Posted on 10/06/2005 8:43:07 AM PDT by InvisibleChurch
The Washington DC public school system is essentially all black, and has been among the most expensive in the country for years. For 2005, spending was $13,330 per student which is more than any other state, and about 50% more than the national average.
With all that money, they've built one of the worst education systems in the country.
What a bunch of touchy-feely, psycho-babble nonsense. I really hope you are kidding. If that were really true, than none of the millions of immigrants who came to the U.S. in the early 1900's would have made it. And history tells us that isn't true. How much hope did they have living in dirty overcrowded conditions. No clothes, shoes, certainly no welfare; many didn't even know the language. The one thing they did have was pride. They wanted to make a life for themselves and their children at any cost. They valued their family. They would have been highly embarassed to not work....learn the language...or do well for their families. There are no values or ethics in the current generations of the welfare culture. One reason why there are very few Asians among welfare recipients is their cultural values.
I am not diminishing the accomplishments of those that did, but that is simply not true. (BTW my grandparents lived & died in the "ghetto", I spent a lot of time each week in spanish harlem. It was every disgusting thing that you think of including vermin, roaches, urine in the halls, junkies on the street and the pervading sweet smell of decaying garbage in the vestibule.)
I will grant you that if your parents are firmly set in the ghetto mentality, it is hard to see another way. But simply exposure to alternatives opens doors. Now that may mean things as simple as a job at McDonald's or outside the neighborhood, church programs, a magnet school that mixes kids from different backgrounds, scouting programs, military service, a couple of smart friends, etc.
I work at a college that has traditionally catered to 1st generation college students (as I was). We have students from some of the worst neighborhoods & schools in NYC, many in mentoring programs to help retention rates. Many are receiving HUGE amounts of financial aid. There is MUCH MORE help available now than there was before. College was not even a dream for poor families, like my father's in the bowery (lower east side Italian ghetto) or my mother's in spanish harlem.
A much higher percentage of young people attend college than 40 years ago, PARTICULARLY minority students. I'm pretty sure you would agree that education is the fastest ticket out of poverty. In fact I've read that it is the MOST relavant factor in studies of income disparity. More of a factor than family income background, race, sex and immigration status or geography (rural/urban).
There is much more opportunity to get out of poverty now. You don't have to be a super-hero. But I will agree that those that have isolated themselves and their families, particularly through substance abuse, ARE firmly entrenched. If the opportunities are there, and you turn your back and refuse to make the effort for either yourself or your kids, who is to blame?
I think they were at a disadvantage BEFORE 1965 too. I know there were many more prosperous minorities in the inner city before 1965 (they left for the same reasons the whites left the inner cities). But there was always an underclass of poor in the inner cities. And not just "minorities," if by that you mean African-American.
You can't help to have a bad attitude when you have been at a disadvantage the whole time your people have been in a country.
I don't think my mother-in-law's family in a town named Mine 7, PA or something like that had a great attitude either. When she got tired of saving flour sacks for recycling into washcloths and canning food so the family would have something during winter, she left. Those eastern european coal miners in PA were at some disadvantage too. She left to do piece-work in NYC and send some money to her mother. I guess she had a bad attitude too, but that didn't stop her from trying to do more than just survive.
So what? Am I responsible? What do I owe to a person in Chicago I don't owe to a person in Calcutta?
Again, so what? Do you have a point to make? What is it?
It may also eliminate the need for special education and failing schools. Amen.
I think you need to take a hike newbie.
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