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Black Education Tragedy
Townhall.com ^ | July 10, 2013 | Walter E. Williams

Posted on 07/10/2013 4:50:50 AM PDT by Kaslin

As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman's defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin's mother. She responded that she doesn't read cursive, and that's in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills.

Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without being able to read cursive writing? That's a skill one would expect from a fourth-grader. Jeantel is by no means an exception at her school. Here are a few achievement scores from her school: Thirty-nine percent of the students score basic for reading, and 38 percent score below basic. In math, 37 percent score basic, and 50 percent score below basic. Below basic is the score when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. Basic indicates only partial mastery.

Few Americans, particularly black Americans, have any idea of the true magnitude of the black education tragedy. The education establishment might claim that it's not their fault. They're not responsible for the devastation caused by female-headed families, drugs, violence and the culture of dependency. But they are totally responsible for committing gross educational fraud. It's educators who graduated Jeantel from elementary and middle school and continued to pass her along in high school. It's educators who will, in June 2014, confer upon her a high-school diploma.

It's not just Florida's schools. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, nationally most black 12th-graders test either basic or below basic in reading, writing, math and science. Drs. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom wrote in their 2004 book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," "Blacks nearing the end of their high school education perform a little worse than white eighth-graders in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and geography." Little has changed since the book's publication.

Drexel University history and political science professor George Ciccariello-Maher disapprovingly says that the reaction to Jeantel's court performance "has been in terms of aesthetics, of disregarding a witness on the basis of how she talks, how good she is at reading and writing." Harking back to Jim Crow days, he adds: "These are subtle things that echo literacy testing at the polls, echo the question of whether black Americans can testify against white people, of being always suspect in their testimony. It's the same old dynamics emerging in a very different guise." Then there's Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, who says: "Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it's already dying, despite having been taught for decades." That's the kind of educational philosophy that accounts for much of our nation's educational decline.

The educational system and black family structure and culture have combined to make increasing numbers of young black people virtually useless in the increasingly high-tech world of the 21st century. Too many people believe that pouring more money into schools will help. That's whistlin' "Dixie." Whether a student is black or white, poor or rich, there are some minimum requirements that must be met in order to do well in school. Someone must make the student do his homework, see to it that he gets a good night's sleep, fix a breakfast, make sure he gets to school on time and make sure he respects and obeys his teachers. Here are my questions: Which one of those requirements can be achieved through a higher school budget? Which can be achieved by politicians? If those minimal requirements aren't met, whatever else is done is mostly for naught.

I hope Rachel Jeantel's court performance is a wake-up call for black Americans about the devastation wrought by our educational system.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: africanamericans; blackstudents; education; georgezimmerman; jeantel; minorities; tragedy; trayvonmartin; walterwilliams
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1 posted on 07/10/2013 4:50:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Leave it to Walter Williams to not defend the use of “Black English”


2 posted on 07/10/2013 4:53:10 AM PDT by Artie (We are surrounded by MORONS)
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To: Kaslin

As long as they see getting an education as “acting white” they will continue to score poorly.


3 posted on 07/10/2013 4:56:16 AM PDT by NRA1995 (I'd rather be a living "gun culture" member than a dead anti-gun candy-ass.)
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To: Kaslin
But succeeding in school is "acting white" and they don't want to act white.

So let them be ignorant savages if that's what they want to be. But then don't let them complain when white folks won't hire them because they are ignorant savages. Don't let them complain when we don't want our children to associate with them. Don't let them complain when we don't want them in our neighborhoods.

If they insist on not being like us, then let them be separate from us.

It's not "discrimination" to refuse to hire the stupid

(And while I'm in rant mode. Who really gives a flying fig if a private business discriminates anyway? Anti-discrimination laws are a direct violation of the first ammendment feedom of association!)

4 posted on 07/10/2013 4:59:28 AM PDT by John O (God Save America (Please))
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To: NRA1995

Why do teachers continue to promote students who obviously are failing? I blame the dems for wanting to keep black students ignorant. Blacks are not inherently dumb. There are examples of charter and private schools where black students excel. Of course parents need to be involved, but it’s even more than that. Who benefits from keeping blacks ignorant and dependent on government for everything? Certainly not republicans.


5 posted on 07/10/2013 5:01:10 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
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To: Kaslin

It’s OK , she’ll get a job at the DMV and will live a good life making yours a living hell.


6 posted on 07/10/2013 5:01:36 AM PDT by Neidermeyer (I used to be disgusted , now I try to be amused.)
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To: Kaslin
The truth of the matter is that the liberal government at large does not want a well-educated population.

Sure, it realizes that there is some need for well and highly educated elite-class citizens, mainly to scheme the furtherance of liberalism and to keep the wheels in motion to sustain the economy. But, largely it also realizes that a ubiquitously well educated population can spell trouble. It further realizes that some of the population will get educated regardless of the curriculum, and they need only politically brainwash these few.

Trouble, because a good education instills actual thinking for oneself. Free-thought, new ideas, actual understanding of how things work is dangerous in the eyes of this government.

So government intentionally makes it hard for the general populace to get anything out of their education. For the dumb masses, government only wants them to be educated enough to run a trash bin lift on a garbage truck, work a picture menu driven cash register while learning how to say “do you want fries with that?”

They instead, encourage even, these masses to get their ‘social educations’ from rappers; Twitter; daytime TV with lawyer ads all day telling them how to sue somebody, get disability, etc.

7 posted on 07/10/2013 5:03:41 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: John O

But, like liberals in general,

they use the guns of the State to make us support their dysfunctionality.


8 posted on 07/10/2013 5:04:50 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Artie
I hope Rachel Jeantel's court performance is a wake-up call for black Americans about the devastation wrought by our educational system.

Good luck. Around here they could care less.

9 posted on 07/10/2013 5:05:31 AM PDT by DCBryan1 (No realli, moose bytes can be quite nasti!!)
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To: Kaslin
I hope Rachel Jeantel's court performance is a wake-up call for black Americans about the devastation wrought by our educational system.

Now when will whites get a wake up call that the exact same is happening to their kids?
10 posted on 07/10/2013 5:05:45 AM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: Artie
American culture has been hijacked by sub-standard English speakers.

It's been going on for a long time. It is hand in hand with the complete lack of breeding and refinement which is apparent in young people ... especially young women. Their slatternly and grotesquely unrefined conduct and appearance are appalling! I see NOW that it is the default and NOT the exception in all commercial advertising.

I make it a point to boycott any product promoted in this way.

I screen as much of this as possible OUT of my life and my environment.

11 posted on 07/10/2013 5:12:20 AM PDT by SMARTY ("The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms." H. Amiel)
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To: Kaslin

In the book “The Bell Curve” the various bell curves of intelligence, civil behavior explain a lot with non-emotional statistics so of course the Saul Alinsky lovers of the world had to attack the books’ author Richard J. Herrnstein.

It was very easy for the intellectually deficient liberals to attack Mr Herrnstein as he had died prior to the books’ publication.

If certain groups would rather be offended than identifying the problem and then developing a learning method to minimize or eliminate the problem, then we will continue to have generations of urban apes posing as humans.

Without exception, any group, be they defined by race, religion, national origin... the ease at which they can be offended is inversely proportional to their intelligence or their belief systems’ value. The hate cult of Islam is the perfect example.


12 posted on 07/10/2013 5:14:30 AM PDT by Wurlitzer (Nothing says "ignorance" like Islam! 969)
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To: Kaslin

Am I the only one who see’s the lie being told here,.

Zimmerman’s defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin’s mother.

Obviously she did not write the letter.You cannot write cursive if you cannot read cursive. If she cannot read the letter she alledgedly wrote then she didn’t write it.The letter is a lie.

Now let me put my racist two cents in.
All over the country black scores are lower than whites.
Teachers have to teach to the slowest kid in class. That means those kids like this one are holding back the class. White kids scores are going down too, even as we spend more money on education.As long as we have people like this sloing down our classes that trend will continue, but of course we cannot have special classes for these people, That would be discrimination.

We continue to blame this trend on parents and teachers and the school system, when the fact is that in general blacks do not learn as well as whites. We never admit to that fact, because that is racist.
BS,it’s fact.

Meanwhile we toss money at a problem that can be solved simply.
Take black and white exceptional students and teach them at their level and place these students that cannot or will not learn in a class where they can waste the taxpayers money in some productive way.

This woman will come out of school with a High School Education, a Diploma and wonder why no one will hire her stupid azz and blame it on her color.

She will get an Affirmative Action job somewhere in Government-—probably working at the Obamacare computer that keeps your medical records.


13 posted on 07/10/2013 5:14:40 AM PDT by Venturer
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To: Neidermeyer

Or Post Office counter.........


14 posted on 07/10/2013 5:14:47 AM PDT by PeteB570 ( Islam is the sea in which the Terrorist Shark swims. The deeper the sea the larger the shark.)
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To: Kaslin

“She responded that she doesn’t read cursive, and that’s in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills. Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School.”

Yeah, but they have a hell of a football team!.......isn’t that what’s really important in lfe anyway? /s/


15 posted on 07/10/2013 5:17:58 AM PDT by V_TWIN
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To: V_TWIN

Why do these articles always ignore the fact that she claimed to have written the letter,
then says she can’t even read it because it’s in cursive?


16 posted on 07/10/2013 5:18:57 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Kaslin

I’ve long felt that when the Democrats lost the civil rights issue, they came up with Welfare as a means of continuing the oppression of minorities. If you look into these communities, you will see the direct consequence of the “Welfare Rewards Program.” Fatherless homes with the most kids get the most money. The women get the checks and adult males just roam from house to house impregnating single women. The result - a bunch of unwanted, unloved feral kids roaming around killing each other.


17 posted on 07/10/2013 5:21:27 AM PDT by IamConservative (The soul of my lifes journey is Liberty!)
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To: Kaslin

Ignorance is a strategy to keep blacks in the RAT column.


18 posted on 07/10/2013 5:21:36 AM PDT by SC_Pete
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To: MrB

“Why do these articles always ignore the fact that she claimed to have written the letter,
then says she can’t even read it because it’s in cursive?”

Yeah, I kind of thought that was technically obstruction or perjury and the court did nothing.


19 posted on 07/10/2013 5:25:33 AM PDT by V_TWIN
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To: MrB

She was hard to understand to say the least, but at one point during her testimony she said that she told someone what to say and they wrote it for her.

True? I don’t know.


20 posted on 07/10/2013 5:31:47 AM PDT by Heart of Georgia
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