When parents take an active role in their child’s education, perhaps this won’t be an issue. Until then, PG County will be the most affluent black county in the country with a sub-standard educational system.

And to that extent, the “experts” are right: kids need their parents to counteract the damage done by the curriculum. Shouldn’t have to be that way because not every child has dependable parents…duh.

I sort of noticed that. He even made reference to the many whites who want to see blacks do well (which caused a mild reaction of suprise from the audience).

Like the Kumon ads imply, you don’t teach kids music by throwing a Beethoven sonata up on the music stand and asking them to play it. You start at the beginning and teach precept on precept, and require PRACTICE until they get it right. It works in music, it works in baseball, it works in reading and math.

From what I’m seeing, society as a whole is not requiring enough out of our children. There is this attitude that a moment’s unhappiness and discomfort is torture and will turn the kid into a serial killer or something.

(2) The self-aggrandizing parade of ” so-called black intelligentsia” on the stage.

(3) The constant “bash whitey” rhetoric.

(4) Allowing Farrakhan’s hateful rhetoric to proceed unchallenged.
Yet I continue to watch these affairs, year in and year out, with the hope that something positive will come from them….but, alas….

Well, yeah, and that’s where the “experts” point in defense. They’ll always be able to use that out. But I think we would not have disintegrated like this were it not for the progressivist “whole math” and “whole language” curricula, watered-down “social studies” and feel-good science.

Blacks of Sowell’s generation used to do well and there was only a minor achievement gap. But they benefitted from good solid curriculum with traditional teaching methods.

Because the only real way of countering it is to do what was done at “fair Eastside” and that was to throw the troublemakers out. This was Joe Clark’s style and his style of school administration brought such a wrath upon him, that he eventually left public education. Few educators are willing to endure the attacks so they just endure the bad apples and put on a dog and pony show.

I watched most of the first panel which dealt with economics. I did not watch much of the second or third panel. I liked the Rev Flake’s response to a question about the success of another ethnic minority. In part of his response,
Rev Flake talked about knowing the proper spelling of ludicrous as oppose to spelling it the way the rapper spells it.

It is really as simple as that.

Look: short of mental inequities due to inbreeding, malnutrition or substance abuse damage, all of our kids are all capable of achievement.

I listened to Belafonte and Farrahkan do their demagogue best to blame black “failure” on white supremacy. The irony is that Belafonte’s mega-millions resulted from his popularity with white record and concert ticket buyers 50 years ago. Farrahkan has never strayed far from the “get whitie” diatribe.

There is NO general black failure in this country in 2006 that is due to entrenched racism or legal (de jure or de facto) discrimination.

When Jessie Jackson was going on his rampage a few years ago about “black” hamburger flippers at McDonalds being held in some sort of indentured servitude, I could only think of my friend Richard. Richard was a hamburger flipper who could not wait to get high school behind him and join the McDonald’s management team. He understood the benefits of 14 hour days and using the system. By the time he was thirty-five, he owned three franchises and is today a millionaire of such means that he sponsors major (redneck?) NASCAR drivers. Not bad for a black kid from the projects with a single mom.

Richard’s mom, however, was ever anxious to get advice. She was deficient in reading and writing skills, but she was dedicated to having her son succeed.

Sometimes success is measured in odd teaspoons. Richard sponsors his church as well as kids who demonstrate an honest desire to succeed and the free clinic in his old neighborhood. Sure, he has been “taken” a few times, but for the most part his instincts are dead on.

I wish I could say the same for the lame-brained government experts.