Pamela Taylor wrote:
>I don't mean to offend, but some folks have a memory
>of school being so great because they are white.
Funny, but I remember the high schools of the
1970s working a lot better than they do today - and I
am definitely not white. Nor were most of the kids who
graduated from the DC public schools in those days,
either.
>African-Americans can give you a different view. Lots
>of other cultures have different ways of learning that
>are just as valid. Since this country professes to be
>the great melting pot, and we are so strengthened by
>our diversity, then we need to accept the FACT that we
>need to embrace a different reality than 20 and 30
>years ago. It is called progress.
It is not progress when the average teacher goes to college twice as long and is
half as competent. It
is not progress to see graduation rates below 50% in
the public high schools of major American cities. If
other cultures' learning methods are "just as valid as
ours", why aren't we importing teachers from the former
Soviet Union or Japan, where the economies are pretty
awful right now?
Trying to understand the miseducation of our
children by looking through the lens of race and color
is like trying to read a book while staring through the
bottom of a Coke bottle. The simple facts are that our
children are not being taught as well as they were 30
years ago. Handwaving and flaming about different
cultures and different learning systems has gotten us
where we are today, and it has to stop if the constant
waste of brainpower is to be stopped.
Colin Powell was right - if some foreign nation
tried to do to our children what the public schools do every day in the cities of
America, there would be a
blood in the streets.
Kevin Trainor
6-10
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