Swayback Nag

Normally, I won’t watch Oprah, nor do I waste perfectly good videotape or TiVo hard drive space on her show.  But I made sure I taped this afternoon’s show; it was about the “crisis” in American public education.

If you saw the show, then my commentary will make sense.  If you didn’t, then what I have to say will probably give you implications on the nature of what Oprah had to say about the matter.

(1)  At two different instances in the show, we saw delapidated conditions in public high schools in Chicago and Washington, D.C.  In the Chicago example, its plight was juxtaposed with a public high school in Naperville, Ill., suburban Chicago.

Remember, Chicago and DC’s urban districts probably spend per pupil far above the national average, and somewhat higher than “well off” white suburban districts.  If there is anyone to blame for their schools being in as bad of a shape as they are, it’s the people or groups somewhere down the line that is getting a hold of that money before it can be used to fix restrooms and hot water pipes.

(2)  One of the Chicago city students, who earned an A in Trigonometry at black inner city high school, sat in Trig class in that Naperville high school, and she was confused about the subject matter.  This is anecdotal evidence that black schools tend to hand out good grades like candy.

(3)  Here’s the most perturbing part:  Oprah said that (pph) “Every child deserves the best education.”

Really?

If you owned two horses, one was a thoroughbred, and one was a swayback nag, on which one would you spend time, money and effort to develop speed for the race tracks?  Right.

But we have dysgenic public policy in public education that seems to spend more money on swayback nags than thoroughbreds.  It behooves a society to aim more resources in education at smarter and brighter children, so that it has a deeper pool of highly talented, inventive and innovative adults whose ideas and lives’ works will improve the standard of living for everyone.

But taking Oprah at her word, we should spend just as much money (if not more) trying to make the swayback nag run quickly as we do the thoroughbred.

(4)  The whole tenor of the show is that we have to “do something” because “things are getting worse.”  Aside from the idea I just stated, I don’t know what Oprah or Bill Gates or anyone else thinks could be “done” that will prevent “things from getting worse.”

Lost in all the Oprah hoopla is that maybe, just maybe part of the reason why academic achievement among American public school students is declining is that with each passing year, the body of American public school students is becoming regressively more non-white.

(5)  During the show, several people from Japan, several from India, and three from the United States (two of whom were black) were asked who the first five Presidents of the United States were.  The Japanese and Indians knew more correct answers than the Americans.

I can believe that most Americans can’t name the first five Presidents.  But I can hardly believe that the average Japanese or Indian knows any better.

This particular segment was just pure, unjustified sensationalism.

(6)  Oprah also featured Jonathan Kozol and his latest book, The Shame of the Nation:  The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.  Like any good fanatical egalitarian, Kozol espouses the thesis that the fact that racial inequalities of achievement exist is prima facie evidence that there is some nabob ne’er-do-well sitting in some building somewhere consipring to resegregate the public schools, and this supposed segregation is itself to blame for poor academic achievement among non-white pupils.

Since Oprah featured his book, and praised it, this must mean that Oprah, too, is an advocate of racial equality.  (“No kidding, Sherlock.” — Peanut Gallery)  The irony of it all is that the relentless pursuit of equality can be blamed partially for the predicament that American public education finds itself in, and the continued obsession with equality instead of quality precludes us from solving the woes.