Ms. Sara Ford’s Commentary, “Understanding implements change” (April 25), seems a one-sided or a “just one part of the story” piece, used to justify one agenda, instead of achieving real success for all students and parents of every race, color, creed and situation, which is the desired goal of authentic education.
For example, when she advocates for House Bill 198 and says it “would require the inclusion and integration of Black history into Delaware’s public school curricula,” she doesn’t mention that this would encompass grades kindergarten to high school. Nor is there mention of other backgrounds — like my mom-in-law’s Mexican heritage (and other Hispanic aspects of U.S. history). Nor does she consider citizens like my aunts or uncles of Korean, Japanese and Filipino cultures. Where is demonstration of her advocacy that “diversity means including people from a variety of social, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds”?
And discrimination is wrong for all. My Mexican mother-in-law experienced it, and even I, growing up in Hawaii, experienced discrimination for being “haole” (outsider) because those who bullied me didn’t realize my mom was half-Hawaiian since I looked like my dad (Caucasian). And I could blame the American businessmen who seized control of the islands from Queen Liliuokalani, but while that was terribly wrong, I know that I cannot blame the Caucasian residents who reside in Hawaii today.
And what about the tribes in Africa who sold their own people to traders?
When it comes to education, what about school choice to give parents the opportunity to send their children to the school they consider best? What about less money to a top-heavy administrative level and more to the students and classrooms?
Ms. Ford is advocating one-sided extreme changes in our school curricula, a type of quick fix that, like other policies implemented from one side and without a deep thinking-it-through process, can have undesirable consequences. For example, in the health area these days, we are currently seeing how one-sided quick and extreme actions to address the pandemic have resulted in not just the tragedy of lives lost but unforeseen repercussions like closed-forever businesses, suicides, lost educational achievement, etc.
HB 198 should be defeated and instead real solutions developed through input from all authentic viewpoints/experiences, because the money and strategies implemented in Delaware over the past years have failed to achieve the desired success we all want for every student of every race, color, creed and situation.
Frederick C. Smiga
Frederica