[monocle]

What you think is obvious may not be so. Look at the frontpage of many local newspapers as well as nationally distributed newspapers and over a period time you will see sport stories outnumbering education stories twenty to one. the same holds with this forum with threads relating to sports and the entertainment industry vastly outnumbering, both in numbers and length, threads relating to education. National spelling bees and geography contests are the closest this nation comes to promoting the importance of education and this miserly attemption pales to tne national audience for the merely for image Oscar awards or the Super Bowl.

To me it is far less obvious than you would have us believe.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Our national space program inspired students and they went into math and science fields. Now NASA is searching for a mission and education is floundering.

A return to the Moon to stay, would give them both new life.

November 6, 2003 - Senate Hearing on Lunar Exploration

[Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek]

You're quite correct. Anyone who thinks this anti-learning attitude is peculiar to black culture (non-culture?) has their head in the sand. While US graduate education has a lot to offer, too frequently (especially in the math and science related disciplines) the majority of advanced degrees are earned by foreign students. And American undergraduates routinely gravitate to "fluff" majors with minimal intellectual challenge and maximum opportunity to slip through to their BA with pure BS.

Getting "the credential" and getting out is the goal for too many, and they are acquiring this 'get my ticket stamped and get out' mentality from their primary and secondary education experience. Student's intrinsic love of learning is flushed out of them by the time they get through the third grade and, absent strong countermeasures at home, it never returns for most of them, even when their formal schooling is over.

[patj]

I do think that it is obvious. Parents should be the ones instilling this, not the newspaper. Immigrants that could not speak or write english made sure that their children got an education so they could better themselves. Most parents want to see their children do better than they did.