The solution to racisim is not racism. It is great to see Al Sharpton and Newt Ginrich together on educational reform, but they begin their conversation talking about race. Untill we have ONE curriculum for rich and poor, "red and yellow, black and white," we will not have educational equality--or excellence. Untill all kids who live in the same town and who are in the same grade sit at the same tables and read the same books and take the same tests and are held to the same standards, we will continue to to have huge disparities in the mesaurable performance of public school children.

Until policy makers actually have to use the schools they foist on the rest of us, "reform" will just be so much hot air. It's August. 'Tis the season for politicians and media pundits to be deeply concerned about "reform."

A Little Historical Perspective

To argue that technological superiority was the cause of America’s remarkable rise to preeminence would be like attributing Tiger Woods’ mastery of the golf world to his Nike clubs. The only thing more irrational would be to accept the fashionable fiction that with enough math and science we can maintain global leadership in the 21st century.

Anand Mahindra, Chairman and Managing Director of Mahindra—one of India’s great industrial combinations—recently made this point at a symposium at Harvard Business School. He argued that America’s significant scientific edge is a thing of the past, noting that India already has several schools of technology as good as any in the United States. He is right. That horse is out of the barn.

Mr. Mahindra—a great admirer of the United States—went on to point out that what made America great was not it’s technological edge but its historic attention to “the liberal arts.” He insisted that it is “America’s vision of humanity” that makes us a beacon for the rest of the world.

If we can adjust our minds to this reality, then Daniel J. Boorstin’s definition of education as “learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know” will take on a whole new meaning. If we can for a moment think outside of the moment or see ourselves the way other nations see us, we will realize that a renewed study of philosophy, history, civics and humane letters represents our best path to cultural renewal and international leadership. We will gradually come to grasp that, after decades of calculated abandonment, the classics are the new frontier of useful knowledge.

America's New Educational Aparheid

America’s New Educational Apartheid

The institutionalization of identity politics has transformed America's system of free public education--once the great equalizer--into a brutal tracking system. It is cruel, inhumane, and a luxery the nation can no longer afford.

Before they ever walk through the school house door, black children, brown children, the poor, and those for whom English is a second language are labled "at risk" and channeled into dummied down programs. While policy makers speak of “no child left behind,” the reality on the ground is a cinderblock and linoleum gulag that profiles small children and leaves whole classes of society without the literacy, numeracy and civic virtue they need to function in a post-industrial society.

We have become a house divided against itself—two Americas, separate and unequal. Educational dysfunction deeply rooted in failed social policy has given rise to a two-track society without a common culture, a shared sense of citizenship or a vital moral center.

Ironically, since the monumental 1954 Supreme Court’s ruling, Brown vs. Board of Education, ending state sanctioned educational apartheid the situation has actually worsened. Virtually every urban system in the United States has installed pupil assignment policies that effectively re-segregated schools by preemptively labeling the poor and students of color as “at risk” and then assigning them to the short bus.

Immediately after the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, parents and activists in Washington, D.C. labeled the policy “programmed retardation,” insisting that it was even more harmful than the practice of segregation in the Old South—but the policy persists to this day. The question is, why?

As Bill Gates recently noted, “Once we realize that we are keeping low-income and minority kids out of rigorous courses, there can be only two arguments for keeping it that way – either we think they can’t learn, or we think they’re not worth teaching. The first argument is factually wrong; the second is morally wrong.”