Abigail Thernstrom says the Brown decision isn't a bust:
When we misleadingly label schools in California with few whites "segregated," the implication is that learning is likely to be compromised. Of course it's desirable - where demographically possible - for children to grow up in a multiracial, multiethnic setting. But surely we don't want to suggest that the racial mix in a school inevitably determines the quality of the children's education - that children in schools without "enough" whites are doomed to academic failure. The doomsayers today who moan about Brown's failure would have people believe that the problem with urban schools is that they aren't white enough - that whites are needed if children are to learn...
But demography is not academic destiny, and the emphasis on "segregation" is a distraction from the real issue: quality education for all public school children. Too many black and Latino children are not acquiring the skills and knowledge they need to do well in life.
U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige says educational equality continues to elude us:
I recognize that I was one of the lucky ones in that pre-Brown era. Both of my parents were educators. I worry that many of today's youths don't see education as the path to a better future. As several African-American scholars have noted, many of today's black youths see education as a "white thing."
That notion is painfully evident: Today, only one in six African-Americans can read proficiently upon leaving high school. The achievement gap in reading between blacks and whites is staggering. Nationally, at the fourth-grade level, the gap is 28 percentage points. Other indicators show similar trends: Black students in the K-12 system have almost triple the rate of disciplinary problems (measured by suspensions) as their white peers. Blacks earn college degrees at half the rate of whites.
What a travesty...
Some still believe we can fix our public education system by spending more money. But we already spend more per pupil on K-12 education than any other country except Switzerland. The issue is how the money is being invested. Historically, accountability in our education system has been absent...
With NCLB, the achievement gap is closing. A recent study by the Council of Great City Schools found that the achievement gaps in both reading and math in urban schools between African-Americans and whites, and Hispanics and whites, are narrowing. Now, every state has an accountability plan, parents are newly empowered, and every student will be taught by a highly qualified teacher.
Some have resisted this law. But Brown also met resistance. To those of us who grew up during those times, the chorus sounds familiar. Racial equality cannot exist as long as there is an educational achievement gap. We must make our schools equitable in order to make our society and culture equitable. Brown's legacy should be equality of opportunity. We must achieve this goal for the sake of all our children.
Joanne Jacobs points to Ann Applebaum's WaPo article which suggests that today's schoolchildren are unlikely to understand the importance of the Brown decision, thanks to sanitized textbooks:
...when I learned that my son's school intended to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that Supreme Court decision this spring, I felt somehow less inspired. The problem was not the principle, but the context: The child in question, who is admittedly very young, has yet to be introduced to the concepts of "Constitution" and "Supreme Court." Maybe they'll get to that eventually, but he hasn't learned much about such matters as the "American Revolution" and "George Washington" either, not to mention "slavery," except what he picked up on the family trip to Mount Vernon...
...Nowadays, history is too often drained of any meaning, left- or right-wing, whatsoever. Partly this is because history, unlike math or science, doesn't lend itself easily to standardized tests....
But testing alone isn't the problem. Recently a group called the American Textbook Council reviewed the standard world history textbooks used between sixth and 12th grades in schools across the country. They found a huge variety of staggering flaws, from phony attempts at relevance, such as comparisons of Odysseus to Indiana Jones, to bad writing and design...
But the worst offense is a tone of cheerful, sanitized neutrality so overwhelming that it actually renders the prose ahistorical. Thus in a section on "Life Behind the Iron Curtain," middle-schoolers are taught both that "Communist governments in Eastern Europe granted their people few freedoms," and that "in some ways, Communist governments did take care of their citizens...
...in a unit on the Industrial Revolution, students are asked how they would react if forced to become child laborers -- "Would you join a union, go to school, or run away?" -- as if there actually were unions, universal education and places for children to run to in early-19th century Britain. Thus in a chapter on Africa, the word "tribe" is carefully avoided...
The issue, then, is not merely the absence of the dead white men: The issue is the absence of both dead white men and slavery, the absence of both the Constitution and the violence that was used to preserve it. To put it differently, the issue is the low expectations we now have of our children, whom we too often judge incapable of hearing the truth.
Posted by kswygert at May 21, 2004 01:38 PM