Rising Hegemon
“Will America’s older, largely white population — through the ballot box and collective self-interest — support young people who are now much different culturally from themselves and their own children? Will they vote, for example, to raise taxes for schools that serve young people of ethnic backgrounds different from theirs?"Hm, let's think about that for a mo... No.
The school situation scares me, and I don't even have kids. You think a bunch of people who see a stealth campaign to raise taxes in the closing of a highway rest stops are going raise taxes on themselves to make sure that black and Hispanic kids have access to a decent education?
I have said this before: the only real shot at serious civil unrest I see in the next few years is going to turn on access to education. Look at unemployment by educational attainment. We wonder, "Iz our children learning"? I don't know, but I know their parents can read that chart.
Update: Another way the school situation is scary.
5 comments:
If you look at Deep South States, this is the traditional problem with support for public schools. Private schools blossomed after Brown vs Board of Educaton. Today States like Mississippi are the lowest funded public schools in the country and home to some of the worst schools in areas ravaged by rural poverty associated with race (Delta area, for example).
Additionally, schools in Brooklyn, NY are also as poorly supported, and have challenges. So what works? Bussing did not work, was not popular, and I lived near Boston during the bussing issue, and kids would have to leave at four in the morning to get home at six or seven at night. And whites kept moving to NH.
Vermont has a centralized funding system which has raised standards and improved access to quality, but that only works if you just have pockets of low performing schools.
In states like NY, and California, the Regents exams and Boards are an improvement that provides a State-centralized balance to locally based funding. It also unifies the state behind the educational standards, and NY and California are very diverse states.
You know who is educating their children? China and India.... 2 billion people working their asses off ... Keep it up, white America ... your bigotry will be the death of the nation.
You know, if public education was required by law, this wouldn't be a problem. Funding would be found pretty god-damned quickly, and teaching pedagogies available in the system would likewise increase. My kids are in private school only because the public schools are stretched too thin.
There are attempts in my local school district at implementing other pedagogies (we have a project school, and a Montessori-esque option), but funding (not to mention the distraction of continual testing) put these programs at risk. Our alternative high school was recently cut out of the budget completely. A school that has demonstrated the ability to get at-risk kids a high school education and integrated into the fabric of society - kids that would have otherwise dropped out - sorry - no money for you. It's beyond stupid.
All thanks to Mitch Daniels and our Republican lege for changing the way our schools are funded (Mitch will be your next Republican president BTW).
ooh, i get to say i'm a minority.
Oh boy, now they can justify budget shortfalls and cut school support by blaming it all on minorities.
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