With every success subcultures achieve against America’s entrenched, opposing forces come new problems that make greater and different efforts necessary – novel plans, programs, tactics and strategies. Nowhere is this more factual than it is with the African American struggles to remedy the lingering consequences of centuries of unequal treatment.
More than 50% of America’s school children are deeply enough in poverty to qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch. Black youth comprise a disproportionate share of this group. Poverty has always portended serious endangerments for educational outcomes. The inextricable correlations among educational levels, personal income, freedom and democracy have long since been established.
The gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students has grown by nearly 40% since the 1960s, and the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion has grown by about 50% since the late 1980s. In 1979, the average college graduate earned about 40% percent more than the average high school graduate. The comparable figure today is nearly 80%.
The principal purpose of education for citizenship in a democracy, for the benefit of each individual, personal freedom, and the nation, sovereignty abroad and tranquility domestically, is to assist the people in their development of the intellectual power to exert accurate, objective judgements in all things; to distinguish the worthy from the corrupt, the valid from the bogus and the essential from the irrelevant; and to assist in their growth of citizens’ internal moral suasion to choose the worthy, the valid and the essential.
Our inherent mental capacity for self-definition, self-development, self-redemption, and self-improvement distinguishes us human beings from non-humans, both four-legged and two-legged kinds.
Control of one’s own mind is the first step in the educational progression toward becoming virtuous human beings and worthy citizens. Failure to achieve increasingly higher stages of mental and spiritual strength, en route to Virtue, renders the mind susceptible to corrupting influences. PEER PRESSURE, as normally defined, is an antiquated notion in light of current deception by evil-intentioned elements. Recent studies found that when people are told that abhorrent acts to which they object are the popular view, i.e., most Liked, their sense of what is “normal” shifts in favor of the abhorrent extreme, and they are less likely to view disparagingly those who advocate such acts. (THE ATLANTIC, November 2017)
Hitler exemplified how repugnant ideas can become favorable and behavioral — opinion leaders repeating ad infinitum untruths about what/who is good and what/who is evil. If preposterous notions get fixed in the mind, horrific acts are easy to incite. (Voltaire)
Like Jefferson, we who call ourselves good, must openly oppose every form of tyranny over the minds of the people.
In contemporary America, youth are influenced by noting whether their stand on issues, i.e., whether they “Like” or “Dislike” something, fits with the majority views expressed on “Social Media” sites. Evaluation of self-worth is in the mix. Keep in mind that youngsters are entering the sites quite young and well before their social and citizenship minds are even remotely developed.
Education that will advance American democracy and free the people must first serve the individual citizen, starting when they are young. Poverty is the enemy that interferes with poor children’s and rich children’s feelings of kinship nationalism because in contemporary America, one’s material condition has been fused with human value.
The impact of outside dominions on children’s moral development, however, is indirectly related to the condition of elements closest to the children’s daily lives: parents, extended families, community residents, schools, churches, youth-serving organizations, and businesses.
Amiel tells us that the test of a nation’s religious, political and educational systems are the human beings developed. If a nation injures the children’s educational advancement, it is a bad nation; if it injures their character development, it is a vicious nation; and if it injures the development of their consciences, their morality, it is a criminal nation. The family and the community, nonetheless, have the primary responsibility for carrying out educational mandates for children’s sake, as well as for the family, the community and for America.
The stronger the community assets – as reflected in the degree of virtuous behavior by adults and the clarity, coherence, cooperation, and consistency of linkages among groups – the weaker the power of the external sources to manipulate in a negative way children’s minds and behavior!
Community leaders, formal and informal, who live among the people must change their attitudes and values by which shape the courses they set for the people’s development, and modify the plans, programs, tactics and strategies they will employ on the people’s behalf. If leaders do not change, e.g., continue to function as usual, American history has shown from its inception that the entities which produce, foster, and profit by injustices will continue to prevail, stifling reform, transformation and progress.
