re: #341 Decatur Deb

Another change is that we are making an honest and difficult effort to educate everyone to a decent level. In my father’s generation minorities and many rural whites were not expected to hit or exceed eighth grade. The “failures” of today would not even be given a real chance then—they wouldn’t be in the numbers anyone worried about.

This is very true. Even rural white poor of my grandfather’s generation weren’t expected to finish school. My grandmother quit at 16 (in the Depression) to help support her family. My grandfather went through 8th grade and was done.

But it’s really easy to “blame” a segment of the problem to reinforce a particular political narrative. There are good teachers and bad. Teachers’ unions can be an obstacle or an asset. Parents can have no time, money, or support, or there can be two of them and they can have lots of time and money and provide support. But how do you identify the intangibles, like the kids who are growing up with good self-esteem but no idea who Darwin is? A single-parent family can provide a background that values education and provides basic scientific literacy to kids. But a teacher with 30 kids in the classroom is not going to be able to provide an environment outside the class where Darwin is discussed or where education is valued.
My son went to a great public high school (one of the top in the country). And we still had to be involved in and engaged with his educational process. Most of his teachers were excellent; some sucked. My daughter’s in a private high school in the same city for various reasons. But one thing that was outstanding about my son’s school is that all the kids who were there were motivated to be there and they were competitive for success. But the group was self-selecting for excelling in education. How do you recreate that across the city, across the state, across the nation? You have people like my sister who has four kids and no college degree as far back as you can see. They don’t value education or college and their children aren’t being raised to value education or college. But we come from the same demographic background. Anyway, my daughter’s school, which is a private school so again it’s already self-selecting, in the college prep track she’s encountering kids who are singling her out for being successful. We are going to try to move her to the advanced track so that she can have an experience similar to that of my son, who was in a competitive environment where everyone tried to be successful. [tbc]