Students’ Knowledge of Civil Rights History Has Deteriorated, Study Finds

From the New York Times Education Section:

“Across the country, state educational standards virtually ignore our civil rights history,” concludes the report, which is to be released on Wednesday.

The report assigns letter grades to each state based on how extensively its academic standards address the civil rights movement. Thirty-five states got an F because their standards require little or no mention of the movement, it says.

Eight of the 12 states earning A, B or C grades for their treatment of civil rights history are Southern states where there were major protests, boycotts or violence during the movement’s peak years in the 1950s and ’60s.

“Generally speaking, the farther away from the South — and the smaller the African-American population — the less attention paid to the civil rights movement,” the report says.

Alabama, Florida and New York were given A grades. Those states require relatively detailed teaching about the decade and a half of historic events, roughly bookended by the Supreme Court’s 1954 school desegregation ruling and the April 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the enactment of the federal Civil Rights Act a week later.

Many states have turned Dr. King’s life into a fable, said Julian Bond, who now teaches at American University and the University of Virginia. He said his students knew that “there used to be segregation until Martin Luther King came along, that he marched and protested, that he was killed, and that then everything was all right.”

Alabama, Florida and New York require teaching not only about Dr. King but also about others like James Meredith, who in 1962 became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi; Medgar Evers, the rights organizer murdered the following year in Jackson, Miss.; and Malcolm X, the Muslim minister who challenged the movement’s predominantly integrationist goals.

Some experts in history education criticized the report’s methodology. Fritz Fischer, a professor at the University of Northern Colorado who is chairman of the National Council for History Education, said it was unfair to give Colorado and some other states an F because of vague state history standards, when they are required by state constitutions or laws to leave curriculum up to local districts.

“The grading system they came up with does a disservice in putting the focus on requirements that certain states are unable to meet and will never be able to meet,” Dr. Fischer said.

Even though Colorado’s standards barely mention the civil rights movement, some Colorado schools teach the civil rights movement thoroughly, he said. “I’ve been in classrooms and watched them teach about the sit-ins and about the controversies between Martin Luther King and Malcolm,” he said.

The report is by no means the first to sound an alarm about nationwide weaknesses in the teaching of American history.

Over the past decade, students have performed worse on federal history tests administered by the Department of Education than on tests in any other subject. On the history test last year, only 12 percent of high school seniors showed proficiency.

The rest of the article is available here.

Debt Ceiling Dilemma presents Opportunities for Different Ideas

Back in August, President Barack Obama signed the bill that raises our debt ceiling and cuts spending by a little more than $2 trillion over the next decade.  This bill was signed after months and months of political wrestling and wrangling over which party or politician had the better plan.  Even after the final deal was grudgingly reached by both Democrat and Republican leadership in the US House and Senate, there was still much that both progressive liberals and TEA party leadership did not like. 

Key staff members from the White House and leaders from both parties agreed that this bill does not solve everything.  Many fiscal experts that study and monitor federal deficits agree that the bill relies too heavily on cuts to discretionary spending, which is not the major driver of the country's long-term deficits. And it all but ignores the need to reform entitlements and raise more revenue.  Both of which are key ingredients to improving the country's long-term solvency. 

In addition to the short-term problems, the special bipartisan congressional committee that the legislation creates could take up both entitlement and tax reform. But given the partisan bitterness on both those issues, the jury's out on whether the committee, which is made up of 12 members from the House and Senate, can move past that.

Lastly, according to CNN Money, the size of the deal is less than what hawks were pushing for.  A $4 trillion "grand bargain" is what budget experts say is the minimum needed to start hitting the brakes on growth in the country's debt.  The fact that negotiators were working toward such an agreement only to step back from it makes the final deal all the more frustrating.

This is our federal leadership at work.  This is partisan politics mixed with bureaucratic bungling and topped with election envy.  I think our leaders are forgetting what it means to compromise and work together to solve the problems of the day.  In the midst of this fiasco, the behavior of GOP officials that seek to “make Obama a one-term president” reeks of junior high bravado. 

Additionally, the repeated walking out of both parties during the discussion reminds me of something my son does when I restrict his time with my Playstation.  All that was missing was the incessant pouting.  Again, this is our leadership at work.  This is our federal leadership that enjoys a 92% re-election rate, a monthly $1,400 automobile lease allowance, and an average annual salary of $174,000.   

But there is a silver lining to this dark cloud.  This is the opportunity to acknowledge all that really is broken with our political system and acknowledge some serious discussion and solutions to fix these problems.  I’d like to propose the following solutions: (1) term limits for federally elected officials and (2) a viable third party option to challenge the current two-party system.

We have been working with the same two political parties for quite some time.  And we have been getting undesired results for quite some time.  People are concerned about the federal government’s spending, Bush-era tax cuts, healthcare, and the 2 ½ wars we are engaged in right now.  These are issues that that been handled improperly by both Democrats and Republicans.  Yet, we still have to choose the lesser of the two evils when the election season rolls around.  As I understand it, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is an acceptable definition of insanity.  This is where the debt ceiling debate lends itself to discussion of a viable third party.

Terms limits, in my opinion, do the following: (1) it gives the elected official a timeline and deadline to accomplish the goals he or she set forth in their campaign and (2) it lets them know that their job is temporary and they should groom a replacement.  I think US Presidents and Vice-Presidents have figured this one out already. 

Since one of the more recent trends are to “think of what the founding fathers would do” and “live according to the constitution”, I will offer this quote from John Adams: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

Teen moms: Enormous social costs (from the Clarion-Ledger)

From the Clarion-Ledger

A new study shows Mississippi's epidemic of teen pregnancies is costing far more than previously thought - more than $154 million a year from taxpayers.
As The Clarion-Ledger reported, that includes increased costs of foster care, social services and incarceration for young people born years ago to teen moms.

"This is not an unsolvable problem," says Carol Penick, executive director of the Women's Fund, which sponsored the study by the nonprofit Mississippi Economic Policy Center. The state's new "abstinence plus" sex education program for public schools can help address it.

And as Jamie Holcomb, director of programs for the Women's Fund said, parents "are part of the solution" by talking to their children about sex.

Districts must choose between teaching abstinence-only or "abstinence-plus," which includes information about contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases. Each district must adopt a policy by June 30, 2012.

The rest of the article is available here. 

A post for September 11th

I vividly remember where I was when two airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  It was the fall semester of my senior year at Alcorn State University.  Just like most mornings, I had gotten up and walked to the bathrooms to wash up for class.  As I was brushing my teeth, I can remember a buddy of mine asking if I had seen what happened in New York.  Thinking that he was referring to abnornmal weather or a sports event, I responded, "nah...I'll check it out in a few.  I'm trying to get to class now."

After showering and picking out something to wear for the day, I turned on the TV.  As I dressed myself, I saw the replay of the 1st plane crashing into the tower.  This had to be a movie.  No one flies a jumbo jet into a building, neither on purpose nor by accident.  But it was real.  It was no big budget movie.  Lives were lost and the United States would be changed forever. 

In addition to the mass panic, that occured across the nation, there was also a fear that gas prices would double in a matter of hours.  I can remember the long lines to the lone gas station on our campus. 

I don't think I made it to a single class that day.

It's 10 years later and we remember where we were and what we were doing on that day.  As this day becomes a chapter for study in new history books, we must also remember those responsible. 

Here is an article from Teaching Tolerance in which a father explains to his son who "they" are.  After believing that "they" are Muslims or Pakistani, the father tells him that "they" are terrorists. 

The father offers this advice: "I understand that teaching a tragic event such as 9/11 can be emotional and difficult, but it is necessary to ensure that children understand events accurately so they do not develop prejudiced ideas about an entire group of people."

The biggest honor we can give those that died on this day is to properly inform our children of who did this.