“There is but one method of rendering a democratic form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education.”
(Benjamin Rush),
“It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.”
(Noah Webster)
Although the proverb, “It is always darkest before the dawn,” meaning that there is hope for the future, has been touted for years, it is not inevitable that all, or even enough people, especially the effectively deceived, will see truth, accept it, and act appropriately. There have been at least seven major education wake-up calls, or Eras, since 1954 triggered by the revelation of great disparities in educational outcomes and poverty levels. Nevertheless, massive numbers of poor children, especially Black children, are still leaving the education system today unready to succeed in America.
Did we forget the education goals we had for African Americans before 1954?
The Brown v. the Board of Education Decision in 1954 purportedly was intended to stem the duplicitous effects of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Decision in which the Supreme Court decided that separate education was legal if the systems were equal. The Brown plaintiffs argued that the systems were not equal.
Despite the “victory,” however, because of narcotizing on both sides, about every ten years or so, our major national, state and local leaders have had WAKE-UP CALLS with regard to serious stalls in progress in the advancement of African Americans in education. Keep in mind the link between education and freedom.
THE SEVEN ERAS
1. The Brown v. the Board of Education decision in 1954.
2. In the mid-sixties, we had the major Civil Rights Legislation.
3. In the seventies, there was the Adams vs. Richardson decision, which was for higher education what Brown was supposed to be for K-12 schools.
4. The eighties brought us A Nation at Risk with President Reagan’s infamous utterance about A Rising Tide of Mediocrity: “If a foreign nation had sneaked into our country and done to our schools what we have allowed to happen, we have considered it an ACT OF WAR.”
5. In the nineties, we witnessed the great American Tragic-Comedy: Goals 2000, when our most powerful leaders promised that by the YEAR 2000 our education system would be the best in the world, and would apply to ALL students!
6. The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002.
7. In 2016, President Obama introduced the new Race to The Top Initiative.
Each WAKEUP CALL forced a breach in the wall of denial and hypocrisy and triggered the formulation of NEW plans and public promises from the president of down to local politicians, public figures and educators to get it right this time.
There was a time, well before Reagan’s utterance, when children at risk meant that the nation was at risk.
Later, the focus shifted from the nation’s vulnerability to that of the individual child, and further to poor children, and even more implicitly to poor Black children. Thus, the imperatives changed in tune with historic racial and political exigences.
When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.
(Confucius)
In 2018, a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that there had been NO PROGRESS for African Americans on homeownership, unemployment, incarceration/Criminal Justice and poverty in 50 year.
Of the Black students who took the ACT in 2017, only 9% of them with these characteristics — first generation in their family to attend college, in low-income families and identify their race/ethnicity as minority — met the college readiness criteria. (ACT data)
The most dismal ACT statistic in 2021 was that only 6% of all Black test takers were rated ready for college-level courses, without remediation, in all four areas of English, mathematics, science, and reading. Whites were more than five times as likely as Blacks to be prepared for college-level work in all four areas. (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2022)
There is ample evidence that unreadiness to succeed in life and college after K-12 educational experiences is a function of deprivation of high quality/high quantity education, not Black genetics. Nevertheless, America’s Domestic Enemies have been effective in using this fallacy to thwart the intention of BROWN and ADAMS, to the detriment of Blacks and America.
