Michael Atherton said:
"I would claim that the facts you cite indicate why Black and
Indian cultures no longer support knowledge and learning as being important goals, if they ever did."
But...
"if they ever did" --- ????
I simply don't get it. First he was arguing against those of us who argued that the high drop-out rate had something to do with the pandemic poverty that minorities find themselves in in this country. For that, he accused us (incorrectly) of "throwing up our hands" over whether anything to fix the dropout rate would be successful. NOW, he says it has to due not with the poverty that is imposed on them but on their own culture that puts no value on education. Is the "throwing up of the hands" now on the other side?
I'd suggest that attempts to attribute drop-outs to culture are as far off the mark one way as it was by claiming that the problem of drop-outs is just the school's problem is the other way. Most of the whites in this country arrived on these shores in the persons of illiterate great-grandparents from Europe where there were then no schools for anyone below the upper classes. I very much doubt that it can be said that their culture valued education any more than that of blacks and non-slave minorities who came here at the same time.
Steve Cross Prospect Park
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