The major problem with vouchers is that some folks get pissed off when they see a little brown kid sitting next to their kid. Some people see them as an entitlement rather than an equalizer.
It’s a case of people talking a good game, but falling short on the court.

And, I’m talking about money from the major players in the black community (like Oprah, although you have to be African to get money from her these days. Or maybe Bill Cosby.) to set up these urban academies. The example I think of all the time is Spike Lee. When he started making studio films, he couldn’t find black people for various positions because the unions would shut them out of the apprenticeships necessary to become a grip, for example. He really opened up the crew side of the film industry for blacks.

Excellent ideas.

Vouchers would help a great deal in bringing your ideas about, or at least among a much broader segment of the black community.

Of course they are anathema to the teachers unions, other public sector unions in solidarity, and hence the Democrat party.

I have a very well-placed source in a high-income community whose kids do very well on standardized tests. Here’s the problem. They get help from the teachers so they don’t fail. These test scores are used as bait by the town to get families with kids to buy there so they can grow the tax base.

I really think we in the black community should pull our kids out of public schools and establish private academies that stress the basics. And, I’m talking about the foundations of Western civilization, not some type of Black Panther indoctrination centre. That won’t get our kids anywhere in the global economy.

However, there is a place to discuss the black experience in the context of the founding of this country. But, I would focus on the people who prospered in spite of our “situation”. We also have to teach that these things would not have been possible in any other country in the world.
The principle of equality, not equal outcomes, has been America’s greatest gift.

Where mental effort really makes a difference is in elementary school. And even more so, before that. Which is why playing with erector sets or legos and reading increasingly elaborate stories to your kids and exposing them to complex rather than only jungle rhythm music at an early age can make a difference. As can hearing and learning at least orally another language before grade school, which regrettably was an advantage I didn’t have. But all of these things tend to require bright parents, or at the very least a bright peer group that the parents talk and compare themselves to (my Johnny is a wiz at building stuff with legos and can’t listen to enough Wind in the Willows, how about yours?) It’s another mechanism by which intelligence is heavily heritable (always with a certain genetic roulette wheel factor), in addition to genes.

The thing is for smarter people it’s less of an effort to get the requisite mental exercise. Instead it tends to be fun. That is they tend to love reading, rather than finding it a chore or always preferring physical play, and often like math problems, as a kind of puzzle they’re good at. They often play with science experiments as a hobby that no one pushed them into. I built a shortwave radio from parts as a kid in 7th grade, and before that built rockets (sometimes successful, sometimes not) in the back yard, not from any kit. Even earlier like in 4th grade or so, my parents tried to keep me from staying up in bed reading too late, but after the flashlight under the covers failed me in avoiding being busted, I taped the bottom of my door and rigged a tin foil relay switch to the door that instantly turned off my light. And read sometimes into the wee hours for fun. Then they just gave up, but cautioned me if I was getting too tired.

Hence the most effective teaching styles for different levels of intelligence are quite different. For the more gifted the most important thing is to keep them interested by showing the way to increasing levels of intellectual challenge, as rapidly as they can handle them, so long as the basic foundations have (demonstrably) been firmly mastered. For the less bright, repetition and drill of the most important things are essential, without wasting too much time on “frills” e.g. lots of social studies lefty indoctrination, etc. (which is often what social studies primarily consists of these days in many places). Actually some drill is needed for just about everybody for some things. Such as learning the multiplication table (when and where that’s even really taught these days, amazingly). But not everyone. One of my classmates claimed to have instantly memorized the full multiplication tables the first time he stared at it for awhile, and it seems to have been true, or almost true. Yeah, that filled me with envy, but also lead me to work really hard at thoroughly memorizing as fast as I could. Because you see I thought I was pretty smart and didn’t want to embarrass myself next to that guy.

I’m not talking about music and art being frills. They can be very important alternate or additional paths for many students.

That’s only true to the extent that some colleges have lower academic standards than a good many high schools. It’s only true by way of a sort of fraud.

There are no national minimum standards, much less enforced ones, for receiving a B.A. degree. Some states may have reasonable minimum standards in their public colleges but some do not, often by the mechanism of having several different levels of colleges within their systems, and considerable variation between colleges within the same level. And no state really enforces minimum standards for students in private colleges. Yeah there are accreditation requirements but those go to faculty education, curriculum and to some extent physical plant, not to quality of student output. As the lowering of standards for evaluating students at many colleges has decline with the mushrooming of the college attending, the effects have cascaded to the quality of faculty who nonetheless possess the requisite degrees for accreditation.

In other words some college degrees have no more meaning than a high school diploma, which though still not completely meaningless in most places, approaches being so in some. In some places it reflects little more than a semi decent attendance record. As well many departments are notorious for often having notably low requirements to appear to be doing well. Such as African American Studies departments, and many or most of the other “studies” departments such as gender studies. Adopting the correct political line and learning to throw around a modest amount of jargon is often almost all that is required. I’m not saying that everyone who adopts such majors is dim, only that it’s a good ticket through college if you are.

And most employers know this. But then again there are diversity requirements.

Just because many would like it to be so that only effort is required for a meaningful college education, doesn’t make it so. And it isn’t so.

What is true is that hard work can make any given amount of intelligence go further. A colorable decent college education might be barely possible for someone whose IQ is at say 100, but only if they were at an extreme point in consistent motivation and discipline, despite many setbacks. It simply isn’t for someone with an IQ of 90. And it generally takes about a 110-115. And to do really well at an elite institution in any demanding field of study generally takes about a 125, at which level it’s a waste to not to go to professional school as well (though an engineer’s professional education for reasons of tradition can sometimes be completed during undergrad college years, by a lot of concentration in those subjects). However all of this is considerably easier and/or higher performance is possible at somewhat higher IQ levels. And then there’s genius level work – which requires genius.

Those who point to test results seeming to show differences in “g” as meaningful are faced with the problem of how to establish boundary conditions. It is the old nurture vs nature problem made fresh by a problem with rather extreme differences in social upbringing.

Anything is possible if you lower your standards far enough. In the end, if someone graduates with a degree but still has no marketable skills, are they ahead or are they just deep in student loan debt?

IMO, the worst thing that could happen to America would be for everyone to have a college degree. We need people with degrees to do the jobs that actually require college education such as engineering and medicine. However, we also need people who can build and fix things. We certainly have a greater need for more machinists than we need additional lawyers.

Not too long ago, the joke was that a high school drop out needed to learn how to say, “Do you want fries with that?” College graduates with worthless degrees had better get used to saying “Do you want a muffin with your latte?”

When you get out of school and have to: work for your money, have to support yourself, have see how much everything costs and how much your taxes are…well, you get scared. Unfortunately, if you haven’t done a good job of getting educated before hand, it will take you a long time to succeed in life.

Parents MUST get involved with their child’s education and complain to high heaven when a school isn’t doing it’s job. They shouldn’t try to protect their kids from failing in school and bad grades should be PUNISHED. Christan parents should teach their kids what God thinks about sluggards. Kids need to understand their future lives depend on education and that Mommy won’t always be there to rescue them.

If my Mom hadn’t threaten me like that I would probably have been a slacker. It’s my nature. Children need to be taught to think about their future.

(Me)
“Now maybe if they have the grit they can overcome a low IQ handicap, but it really is improbable for a low achiever – by definition – to make the grade.”

b)It is less probable, yet 100% do-able.

c)You would recommend to a kid who is ‘normal’ yet not very smart to not have college ambitions?

d)I’m talking about diagnosed mental retardation, which is generally 70 or below, with 100 as normal.

Ok…trying one last time. Reading all of these, I’m concluding that you equate “normal” with “average”, and you’re saying that anyone with an “average” (by which you mean someone with an IQ of 100 or up) is capable of completing some college somewhere, even if perhaps not an ivy league or equivalent college. You are not stating that someone who is mentally retarded (below 70 IQ) can be expected to complete college. No disagreement from me on either statement.

What about those who fall between 70 and 100?

I have a problem with this part: “a kid who is ‘normal’ yet not very smart”. What does that mean?

e)If he could graduate from Notre Dame, I see no reason why someone who may be less intelligent than he was, with the same effort, graduating from a small, less prestigious open enrollment college.

In this statement, it seems to me that you equate a dyslexic person with not being particularly intelligent. I think that’s a false equation. Dyslexia and intelligence are – as far as I know – unrelated. He had a learning problem due to his dyslexia – he may (or may not, we don’t know)have been brilliant and the dyslexia just masked it. Even so, neither of these give any indication that ND lowered it’s standards to “get him through”. Maybe he had extra help, but lowering its standards would demean both the college and the individual, imo, and I don’t believe that ND would do that. Nor should they.

Extra help – yes. If it will help, all they need.

Lowering standards – no. It doesn’t help anyone in the long run.

During his time at Holy Cross, Rudy learned that he suffered from a mild case of dyslexia, which may have contributed to his previous academic struggles.

Your perception is off. Clearly I was showing that he ROSE to meet their standards, not the reverse. Some bios state that he stuggled academically due to his learning disabililty. A dyslexic student who basically just managed to pass is below Notre Dame standards, which is precisely why he was repeatedly rejected by the school. Only through obsession was he able to achieve grades in junior college well above what he made in high school and eventually enter a university of higher than average standards and graduate.

If he could graduate from Notre Dame, I see no reason why someone who may be less intelligent than he was, with the same effort, graduating from a small, less prestigious open enrollment college. I have seen it happen on several occasions.

http://www.sportshollywood.com/askrudy.html

I agree that any _average_ student should be able to get a college degree if s/he is willing to work for it.

To ignore this reality will be devastating for all segments of American society. We must find a way for all of our citizens to have a productive place in our society and economy. To ignore all evidence that certain groups consistently lack skills and education necessary to prosper may be politically correct, but it is not productive. The point that a stonger support group of family is needed by the very people who have the least education and skills was also made repeatedly by Herrnstein and Murray.

Absolutely correct.

We owe things to our lower IQ citizens who are already here. We don’t necessarily owe them a living or advancement without the right sort of effective efforts on their part, but we should do what we can to help them succeed and live a decent life.

Lest that sound too soft headed liberal to you, I agree with most of LaShawn’s approach to achieving that end. (I’m not so insistent as she is on the no premarital sex thing, but I agree completely about the enormous importance of no pre-marital babies and for many the first might be necessary to achieve the second. Yeah it doesn’t have to be but then everyone isn’t as conscientious about birth control as are some and all methods have some core of unavoidable failure rates. That takes us to abortion as a last resort, where I disagree with the vast majority here (because I think no pre-marital babies trumps other considerations), but have no interest in arguing.)

What we don’t owe is a secure continuing right to remain in America and be given all sorts of very expensive help which often doesn’t work very well, to illegal aliens particularly of the low skilled, low IQ and low family preference for education variety.

It’s got to stop and NOW. It is incredibly stupid to allow it to continue. We are building in horrific costs in this 21st century global world. We will lose to China soon enough and disastrously if we keep this up. (And there’s no sign whatsoever that they are going to adopt our sorts of PC policies to Third Worlders.)

Go after employers. And deport illegals. Hell, mine the border and post lots of signs if we have to. Their inundation is most costly of all to many blacks at the lower end of the IQ distribution.

So did Notre Dame have no standards when it graduated Daniel Ruettiger? >>

So you’re suggesting that Daniel was below average IQ and needed lower standards in order to graduate? ?? do you have any cites for that assumption? I checked Wikipedia, and it mentions that he apparently had a dyslexia problem, but that falls into a special ed category, not a mentally disabled category. Are we talking past each other here? Low IQ and learning disabilities don’t seem to me to be equivalent.