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From Our Point Of View: Task Of Explaining Belongs To Joiner

From Our Point Of View: Task Of Explaining Belongs To Joiner image
Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
July
Year
1979
Copyright
Copyright Protected
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
Editorial
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From Our Point Of View

Task of explaining belongs to Joiner

ANN ARBOR’S Board of Education has arrived at a reasonable response to U.S. District Judge Charles Joiner’s well-intentioned but unclear ruling in the “black English” case.

The school trustees did not bluntly say so, but their decision at last Saturday’s special meeting is an effort to obtain a clear statement from Judge Joiner as to what his July 12 opinion means.

Trustees would have been acting properly had they followed Supt. Harry Howard’s advice and publicly reiterated the decision made at their improperly called nonpublic session last Wednesday. That decision called for immediately carrying this case to the Sixth U.S. Appeals Court in Cincinnati.

An appeal may yet be necessary.

First, however, it makes sense to seek a clarification of what Judge Joiner envisioned when he said he wishes to see, in 30 days, a plan “to help the teachers of the plaintiff children at King School to identify children speaking ‘black English’ . . . and to use that knowledge in teaching such students how to read standard English.”

Joiner also said:

- “There is no direct evidence that any of the teachers in this case has treated the home language of the children as inferior...;

- “they” (meaning “teachers in this case”) are “acutely aware of it” (meaning “black English”);

- “There is no evidence in this case that any instructional program has been withheld from any plaintiff on account of his or her race.”

Yet, the judge implied that there is knowledge available to the school board which has not been made available to teachers. Joiner said he seeks “only to see that this defendant (the school board) carries out an obligation to help the teachers use existing knowledge as this may bear on appropriate action to overcome language barriers.”

These various observations by Judge Joiner simply do not add up to a directive for action which could be carried out by the school board and King teachers without clarification from the judge.

THE proper purpose of appealing any judicial ruling is to seek reversal. At this point in the case, the purpose of an appeal would be to seek a higher court’s speculation as to what Judge Joiner meant to say in his July 12 ruling. The burden of providing that clarification is, instead, rightly being placed by the school trustees on Judge Joiner himself.

He wrote approvingly in his July 12 opinion of a “simple remedy” offered by the plaintiffs. School officials could demonstrate good faith, and possibly learn the specifics of that “simple remedy,” by inviting the plaintiffs to take part in writing a plan for submission to Judge Joiner.

His acceptance or rejection of whatever plan is submitted will provide what is missing now: A clear basis for judging whether an appeal of Judge Joiner’s opinion is warranted.