School Studies Charge of Racist Class Materials : Education: A parent says a videotape shown in a class depicts racist and sexist stereotypes. A paraphrased speech by Martin Luther King Jr. is also investigated.

West Covina Unified School District officials are investigating materials used in two classrooms after a parent complained that they are racist and sexist.

Cheryl Ivory, 43, said she and her 17-year-old son, Brandon, discussed a videotape shown in one of his classes at West Covina High School that he said depicted racist and sexist stereotypes.

After viewing the film, “The Kingdom of Mocha,” Ivory agreed.

A short time later, Ivory’s 14-year-old son, Marlon, called his mother at work to read her a paraphrased version of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech written by his English teacher and distributed in class.

Ivory, who is black, said the teacher, who is white, told the class she translated the late civil rights leader’s speech into current black dialect.

It was insulting, illiterate and defamed King’s message, said Ivory, a data processing specialist with Los Angeles County.

School district officials said both incidents were personnel matters under investigation. Officials said they have retrieved the video, which a district committee will review, and the speech, to determine whether the material is appropriate.

Supt. John Costello said the investigation will follow a district procedure that requires the principal, Ben Furuta, to review both complaints first. Then, Costello said, he will select a committee, including the principal and five staff members, to review the material and submit a report to him in 30 days. Costello will then make a final decision.

Furuta said he sent Ivory a letter expressing his concern about both matters, and they have scheduled a meeting for Wednesday.

Ivory said she plans to bring Jimmie Dixson, acting president of the San Gabriel Valley branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, to the session.

“The Kingdom of Mocha”--a cartoon showing how the world economic system evolved--was released by Amoco Oil Co. in 1976, and distributed nationwide, primarily to schools.

The film’s setting is a fictitious island with different ethnic groups speaking in exaggerated accents--including German, Italian, Middle Eastern, British and American Southern.

In the original film, “Big Daddy,” a bald, pot-bellied, cigar-smoking Anglo, runs the island. “Bennie Six Toes,” a black, is the coconut seller. Another character, Ian, is also black, with a big, Afro hairstyle, popular in the ‘70s, and bright red lips. “Miss Rachel,” an Anglo, walks the island wearing low-cut, revealing dresses, speaking in a sexy voice and selling melons.

Brandon Ivory recalled how he felt while watching the film in teacher Ben Cimino’s class. Students were laughing, and the teacher had a smirk on his face when Ian began talking in an exaggerated black dialect.

“I was really upset,” said the senior, who had just returned from a summer camp where racism and sexism were discussed. “I said ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this.’ ”

Amoco received a few written complaints about stereotyped characters in the film, said Judy Kaminsky, Amoco’s Foundation’s program adviser. But the firm withdrew the film only because it was outdated, she said.

A new version, “The Return to Mocha,” was produced in 1986. Although some of the same characters remain, they bear only slight resemblance to the originals.

Both films were distributed by Modern Talking Pictures, a Florida-based educational resource distribution center. The center received no complaints about the original film, said Marge Kondash, supervisor of customer services.

Neither video, however, is on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s or the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s approved list of films.

Cimino, who is white, said he has shown the older film to his classes for three years. He considers it to be a good instructional tool for teaching the principles of economics and does not demean any group.

“The kids really enjoy it,” said Cimino, 53, a teacher for 28 years. “It’s natural that they watch cartoons. It’s done in an entertaining way with one-liners. It gets their attention.”

Furuta said the film has been shown in the West Covina district for about 12 years without any previous problems. The principal said last week that he had viewed a snippet of the film and believes it does a good job of portraying how the economic system was developed.

Furuta said he talked to English teacher Judith L. Rogers about her version of King’s speech and concluded that she was not being malicious and did not intend to harm or demean anyone by using it in class.

The following are excerpts:

“Youse go back to Misipi, Alabamma, Souf Carolinie, Georgea and Louseeana, an’ don’t youse be whinin’ or conversatin’ ‘bout yer touchured soles.

“Listen up. I still gotta dream way down deep inside me cuz weses livin’ in Ameriga. I wanna have my chillun’ razed up and looked at 4 there charakter and not there color.”

Why didn’t Rogers translate “The Star Spangled Banner,” or “The Constitution,” or something else? Ivory asked.

King’s speech was chosen, because “it was the best speech I ever read,” Rogers said in an interview.

The teacher said she needed a motivational tool to get her students to improve their reading and writing skills.

Rogers, 45, is a temporary ninth- and 10th-grade English teacher whose contract expires in January, 1992. She said she understands and empathizes with Ivory, but explained that her version of King’s speech was not “illiterate, or paraphrased.”

“It was a grammatically incorrect version of what was a substantially beautiful speech compiled of grammatical errors from all my students,” she explained. “I have a student from Egypt who uses ‘wese.’ My Mexican students use ‘Ameriga,’ and white students use ‘charakter.’ ”

The teacher said she did not intend to defame or defile King’s message.

Ivory said Rogers did not ask the students to correct the errors. Indeed, copies of the teacher’s lesson shown to a reporter by both Ivory and Rogers contained no such instructions.

“It’s an insult,” said the soft-spoken Ivory. “I feel she (Rogers) totally disrespected Dr. King. Just like people who get upset when a flag is burned, that’s how I felt about what she did to (King’s) speech.”

Marlon Ivory said that when Rogers handed out the assignment, the teacher laughed along with the class and was proud of her creative spellings, such as “10asea” (for Tennessee).

Robyn Black, 14, a black student who was asked to read the speech to the class, said that when she read it later, she realized it “offended me a little bit, because it makes black people look bad.”

Not all of the students in Rogers’ third-period English class agreed.

“I don’t think she was trying to offend anyone,” Miguel Cuevas, 15, said of Rogers. “She was doing it her own way.”

Erika Elmore, 14, said the teacher “was trying to explain how people without an education talk.”

Education experts spoke in general about the impact of stereotyped material on children.

“A school’s curriculum should not put young people of color, or any other person, in a position to have to defend a stereotype,” said Dr. Gordon Berry, a UCLA graduate professor of educational counseling and psychology.

Teachers should be selective in choosing material and should fully explain their goals and objectives, said Berry, who also studies social behavior and cross-cultural understanding. Students are frequently powerless when instructors choose material that fosters bigotry and racism, because the instructors control classes and grades, he said.

The West Covina High School teaching staff participates in periodic workshops on dealing with an increasingly culturally diverse student body, Furuta said. However, the principal said there has been no training on how teachers should deal with individual students.

The campus has 2,250 students--39% Latino, 36% Anglo, 12% Asian, 9% African-American, and 3% from other racial groups, Furuta said. There are nine teachers with Latino surnames, four Asian and no African-American teachers, he said.

Jo Bonita Smith Perez, multicultural consultant for the county Office of Education, has conducted conferences on cultural harmony countywide and at individual school sites since 1976.

“Most districts have just one 1 1/2-hour training,” she said. “It’s like taking Vitamin C, you have to continue it or you lose it. Each district needs a series of these workshops, because most teachers are not trained to work with multicultural students.”