Why are ignorant people put in charge of something as important as education? It is astounding that anyone in their right mind would entrust their children to dim-witted administrators and pencil-pushers who believe the best for black children isn’t excellence, high achievement and dignity, but mediocrity, lowered expectations, empty accolades and high self-esteem.
Apparently too many students were failing classes or flunking out altogether at Benedict College, in my home state. Administrators decided to spread the poverty of lowered standards by scrapping traditional methods of measuring aptitude and base students’ grades on “effort” rather than actual work completed or knowledge gained.
When white liberals do this sort of thing, I’m neither surprised nor shocked because I know they have no concern for blacks’ education. But I’m always astounded when black people themselves do things like this, no matter how often or how widespread the incidents.
Despite what my detractors think, I want the best for black people. That is not to say I don’t care about anyone else. But let’s face it: there is a certain kinship one feels toward members of one’s own sub-culture, or “family”, and I can admit that. Why some blacks are so willing to accept scraps from the table instead of the choicest fare is something I’ll go to my grave wondering.
But I digress. As if the dumbed-down government school education black children receive isn’t bad enough, Benedict, an historically black college, is complicit in the miseducation. I’d heard about what Benedict was doing months ago, but Walter Williams’s latest column put it back on my radar screen. He writes:
Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., enforces an academic policy that defies belief. Say I’m a freshman taking your class in biology. I learn little from your lectures, assigned readings and homework. I do attend class every day, take notes and manage to average 40 percent on the graded work for the semester. What grade might you give me? I’m betting that all but the academic elite would say, “Sorry, Williams, but no cigar,” and I’d earn an F for the course. But if you’re a professor at Benedict College and gave me that F, you’d be fired….SEE [Success Equals Effort] is a policy where 60 percent of a freshman’s grade is based on effort and the rest on academic performance. In a student’s sophomore year, the formula drops to 50-50, and it isn’t used at all for junior and senior years. In defense of his policy, Benedict’s president, Dr. David H. Swinton, said that the students “have to get an A in effort [?!] to guarantee that if they fail the subject matter, they can get the minimum passing grade. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
According to a story published by Columbia’s The State newspaper (www.thestate.com, Aug. 20, 2004), Milwood Motley said the policy compromises the integrity of Benedict. Students are being passed to increase student retention by falsely boosting academic performance. When professors Motley and Williams assigned grades based upon academic performance, Motley said the administration “told us to go back and recalculate the grades, and I just refused to do it.” At that point, Dr. Swinton fired both for insubordination.
Dr. William Gunn, a faculty member for 40 years and president of Benedict College’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, is dead set against the policy and believes most other faculty are as well. Writing in The State (Sept. 22, 2004), Dr. Gunn says the SEE policy not only harms today’s student but as well Benedict graduates who will see their degrees come under suspicion.
Dr. Swinton’s policy borders on lunacy.
For all the high-toned intentions of the SEE program, it’s all the same lower standards stuff. More often I’d like to read a comment from a liberal who actually understands why this is harmful instead of the same old comments that defy common sense. Change is good (hint).
Education writer Joanne Jacobs also wrote about this. She calls SEE the “Low Standards Equals Failure” plan. Jacobs is much too kind. Then again, if she said anything harsher she’d be called a racist, the number one conversation stopper. (Don’t fall for it!) I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that.
I contend that the president of Benedict College received a sub-par education himself, and because he’s “got his” he couldn’t give a **** about students at the school. The SEE program is just more of the same racist garbage that’s rampant in government education anyway.
While liberals are falsely accusing me of “self-hatred”, they fail to see that what Swinton is doing and what parents are allowing fall under the vile accusation, not anything I’ve ever said or written on this blog. But my liberal detractors prefer to harp on my opinions rather than on misguided cogs in the machine like Swinton.
By the way, that two men who stood up against this error were fired shouldn’t surprise you. Expect more of the same, especially if Democrats end up in the White House.
Addendum: Did this guy go to Harvard? No wonder he thinks this hare-brained scheme is a good idea!
