Subject:
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Re: Inter-racial, Inter-religious, Inter-national relationships
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 6 May 2001 17:31:00 GMT
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Viewed:
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330 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Tom Stangl writes:
> >
> > > I don't call that progress, I call that moving BACKWARDS. The question
> > > simply shouldn't be there AT ALL.
> >
> > I agree. We leave it blank (along with a lot of other stuff like how many
> > bathrooms we have and other marketing research kind of stuff...) on the
> > census form. This has earned us a followup visit the last two times.
>
> As I'm technically a member of another person's household,
> I don't get to fill in my own census form--but historically
> we haven't been willing to answer those questions either.
> Good luck if they want to follow up, seeing as how we're
> never home...:)
I'm glad the census bureau collects data on such matters as the number of
bathrooms contained in the average household. I would think information such as
this would be useful to historians in the future-- I mean, wouldn't info like
that provide background color and sort of place historical events in context?
(Okay, maybe the bathrooms example isn't the best!)
Personally I have no problem with questions such as these as long as the info
is kept anonymous, AND as long as imparting the info is voluntary. I only had
one student tell me she didn't want to state her ethnicity, and I told her (so
the rest of the class could hear in case they also had concerns) that if there
was no "decline to state" category that she should leave it blank (I was
surprised BTW that more kids did not appear to share her concerns). I DO think
this information is useful because it can show whether there might be a
correlation between certain demographic characterisitics and performance on
standardized tests, for instance. The more detailed the information we have
concerning the relationship between particular demographics and test scores,
the more we have to work with in addressing any inequities that might be
present in the testing system.
Maggie C.
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