“IGNORING THE ELEFANTE”

The Arne Duncan, Newt Gingrich, Al Sharpton interviews today are the best I have seen on Meet the Press-ever. I loved the passion David Gregory exhibited toward the topic of how to improve education.
They discussed accountability, parent participation, teacher unions, and of course the drop-out rate among black and Hispanic youth. Unfortunately, they never mentioned nor could they have discussed the issue of learning English-academic English I mean-by both students who speak languages other than English and yes even amongst monolingual English speakers.
As an Hispanic/Latino/Chicano-what ever appellation you use-I appreciate the discussion about improving our schools since my group is one of the most impacted, if not the most, considering the growth in population of our ethnic group.
I have been directly and indirectly involved with and in public education for over forty years. The lack of voices from the Hispanic community on a national level is abhorrent to me and I mean in every part of the social, political and economic dialogue. From my background and experience, second language issues are the most ignore and misunderstood in this country yet the single most important determinant in both the cognitive as well as the affective domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy when it comes to knowledge and skill acquisition.
Therefore, it was not surprising, albeit dreadfully disappointing and frustrating, that once again, on a national forum, just like in the administration and in other media outlets, the Hispanic population was and is “El Elefante” (like my friend Juan Tornoe of Hispanic Trending says) in the Board Rooms and newsrooms that no one addresses, because they cannot or will not seek out those who have the background, knowledge and experience to represent our point of view-que lastima!
Lastly, there was the failure to discuss how to improve and provide teachers the modern tools-technological tools-they need to accelerate learning in ways traditional teaching tools (pencil-paper/worksheets-textbooks) never have done nor will ever do to engage students in learning-especially in the digital world in which our students were born. Want to know how? Send a comment!