Thanks for your comments.

>You can put all of the money into elementary and secondary
>schools that you want, but if people don't have the kind of
>family values that place an emphasis on discipline and
>education, it won't do any good.

"This above, is not an easy thing to say.

I'll leave it at that."

Well, the idea of more funding for schools is important, but when there is a situation where the young people just plain don't know how to act, and don't have any respect for elders or authority because of a lack of home training, I don't think that there's going to be any big improvement. If anything, the school's resources will get turned toward making the place into a penal colony instead of a school, in order to control the kids (e.g. police officers in the NYC schools, etc.).

My point is that even with all of the racism, differential treatment, and injustice in the educational system and American society in general, some of our people are still not making the most out of what is available to them, and we aren't going to get any sympathy (or additional funding) from *anybody* as long as this sort of thing is going on.

"If you went to NY, how many Jamaicans, Trinis, and Haitians (or 1st generation children) are flunking out?

You can easily make the foreign born/children of immigrants argument for the model minority, our Asian peeps. But research (none of which I have in front of me), suggest that the model minority thing works well in 1) well to do/professional families, 2) 1st generation American born.

Once you get to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations (think California), the model minority falls apart."

Please understand that I am not interested in anointing West Indians as 'model minorities'. I just think that there are things we can learn from those parents and educators that were themselves educated *in the Caribbean*. The point is not so much to deify the U.S. descendants of these people, but to consult with educators who have experience with those educational systems.

The significant point is that these adults are the benificiaries of a system of education that is not operating on the basic assumption (or at least the strong suspicion) of black inferiority.

As far as the institutional level, this is why we are always going to have trouble with these issues as long as we sit back and wait for white American society and its institutions to solve this problem (not that I'm suggesting that you are making this argument).

Many whites don't really view the issue of black education as a 'crisis' or a 'problem'--because deep down, many of them think we are inferior anyway. If it were not for this kind of racist undercurrent, this issue would have been dealt with decades ago. This is the richest, most powerful country in the world. There is no good reason why there should be so many black people in this country today who are uneducated, even to the point of being functionally illiterate. Obviously, there are quite a few whites in this country who don't really *give* a shit whether our kids learn or not.

All I am saying with the 'West Indian' issue is that, while I am not arguing for some kind of wholesale transplant of institutions, I don't neccessarily buy the idea that we can't learn anything from these immigrants and their approach to education. American laws and institutions have been influential world-wide, particularly over the last 50 years. If other countries can be influenced (for good or for ill) by our institutions, why can't it work the other way?

Maybe it is true that the knowledge is not transferrable from the West Indian Immigrant context to the broader African American context--but at this point, it's all conjecture. I'm just saying that it is worth looking into--some studies should be done, and experts on that educational system should be consulted, in my opinion.

Maybe there could be a study-abroad program where African American student teachers would go to teachers' colleges in the Carribean, where they would study the Carribean system.

Like I said, I am well aware of all the implied problems in terms of implementation--I'm just saying that these immigrants are clearly doing something differently in terms of instilling the value of education in their kids, and I am interested in whether we as a people can learn something from this.

All of the comments you make about the problems that some parents have with helping their kids with homework are well taken. However, I think that there is still a significant problem with some kids not really coming to school with the kind of attitude that will give them a chance at success. Believe me, I am not some neoconservative individual who is unsympathetic toward people, and I didn't attend primary and secondary school in a wealthy or privileged community. But when I see kids who have no respect for elders, and with an idea of their 'blackness' that somehow precludes any notion of the value of formal education, I know that we have a big problem on our hands.

>Many of the issues that American black people have
>concerning the value of education stem from the particular
>history of slavery and its aftermath in this country. I
>think that blacks who espouse these borderline-hostile views
>toward education fail to realize that we are virtually the
>*only* people in this country that have these kinds of
>pitched battles over the fundamental value of education, and
>that this has to do with the uniqueness of our historical
>experience.

"Well, that might be the perception, but it's also cause we dont' really pay attention to whites as a group.

There is a general distrust of academics and intellectual type stuff across the board in this country."

I am well aware of the general American trend toward anti-intellectualism, and that white people have a version of this as well. However, black people's issues with this are much more complex, in my view, because for some of our people, the notion of 'blackness' itself is placed in opposition to the idea of being an educated person. This is where the tie-in with the history of slavery in the US occurs.

While white Americans have their own issues with anti-intellectualism, you don't hear white people saying things like, "Why is so-and-so studying so hard? What, is he trying not to be white or something?" This statement is so absurd that I have trouble even typing it--white people simply don't talk in these terms. The black situation cannot be reduced to simple American anti-intellectualism--when you have a situation where people are staking their fundamental notion of identity on the idea of *opposition* to formal education, the problem takes on a whole other dimension. My point is that this is definitely contributing to our overall problem.

I am not denying that this is at least partially caused by historical/structural factors (see my post #98). I am just saying that if we are waiting around for whites as a group to acknowledge the historical legacy of racism and fix the situation, we are kidding ourselves--this isn't going to happen.

"The diff is, the smart white kids have enough support from one another, and from society in general, that they can make it past the silly world of public school. (you know this starts in the 1st grade)"

Which goes toward my point. To say that white kids are much more likely to escape the worst effects of some of the negative trends in society (in this case anti-intellectualism) because of the existence of a white support network does nothing to change the reality that black people who do the same thing end up not getting an education.

The whole "well, white people do it too" argument is not really relevant, in my opinion. We have always known that we are going to have to work harder, and overcome more obstacles than whites in order to get half as far as they do. We can ill afford to engage in the kind of anti-intellectualism that some whites deal with--we all know that the system will not work to help us in the same way if we screw up.

>The success of foreign-born blacks in American educational
>institutions proves that these hang-ups are simply not
>shared by all blacks.

"Well, yeah ummm maybe.

200 black kids @ harvard, 150 or so are Foreign Born, tells you nothing about the 30 million black folks in this country and the education that we receive."

I'm not suggesting that, by itself, the Harvard study is equivalent to a thorough study of black education in America. However I *am* saying that the results are significant, and in a certain sense alarming for AAs (although I have nothing against West Indians or Africans succeeding--I am sure that they earned it).

Granted, Harvard students represent a miniscule part of the overall student population, but it is significant in that the Ivy League schools are the gateway to the most prestigious and lucrative job networks in this country. I am not saying that AAs should all aspire to go to Harvard, I'm saying that, all other things being equal, *our* kids should have the advantage over the children of foreign-born blacks, in terms of their ability to gain admission to prestigious US schools through competetive admissions. Again, I am not begrudging the foreign-born blacks their success--if we aren't going to take full advantage of the opportunity, why shouldn't they?

The fact that 2/3 of these students have foreign-born parents (or are biracial) is significant, because these blacks form a relatively small proportion of the 30 million blacks in this country--the overwhelming majority of US blacks have parents who are native-born. Its not even like we're talking 50-50 in terms of population--it is much more lopsided than that. I am going to speculate for a moment and say that if a broader study were to be done, you might well see similar results at many other prestigious institutions across the country.


"The fact that Lincoln is @ Princeton, might over look the fact that Mikey, Bunny, and Desmond are still on the block."

I am not suggesting that all West Indians are at Harvard or in the Ivy League. I am simply saying that these results would not look like this if native-born AAs were taking better overall advantage of their educational opportunities. Hell, even if you exclude the poorer AAs who are more likely to come from low-performing schools (not that I advocate ignoring them), there are more than enough *middle-class* blacks in this country to preclude a result like this.

In closing, I say: 'Bravo' to the Caribbean folks and Africans--but in the same breath, I say to native-born AAs 'Why in the hell can't we compete more effectively? We are the vast majority of the black population in this country, and we should be at these institutions in much greater numbers!'

While I am certainly no elitist, I think that the fact that we aren't able to put more students in the top institution in this country *is* significant of a larger problem in our community, notwithstanding all of the issues with racism and discrimination.

Another important thing to keep in mind that is that there are non-black minority groups in America that are only a fraction of the size of AAs (in terms of their proportion of the population) who place many, many more students in top schools like Harvard than we do. I am aware that our overall problems are much more complex than just looking at our admissions to elite institutions, but these results *are* significant, on a certain level.

Bottom line--we have to do much, much better than we have been doing, in terms of preparing our kids to compete in the educational arena.

BTW, it sounds as though you might be a teacher yourself. If so, much respect to you for being down 'in the trenches' on this issue.

I can definitely say that the low pay that teachers receive in the US is a crime, and is one of the major contributing factors to underachievement among US students in general.