Why Schools Need More Teachers of Color—for White Students

[The Captain]

news.yahoo.com/why-schools-more-teachers-color-123000002.html

Among the ACT-tested graduates in 2014 who said they planned on pursuing an education major, 72 percent were white, compared to 56 percent of all tested students. Yet nonwhite children are now believed to make up a majority of the country’s public-school population. Studies show that, academically, nonwhite teachers produce more favorable outcomes for students of similar backgrounds; emotionally and socially, these educators serve as role models who share students’ racial and ethnic identity. What hasn’t gotten much attention, however, are the potential gains for white students.


A lot of interesting items brought up in the article.

Stretching back my memory, the first minority teacher I had was in HS.  She was our orchestra/music teacher though so we didn't touch on social issues at all.  She did introduce me to jazz and blues though (and other genres but you could tell this was her passion), something which I appreciate to this day.

In my HS whites were the minority, yet almost all the teachers were white.  I never really thought about it until now.

Makes me wonder - why we don't have more minority teachers, and if race relations would be better if children were given exposure to different cultural perspectives. ?

[teen persuasion]

That does seem to be the unanswered question in the article - why aren't there more minority teachers?  The author seemed to think that minority teachers were important as role models for minority students AND for the race relations lessons they could teach white students.  I tend to think that educators are a self selecting group, right?  No one makes you become a teacher.  So perhaps the question really is why fewer minorities value and choose education as a career, fewer in relative terms, and fewer vs past numbers (a complaint voiced multiple times in the article).

[teen persuasion]

TBH, a similar argument has been made about how heavily education skews to female.

[Tennesseer]

All my teachers were minorities-they were priests and nuns.

[tskeeter]

I suspect that there are a variety of factors that contribute to the absence of minority teachers.  First, afirmative action.  Afirmative action requirements have encouraged businesses to vigorously recruit well educated minority employees.  Given the plethora of career choices, many of which pay much better than teaching, I suspect that many well educated minority students choose more lucrative careers.  A second factor could be the value that some minority communities place on education.  I think that kids that grow up in communities that place a high value on education tend to view teachers as having important jobs.  And, as a result, they view education as a career that makes an important contribution to our society.  If you don't value education, you probably don't value what teachers do, and you probably aren't interested in becoming a teacher.  Then there are community pressures.  In some communities, getting a college education is viewed as selling out your cultural heritage.  Becoming an Oreo, or an apple.  Minority on the outside, white on the inside.

I do question why the "education" surrounding discrimination seems to be limited to discrimination against certain ethnic groups.  I think a more balanced perspective would be to discuss how immigrants, willing and unwilling, of all ethnic groups have been discriminated against in the US.  And it would be worthwhile to investigate why that discrimination has occurred.

DW's grandmother arrived in NYC from Ireland to find signs in storefronts that said "Help Wanted - Irish need not apply".  Because she was Irish, Gram was not able to find work in NYC.  I think Gram experienced discrimination, despite her light complextion.  Similar kinds of things happened to Italians, Poles, Germans, and others who immigrated to the US.  Pretty much every successive immigrant group has experienced discrimination.  Why?  While I'm not a social anthropologist, I suspect that the reason was primarily economic.  The new immigrants were likely to take the low skill jobs requiring limited education from the preceeding immigrant group because the new immigrants would do the work for lower wages.

History, without social context and understanding is merely a pretty meaningless collection of facts and events.  However shocking those facts or events may be.  However, an understanding of the social pressures that led to certain types of behavior may allow us to manage the social issues such that we do not encourage people to repeat the behaviors of the past. 

[zibazinski]

I had a friend tell me that if they actually made it to college no way we're they settling for a teachers wages. That made sense to me. If I'd had to overcome what most minorities have to overcome to get into college I sure wouldn't be a teacher. Not at that salary or that treatment.