Muse – Race and Education

Race has been brought up a lot recently on TV and radio. Mostly because of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. That would be the Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation in public schools. Rightly so as the term separate but equal was anything but.

Of course, when one aspect of race comes up, it’ll eventually give rise to a host of others as discussion and debate twist this way and that.

The US has improved considerably the last fifty years. Perfect? Not at all, but things are getting better and have the potential tog et even better with time and the example of those who can shed the prejudices of the past. And as it should be, it behooves us to muse what we have wrought in the past and consider if it is still necessary.

While race is still an issue at times, mostly with those who still hold conscious or unconscious prejudices, the need to give consideration for race as an equalizing factor has declined. For the most part, if someone is focused and determined to succeed, they will despite their skin color. There are some exceptions, but such is to be expected for the time being.

Wealth is more of a dividing factor today, as it becomes easier to succeed when you have the money to hack up your attempts. Where affirmative action was once needed to equalize things in terms of race, I think it should be adjusted now to focus on assisting those who are poor rather than those who are black.

Most of the problems with advancement are a matter of either financial status(lack of money to afford college effectively eliminates it as an option) or simple lack of desire. No amount of help will mater for those who don’t care. Not until their desire is roused.

Which leads us to what should be the primary focus in advancing the underprivileged. Education. Education is where it all starts. Without education the desire and the means won’t be there to succeed and it will be near impossible for someone to do be anything but an inconsequential cog in the machine or an aberrant glitch destined to be excised.

Schools are one of our main weaknesses. Everyone knows we need to fund them. Everyone knows we need to make them better. But what everyone can’t agree on is how to do it and what to teach. Thus we struggle and fight each other in an effort to impose our vision on the whole and all the while years pass with class after class peppered with those who slip through without the proper education and without the proper determination to excel and make themselves better. Both to serve society and themselves.

Schools are improperly funded and teachers often inadequately trained. Not only in terms of their chosen teaching subject, but in terms of how to engage and light the spark of imagination in the young. Nor does the system itself help, where most classes are less than interesting to those without the desire to learn and advance.

Where we should have commissions of experts studying education and how best to craft a skillful curriculum that both teaches the basics and instills a hunger for knowledge, instead we have the fragmented guessing game that makes for a disorderly and less effective system. Instead of openly teaching all possibilities, we quibble over whether we should teach Creationism or Darwinism.

Why not teach both? Not one of us holds the keys to ultimate truth. Only the heirs to our tarnished legacy have the chance to discover that. We should equip them for any circumstance and let them build upon what we have all laid as a foundation of learning and possibility. Children should be taught of belief and will, faith and focus. They will believe what they will, better to show them all that there is to believe in life and allow them to make the best possible decision for themselves.

What we need is a national basis for school curriculum. Not a plan for indoctrination, but a destination where we would like all of our kids to be. How teaches get there is irrelevant, so long as the kids test well. We need to focus money intelligently, rather than using it as a carrot to force schools to struggle or be cut off. Problem schools should be focused on and studied. What do they need? Supplies? Get it for them. Better teachers? Find them and recruit them. Better facilities? Repair them. Let’s stop pussyfooting over the cost and do what needs to be done. Increasing the education of our populace will reap a return of greater prosperity. It’s money invested in the future.

I’ve grown tired of the debates about education. They end up with us spinning our wheels and going nowhere. Race is no longer a factor. Where you live and the environment you grow up in has more bearing. The type of teachers and the resources of your school are more a factor. The parents are more of a factor. A kid who lives in poverty, has piss poor teachers and a rundown school is less likely to excel than a kid who has a comfortable life, great teachers and a top of the line school. That is simple fact. There are some exceptions, but exceptions are extraordinary(in the good or bad). What we need to focus on are the general trends. We need to study them openly and honestly, to find where we need improvements.

Otherwise we’ll continue to languish and in time I can imagine our status as a superpower diminishing as other countries grow in wealth, learning and technology. It might not happen soon, but over time it could. Empires rarely crash in a day, but often the signs of decline are deadly in their subtlety.