No Excuses (C-SPAN Booknotes - 8pm Eastern)

C-SPAN Booknotes ^ | 1Feb04

[leadpenny]

Booknotes
No Excuses
C-SPAN
Washington, District of Columbia (United States)

Thernstrom, Abigail, Commissioner, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

[leadpenny]

She is the sane voice on the Commission chaired by Mary Francis Berry

Should be replayed at 11pm Eastern for you Super Bowl fans.

[leadpenny]

"No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning"

[Dr. Scarpetta]

BUMP

[Jimmy Valentine]

The average black child leaves high school approximately FOUR YEARS behind in learning than white children.

Calling Eleanor Holmes Norton - what about vouchers now you nappy headed b**ch?

Regards

[Dr. Scarpetta]

I like her, but I never heard of her before this show. She's very interesting.

[billorites]

This week's Book Notes got burried by the SuperBowl.

Nobody saw this.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

I found a page at Simon & Shuster where you can post a comment to Abigail Thernstrom. I'm going to send a comment.


http://www.simonandschuster.com/content/content.cfm?sid=33&pid=355650&app=post_a_comment

[Intolerant in NJ]

An excellent presentation, rich in discussion and statistics on why "culture matters" in the success or failure kids encounter in school - especially interesting info on the accomplishments of Asian children in comparison to other groups - while only 4% of the US population, Asians make up 27% of this year's class at MIT and 15% at Harvard, etc. - apparently because their parents have "stars in their eyes" about the ability to get ahead in America, while others have just the opposite feeling, and push their kids to take advantage of the opportunities given them....

She also talks about the "moral pedestal" on which Cambridge, Mass., schools place themselves in pushing "progressive" ideas such as busing children - "moving children around is not the way to improve education", she says. Forty years ago while running my dissertation in a couple of west Philly elementary schools I got a brief glimpse of early attempts at busing - each morning a bus would roll up to the mixed population school building and unload its cargo of black children who would immediately go en masse to a far corner of the schoolyard, remaining there looking dismal and forlorn until the bell rang for them to go inside - they seemed no more "integrated" into the life of the school and community than did I, an adult visitor there only a few days a week for a few months. Books like the Thernstroms' could go a long way in getting educators to see the errors of their ways - if they could be enticed to read them.......