Separate but unequal...

Désolant mais intéressant cet article de Bob Herbert dans le NY Times de ce matin. En 1954 la Cour suprême se prononçait dans la cause Brown vs the Board of education of Topeka, Kansas. Ce jugement ouvrait une première brèche majeure dans la ségrégation raciale en vigueur dans le sud des États-Unis. La Cour suprême contribuait ainsi à remettre en question le principe du "seperate but equal" reconnut comme constitutionnel à la fin du XIXe siècle.

Si on ne peut douter de la victoire de 1954 au plan légal, le bilan effectué par Herbert est bien triste. Il s'attaque cette fois à la pauvreté des jeunes noirs et des jeunes hispanophones qu'on retrouve dans des milieux pauvres où les "conditions d'apprentissage" ne sont pas propices au progrès. Lorsque la discrimination remplace la ségrégation... À lire!

"More than a half-century after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling, we are still trying as a country to validate and justify the discredited concept of separate but equal schools — the very idea supposedly overturned by Brown v. Board when it declared, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Schools are no longer legally segregated, but because of residential patterns, housing discrimination, economic disparities and long-held custom, they most emphatically are in reality.

“Ninety-five percent of education reform is about trying to make separate schools for rich and poor work, but there is very little evidence that you can have success when you pack all the low-income students into one particular school,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who specializes in education issues.

The current obsession with firing teachers, attacking unions and creating ever more charter schools has done very little to improve the academic outcomes of poor black and Latino students. Nothing has brought about gains on the scale that is needed.

If you really want to improve the education of poor children, you have to get them away from learning environments that are smothered by poverty. This is being done in some places, with impressive results. An important study conducted by the Century Foundation in Montgomery County, Md., showed that low-income students who happened to be enrolled in affluent elementary schools did much better than similarly low-income students in higher-poverty schools in the county.

The study, released last October, found that “over a period of five to seven years, children in public housing who attended the school district’s most advantaged schools (as measured by either subsidized lunch status or the district’s own criteria) far outperformed in math and reading those children in public housing who attended the district’s least-advantaged public schools.”

Studies have shown that it is not the race of the students that is significant, but rather the improved all-around environment of schools with better teachers, fewer classroom disruptions, pupils who are more engaged academically, parents who are more involved, and so on. The poorer students benefit from the more affluent environment. “It’s a much more effective way of closing the achievement gap,” said Mr. Kahlenberg."

Lien pour l'ensemble du texte: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/opinion/22herbert.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212