Can the article in the New York Times live up to the stupidity of its sub-headline?
Urban Schools Aiming Higher Than Diploma
There’s a growing sense of urgency among educators that every student should be on a college track.
I'm too depressed to click and see.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
This Sara Rimer is an obvious racist and must be fired immediately by the NYT!
ReplyDeletePeople of truly good will know that every schoolchild in America must be properly prepared for a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, with most simultaneously earning an advanced degree in statistical evolutionary-biology. And the students of urban Detroit should also be studying ancient Sanskrit and Homeric Greek to compensate them for decades of educational neglect!
Sara Rimer is a racist! Sara Rimer is a racist!
This is pretty narrowly focused on academics. The most that will get you is some shelppy middle-class desk job with a bunch of dorky Whites and Asians.
ReplyDeleteWhy not put sports and music back into the deprived urban schools and aim high as well? I don’t see why each and every one of these students can’t be trained to become multi-million dollar NBA 1st round draft pick straight out of H.S. or entourage-like MTV rock star. Anything less is the pernicious racism of low expectations.
Relax, Steve. I read the article and the college track referred to is the athletics one.
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right, the article asks why ever student can't win a gold medal in the Olympics track & field competition.
ReplyDeleteAll this at a time when an ever-growing fraction of white males are eschewing college to go directly into a skilled trade. ["Symbolic analysis" type jobs are the absolute worst place to be in a globalizing economy - you're competing with an entire planet who can ship their work product can via Internet. HVAC work is a lot harder to outsource.]
ReplyDeleteTrust a government bureaucracy like public education to jump on a wave that's already broken and find yet another way to screw minorities by miseducating them.
wow, the second paragraph is about how a teacher walks students to the SAT building so they won't get lost. That sounds like the sort of "life skills" training given to "special needs" kids in schools. So the theory is, if kids who need help learning to tie their shoes in high school are adequately enabled to take the SAT, everyone will go to Harvard. finally, racial disparities explained, all the really genius blacks got lost on the way to the SAT's, after their dogs ate their homework for 12 years straight.
ReplyDeletedepressing is right
It gets better!
ReplyDelete“For a long time we believed in the ‘some kids’ agenda,” Dr. Deasy said. “Some kids will go to college, some kids will go to the work force, some kids can go to the military. That’s garbage. We believe that every kid can learn at a high level and that college is for every child.”
And at least one of the commenters on the article seems to be an isteve reader:
We have urban high schools where over half the students drop out before graduation, but we're going to send two-thirds to college? This is only possible if college is made the academic equivalent of middle school. In an urban high school, over half the students typically have IQs below 90. They cannot possibly benefit from an abstract educational courses much beyond basic skills. An humane educational system would prepare them vocationally with a set of practical skills they could actually use to avoid poverty or prison. But this doesn't interest the self-serving education bureaucracy.
Oh come on. The article has some great ideas: How about an English class where they throw a party for you if you complete an college application essay?! Cake and balloons would convince me to go to college and would motivate me to do well there. Don't be such a party pooper.
ReplyDeleteHuh? I read no so thing.
ReplyDelete“For a long time we believed in the ‘some kids’ agenda,” Dr. Deasy said. “Some kids will go to college, some kids will go to the work force, some kids can go to the military. That’s garbage. We believe that every kid can learn at a high level and that college is for every child.”
He added, “If a student chooses not to go to college, that is O.K.”
"At Excel High School, in South Boston, teachers do not just prepare students academically for the SAT; they take them on practice walks to the building where the SAT will be given so they won’t get lost on the day of the test."
ReplyDeleteThe tone of the article is pretty much summed up in the first paragraph. "Practice walks to the building where the SAT will be given"??? Why not pin the students' names on their shirts, so they can at least enter that information correctly? Wasn't there an old story years ago that you get 500 points or something like that for just filling in your name?
Brave new world indeed!
The four slogans of the Party, on display everywhere, are:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH!!!
My idea is this.
ReplyDeleteIslam = Peace
Diversity = Strength
Democracy = Freedom
"Excel High School, in South Boston..."
ReplyDeleteNo wonder why things are so effed up. They named the place after a Microsoft program!
When they graduate from Excel High School, they can go to the University of Powerpoint.
ReplyDeleteOk, I read this. The funniest part was about giving high school students more than the basics so that they could graduate from college rather than merely gain admittance. What a novel idea.
ReplyDeleteWhen they graduate from Excel High School, they can go to the University of Powerpoint.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but their job Outlook will be so dim they'll have to Access unemployment.
Word.
“We don’t know yet how to get everyone in our society to this level of knowledge and skills,” said Michele Cahill, a vice president at the Carnegie Corporation, which, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is financing many of the new efforts.
ReplyDeleteRight now, if I recall correctly, about 27% of Americans earn college degrees. So if you want to increase the number of college graduates by say 50%, where would you go to do that? Presumably, to the kids in the 59th-73rd percentiles, right?
But my perception of the efforts of groups like the Carnegie and Gates Foundations is that they're not focusing on people in that range. Very few kids at the "urban" schools where they're spending all their money are even 60th percentile.
There is, indeed, a lot of wasted potential in the US. But it's not in the inner city schools - it's in the middle class white schools in the middle range kids who mostly get forgotten by a society that spends so much money and energy on kids in the very bottom.
"groups like the Carnegie and Gates Foundations"
ReplyDeleteIronic, since Bill Gates is a college dropout and Andrew Carnegie went to work at a cotton mill at 13.
What was the Heinlein novel where every citizen of a future California was automatically awarded a college degree at age 22?
What was the Heinlein novel where every citizen of a future California was automatically awarded a college degree at age 22?
ReplyDeleteNovel? I thought that was the Democratic Party platform...