My daughter is a freshman at a very large city school and is registered in a Speech class. Racially the school is predominantly black. My wife thinks greater than 70% of the students are black. Speech is an optional class for freshman. All students enrolled in speech automatically join the speech team and tonight we attended the required informational meeting for the team. There were approximately 100+ parents at the meeting. 95 were white. What the hell???????????

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its just the world we live in.

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GONE but not forgotten
1976 300D 195,300 miles
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There is the possibility that the black students in question probably have parents who work shifts that wouldn't allow them to attend said meetings.

That said, I remember listening to a radio call-in program regarding the quality of public school education, and caller after caller chimed in on how "teachers weren't doing this", or "not doing that", yadda yadda. Most of the callers were black (as I gathered from their linguistic characteristics ).

Later, a teacher called in and calmy noted that whenever there are scheduled parent's nights or parent teacher conferences, rarely a parent shows up to attend...that pretty much silenced the phone lines from then on.

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2009 ML350 (106K) - Family vehicle
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The same is true with South American cultures. They have greater separation of duties, and even middle class families have their own cooks, gardeners, drivers, etc. Its presumed that schools will take care of all aspects of education, and parents needn't get involved.

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My fiance recently switched from a predominantly hispanic/black ghetto school to a school that's approximately 50/50 hispanic/white and no where near as ghetto. In her previous school parental involvement was practically zero. Never bothering to show up for confrences, no disciplinary involvement etc. In this school she can hardly keep them away. And she typically has anywhere between 30 to 60 e-mails a day from parents. Still a noticable split between involvement of the whites (almost complete) and hispanics, probably about 50 percent - which however is a huge increase over the ghetto.

- Peter.

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Formerly...
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1984 123 200
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It wasn't just the parents. The students were there participating in a mock tournament while the parent's met. Same ratio of races. It looks like black students are not signing up for Speech.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Say wut, yo?

My wife teaches in a middle school (gr. 6,7,8) in an area with not many minorities. The families that do not show up/get involved in the the childrens education are mostly from poorer families. Some of the problem can certainly be cases of work and childcare issues. (and some parents will show up with young children in tow). A lot of it seems to be just a lack of concern for their child's education or an attitude that it is the school's job, not theirs. Too often these children do not do well in their studies and wind up in the same economic rut as their parents.

Different races/cultures/groups have different interests. They have the right to pursue those interests I reckon'.

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-Evan


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Non-Benz Fleet:
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Parents arrested for truancy of kids:

http://projects.ajc.com/gallery/view/metro/dekalb/0917truancy/