Why in Sam Hill would a sentient parent
send his child to any school of higher learning in America today when
"colleges across the country are alteringadmissions
requirements and curricul[a]" in order to "improve diversity ratios
on campus"?
Mind you, it is not to increase standards. No, the
changes involve "lowering of standards and a very clear implication that
students from certain backgrounds cannot score as high on tests as their peers
of a different melanin makeup."
When will this madness stop?
Instead of rooting out the reasons why students of color are doing
so poorly, the Left continues to use them as cannon fodder to control the
education of young American minds.
Why is it that the public education system has
failed so many of its black and Hispanic students? How is
the following possible?
[I]n America's public high schools, 45% of black students
and 43% of Hispanics (as compared to 22% of whites) drop out before
their classes graduate. Dropout rates are especially high in urban
areas with large minority populations, including such
academic basket cases as the District of Columbia (57%), Trenton (59%),
Camden (61.4%),
Baltimore (65.4%), Cleveland (65.9%), and Detroit (75.1%).
Of those black and Hispanic students who do manage to earn
a diploma, a large percentage are functionally illiterate. Black
high-school graduates perform, on average, at a level that is four
academic years below that of their white counterparts. Of
all graduates in the class
of 2011, only 11% of blacks and 15% of Hispanics were proficient in math,
as compared to 42% of whites. Similarly, just 13% of blacks and 4%
of Hispanics were proficient in reading, versus 40% of whites. As
political science professor Lydia Segal notes in her book, Battling
Corruption in America's Public Schools: "It is in cities such as New
York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia where the largest numbers
of children cannot read, write, and compute at acceptable levels and where
racial gaps between whites and blacks and Latinos are widest. It is
in large cities that minority boys in particular, trapped in poor schools, have
the greatest chance of flunking out and getting sucked into the downward spiral
of crime and prison."
These failed, inner-city schools are run entirely by
Democrats and progressives who, as author Jonah Goldberg points
out, have "controlled the large inner-city school systems for
generations." Indeed, the powerful teachers unions
overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party and its left-wing agendas; the
bureaucrats at the Department of Education overwhelmingly hold progressive
political and social views; and the ideological orientation of America's
teacher-training colleges is decidedly leftist. All of these factors have
combined to create the proverbial train wreck that is public education in the
United States today.
It has not
improved a whit since then.
But in the usual left-wing approach to problem-solving, instead of
genuinely addressing the substandard education that students receive, leftists
will claim there is insufficient funding, that testing is actually biased
against certain groups, and white privilege makes it
impossible for people of color to succeed. Then teacher unions will
advocate for failed programs such as whole language, new math, and a myriad of
other alleged solutions guaranteed to do one thing and one thing only: dumb
down the recipients of such theories. The Democrats
are onlytoo glad to accommodate.
Consequently, in 2019, "Stanford pushed a separate physics
course to ensure retention of 'underrepresented' physics
majors." Learning
assistants, AKA tutors, were hired to offer extra help with coursework
because Stanford educators believe that one reason for the decline by
"underrepresented minorities is that they feel physics is not relevant to
their communities[.]"
G-d help us when these underrepresented students enter the medical
field. Do you want a nursing student who has not mastered the basics
of his field administering your medicine? Is it racist or is it
reasonable to wonder if the black doctor really knows what she is doing or was
just passed along to make the diversity statistics look good? After
all, instructors are being told to grade women in the STEM
programs less harshly.
Rick Singer, at the center of the college admissions scandal,
would tell white families to lie about their race on college applications to
give the student a better advantage. What he did was egregious, but
what the colleges and universities are doing is equally vile, as affirmative
action is deliberately being used as a competitive advantage. The
rationale that using race will end racism is an indictment of the identity
politics that the Left continually promotes.
Scams abound. An ESL instructor at a four-year
university was queried as to the high number of Spanish-speaking
students. She explained that they were from predominantly local
Hispanic communities. They sign up for easy ESL classes and do well
and then have their more complicated classes — e.g., science — taught in
Spanish! When asked why these students, who had graduated American
high schools, were not proficient in English, the instructor explained that
they were products of bilingual education, with English as an afterthought —
yet another perfect example of the balkanization of classes meant to entitle
one group over another.
Common Core, which was launched in 2010 during the Obama
administration,was
funded by the oil-rich Muslim country Qatar, which also finances
terrorism. This is why history textbooks have large sections
dedicated to the Islamic faith, culture, and history, whereas Christianity and
Judaism get short shrift. Indoctrination in Islam trumps reading and
math readiness as scores continue to plummet.
Should someone attempt to change the Democrat/left-wing narrative,
he will be demeaned and excoriated. Just ask Candace
Owens. By the way, where are the Hispanic voices who rail
against the idea that their students cannot succeed by hard work and
studying? Aren't they insulted by the inference that their young
always need some handicap to succeed? Why is English proficiency an
afterthought? And why do Spanish-speaking students who are born in
the U.S. continue to speak of "their country" being Guatemala or the
Dominican Republic rather than America?
Instead, we are "graduating" students who cannot compute
simple numbers and have no idea where places are on a map. Their
vocabulary base is between the fifth and eighth grades; they have not been
taught the ideas of the Founding Fathers and, too often, are incapable of
thinking beyond the most superficial level. Colleagues of mine
whisper to each other, wondering if some of their students are actually
mentally retarded because of their inability to do basic college
work. It is not meant as an insult — it is a question based on
empirical observations concerning the steady decline of students' performance.
Parents must be at the forefront of the
demand to completely overhaul the behemoth that has left wisdom and
education way behind. Schools are no longer bastions of knowledge;
they are financial institutions that will do anything to maintain their
economic viability, no matter the real cost to the students in their
charge. The Left has found a willing partner in the schools of
higher learning. The educational establishments are working overtime
to maintain what has now become merely a business enterprise while the Left
continues to ram its progressive and dangerous ideas on the young and
impressionable. In fact, "thealliance
between the public education establishment and the march of
'progressivism' is as natural as anything could be."
Furthermore, "[a]s the poor quality of many public schools
has become increasingly evident over the last several decades, the education
establishment has become an utterly slavish ally of the political
left. It depends on the coercive fist of
government." Thus:
[T]he political left has become ever more reliant on the
education system (K-12 through college and beyond) to inculcate statist ideas
in people. If voters were inclined and able to think through the harmful
consequences of progressive policies such as minimum wage laws, welfare
payments, the Green New Deal, government-run health care, wealth taxes, and so
on, they would toss the leftists out of office.
Consequently, "it's no surprise that public schools are
ratcheting up their efforts at turning students into adults who will
automatically vote to keep their political allies in power. And that
calls for constant adjustments to the curriculum."
For example, in Seattle, the public schools have adopted a
new mathematics curriculum. Plain old math, you see, just had
answers that were objectively right or wrong. Ethnicity and social
justice had nothing to do with it. But the zealots of progressivism
couldn't allow a substantial element of the school day go by without any
expression of the grievances certain groups have against western civilization.
In the spirit of Jonathan Swift's
"Modest Proposal," perhaps we should just close all schools until
reason ensues and Americans can, once again, have faith that the doctor holding
the scalpel actually knows what he is doing. It would be gratifying
if American students could be genuinely proud of that piece of paper they receive
at the end of four years.
Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/education_and_business_an_incestuous_relationship.html
