not only offer a college, career-focused education to Native Americans, but they unabashedly consider everyone regardless of race, color, creed or sex. It’s just that your typical American college student has access to a wealth of other college options.

Most tribal colleges are rural, even remote, and can’t provide anything more than what a typical community or technical college may provide. White males won’t find minority scholarships to Tribal Colleges, but neither will anyone else due to a lack of funding. And unlike the public HBCUs, no one is offering scads of federal funding to ramp up scholarships for whites and/or males.

As for colleges that serve Hispanics, they are just that: Hispanic-serving. Sadly, this minority population doesn’t even have its own college system.

Scholarships Won’t Be Anymore Plentiful in the Future

Perhaps it’s associated with majorities, money, statistics and the who’s-getting-what of scholarships, but don’t expect White Male Scholarships to multiply like rabbits. There are too many objections, too many historical complexities and theologies of blame to give way aggressively on the issue.

So even though clearly something’s up, white guys still have the burden of proving themselves a minority, a claim that remains a topic to be rolled around a bit more, poked at by pundits, accounted for by accountants and otherwise analyzed until its day has come. In the meantime, if you are one of the “white guys” you might consider going for a former minority-driven scholarship at one of the larger public universities especially where there’s been a legal shake-up in Affirmative Action. Or grab up a fleeting “Caucasian” scholarship from one of the public Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Somewhere down the line we can hope college admissions, like everything else, will no longer have eyes for color or gender.

Source




ENGLAND TO TEACH CORRECT ENGLISH AGAIN

But lots of other bumf as well

Teenagers will be taught to speak properly, and recognise how to use standard English in formal settings, under an overhaul of the school curriculum for 11-14 year-olds. The proposals will place strict emphasis on teaching children to banish expressions such as "they was", "I done", "them books" and "I ain't" from use in debates and presentations and to use colloquial language such as "anyway" and "okay" only where appropriate.

Sue Horner, head of development at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), said that since this part of the curriculum was revised in 1995, demands from employers for schools to emphasise skills in spoken English had increased. According to research by the QCA, young people in their first jobs said that one of the biggest challenges they faced was speaking confidently on the telephone to a stranger. "They were very clear that they didn't really know how to do it. They were crying out for help," Ms Horner said.

Under the new proposals, students will continue to study Shakespeare and Jane Austen, but will also be taught to correct their English using spell-check programs and to use an online thesaurus to expand their vocabulary.

Learning about the British Empire and key dates in history, as well as how to draw up a spreadsheet and speak Mandarin, are also proposed in the new curriculum for secondary schools in England. The new focus on broadening knowledge and communicating it effectively is part of a wider attempt by the Government to drive up the basic skills of school-leavers.

The changes are intended to give teachers greater flexibility while retaining core elements of learning. But critics gave warning that far from allowing greater freedom, the proposals were packed with advice for teachers to cover everything from social diversity in the Middle Ages to the Holocaust and "political and cultural achievements of the Islamic states from 600 to 1600".

In history, the 21st century focus is away from a thematic treatment and back to learning dates and facts in chronological order. There will also be emphasis on promoting cultural and ethnic diversity through the study of the slave trade and the British Empire. "Pupils should learn that people and societies involved in the same historical event may have different experiences and views and develop a variety of stories, versions, opinions and interpretations of that event," the review states.

There will also be a new emphasis on life skills, such as healthy living, cookery and financial literacy. In modern languages, the watchdog suggests that students should learn Urdu and Mandarin as well as European languages. In science, the review suggests "a shift away from content towards the scientific process or how science works". Students will study drug abuse, psychology and the implications of developments such as in-vitro fertilisation. The new curriculum will also introduce a new system of peer assessment.

Susan Anderson, director of human resources at the CBI, welcomed the emphasis on mastery of basic skills. Employers are crying out for numerate, literate and IT-savvy youngsters who can work as part of a team, make decisions and take on responsibility." Teaching primary school children philosophy and the thinking skills of Socrates brings a lasting gain in intelligence, according to follow-up research, published yesterday, into pioneering teaching techniques in schools in Clackmannanshire, Central Scotland.

Source





BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS: Police take home-taught student to psych ward

German government agencies objected to her parent-led courses in math, Latin

A nation whose education officials already have warned that they will, when necessary, "bring the religious convictions of the family into line" with state requirements, now has removed a 16-year-old girl from her family and placed her in a child psychiatry unit after she turned in below-expected grades in math and Latin. The news of nearly two dozen officials and uniformed police officers physically taking the teen from her home in front of her shocked family is just the latest horror story to come out of Germany, where homeschooling was placed under a ban by Adolf Hitler and der Fuehrer's law still is enforced.

The stories are concerning to homeschoolers in the rest of the world, including the United States, because of the real potential that international law eventually could be used to ban such activities in places where it now is legal.

The newest German case was reported in a statement delivered to WND by Netzwerk-Bildungsfreiheit (Net-Education Freedom), an organization that works for homeschoolers' rights in Germany even though it is illegal there. A spokesman for that group had contacted WND after the news website broke the story that a German government official had warned that families' religious beliefs will have to be brought into alignment with required school attendance laws.

The government at that time had responded to a parent concerned about children being forcibly placed in custody by police officers and then delivered to the mandatory public school system: "In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement," the government said.

The student in the newest case was identified by the German organization as Melissa Busekros. She has been removed from her parents' custody, and placed in the Child Psychiatry Unit of the Nuremberg clinic, her father, Hubert Busekros, told the homeschool group. "What is being done to a sensitive and musical young girl, just because the bureaucrats want to set an example? In their zealous drive to enforce compulsory schooling (which by Melissa's age is only part-time) at all costs, they readily accept the trauma caused to the unassuming and lovable Melissa," the German homeschooler said. "The Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit condemns this inconsiderate and totally incommensurate behaviour on the part of the officials involved and demands that they give Melissa her freedom and return her to her family immediately."

The case began developing in the summer of 2005, when Melissa, then 15, was told she'd have to repeat the 7th grade at the Ernst High Gymnasium, a public school, due to her grades in math and Latin. "The situation in the class played no small part in creating this state of affairs - the high noise levels and cancelled classes prevented her from receiving the educational assistance she needed during school hours," the German organization said. Since she had good grades in all the other classes, she and her parents decided she would be tutored individually at home to meet her needs. She still took part in music and sang in her school's choir.

But school officials were unhappy, and expelled her, so the Busekros family continued educating her at home. At the end of the 2005-2006 school year she was no longer subject to full-time attendance requirements, but the Jugendamt, or Youth Welfare Office still created a case in Family Court and ordered the family to appear at a hearing.

Then this week social workers accompanied by police officers appeared at the home one morning, demanding that Melissa be handed over to them immediately, providing as authorization a ruling by the Erlangen Court dated Jan. 29. It said, "The relevant Youth Welfare Office is hereby instructed and authorized to bring the child, if necessary by force, to a hearing and may obtain police support for this purpose."

The teen was taken to the Child Psychiatry Unit and interrogated for nearly four hours, after which she was returned home, the Netzwerk said. However, the worst was still to come. On Thursday, the Family Court judge, staff members of the Youth Welfare Office, and 15 police officers "marched up to the Busekros home, to haul Melissa off to the Child Psychiatry Unit." "This treatment was justified by the psychiatrist's finding, two days previously, that she was supposedly developmentally delayed by one year and that she suffered from school phobia," the Netzwerk said. "It is not known when Melissa's parents and siblings will be able to see her again, as the official approach in cases of 'school phobia' is to completely prevent the 'patient' from having any contact with those closest to him or her, as such contact supposedly enables the phobia," the Netzwerk said.

Such issues are alarming U.S. homeschool leaders. Michael Farris, cofounder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, has called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to protect the right of parents to educate their children at home, in light of such developments in Europe. One of his major concerns is that if the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a plan already accepted as law by many nations around the globe, were ratified by the Senate or adopted by the federal courts as enforceable international law, American homeschooling could be banned.

A homeschool advocate in Germany earlier wrote to WND that, "We are not far away from an intolerant dictatorship in our country. Parental rights are more and more abolished. If you do not the way the state wants, to so-called Jugendamt (youth welfare office) is quickly to check out if they can take away the custody of your children." He was not being identified because of his position in Germany. "As long as you practice your faith in a church building you have no problems, but as soon as you act in accordance to your faith, for example, in the education of your children, the freedom ends rapidly," he said. He likened the situation to that of families under the Nazi regime, or "like in the former Soviet Union under the Communists."

The HSLDA also has pleaded for help for the German community. "The situation, unfortunately, is not getting any better, and they need your prayers and support," the organization said recently. "Most recently, a decision was handed down by the European Court of Human rights (which) . completely turned the European Union Constitution's Article 14, the section on parent's rights to control the education of their children, completely upside down."

That decision will allow any nation in the EU, should it choose, to outlaw homeschooling. "Meanwhile, the German homeschoolers continue to be unmercifully persecuted. In our last report, we explained that there were approximately 40 families in court at one stage or the other. Families are fleeing regularly to other foreign countries in order to continue homeschooling."

Source

***************************

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

***************************