January 12, 2006
Education: Then and Now
By Thomas
Sowell
Recent news
that school children in Charlotte, North Carolina, had the highest
test scores among children in big cities across the country had
a special impact on me. Back in the late 1930s, I went to school
in Charlotte and, while I don't know what the test scores were then,
I do know that we were far behind the children going to school in
New York.
That became
painfully clear when my family moved north and I enrolled in a
school in Harlem in 1939. From being the top student in my class
down in North Carolina I was suddenly the bottom student in my
class in Harlem -- and struggling to try to catch up.
Decades
later, my research turned up the fact that the kids I couldn't
keep up with in that school back then had an average IQ of 84.
Contrary to fashionable beliefs, it was not the racial segregation
that made the education inferior in Charlotte, since the school
in Harlem was also a black school.
It was common
in those days for a kid from the South to be set back a full year
when he entered school in New York. The difference in educational
standards was that great.
I had somehow
persuaded the principal to let me be an exception. It was a mistake
on his part and mine. I was clearly a year behind the kids who
had gone to school in Harlem.
Three years
later, I had caught up and pulled ahead, and was now assigned
to a class for advanced students, where the average IQ was over
120.
That does
not mean that IQs don't matter. It means that I had a lot of work
to do to get my act together in the meantime, in order to overcome
the disadvantage of an inferior education in North Carolina.
Fast forward
a few more years. I am now in the Marine Corps, going through
boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. When the mental test
results from my platoon were tabulated, the man in charge expressed
amazement at how many high scores there were.
"Where
are you guys from?" he asked. "New York? Pennsylvania?"
We were
from New York -- and the high quality of our schools at that time
was undoubtedly a factor in the high test scores we made.
No one in
those days would have thought that Charlotte schools would end
up turning out better educated students than the schools in New
York. I don't know what has happened in Charlotte but I do know
what has happened in New York.
Some years
ago, when I looked at the math textbooks that my nieces in Harlem
were using, I discovered that they were being taught in the 11th
grade what I had been taught in the 9th grade. Even if they were
the best students around, they would still be two years behind
-- with their chances in life correspondingly reduced.
New York
City has two kinds of high school diplomas -- its own locally
recognized diploma, that is not recognized by the state or by
many colleges, and the state's Regents' diploma for high school
graduates who have scored above a given level on the Regents'
exam.
The Regents
diploma is for students who are serious about going on to a good
college. Only 9 percent of black students and 10 percent of Latino
students receive Regents diplomas.
That a Southern
city's school children would now top the list of big city test
scores may be due to the fact that the South has not jumped on
the bandwagon of the latest fads in education to the same extent
as avant garde places like New York City, where spending per pupil
is about 50 percent above the national average.
These fads
now include the dogma that racial "diversity" improves
education, as does emphasis on racial "identity." In
reality, a recent study shows that black students who perform
well in racially integrated schools are unpopular with their black
classmates. They are accused of "acting white," a charge
that can bring anything from ostracism to outright violence.
The same
is not true to the same extent among blacks attending all-black
schools. Hispanic students' popularity likewise falls off sharply
-- even more so than among blacks -- as their grade-point average
rises.
Is it surprising
that white and Asian American children do better without these
self-inflicted handicaps to academic achievement? Is it surprising
that New York City schools are now paying the price for avant
garde educational dogmas?
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
