On Wednesday, February 16, 2005, at 08:06 AM, Michael Atherton wrote:
I'm probably one of the few people that believes that link is not between poverty (as low income) and academic failure. I believe that is link is between culture and academic failure. This implies that simply raising income levels will not solve the problem and that special programs that acknowledge the cultural relationship need to be developed. Most educators are too "correct" to admit that the problem is dominated by culture, which in turn just perpetuates the problem. If my assumption is true, then trying to solve academic failure by eliminating poverty is doomed to fail. I believe that the solution is to reduce poverty through education.
The contributing links to academic failure, whether from low income or culture do not necessarily point to solutions that originate from and/or remain with the schools.
I happen to agree that culture is a large contributing factor in academic failure -- the culture of the majority class. People of all cultural backgrounds buy into this as they are educated and if they go into education, when they return to the public districts to perpetuate it.
There is no reason other than culture to have a long summer hiatus from learning.
And, America grinds all cultures into broken glass. The pieces glitter and show facets of what they once were, but they are broken under the great wheel of commercial enterprise. Under the guise of teaching "citizenship," the public school systems have been complicit in teaching from a core set of beliefs, points of view, and the repression of critical judgment.
Therefore we cannot expect the achievement failure correction to come from the schools. It must come from the cultural communities and organizations.
We have simply waited too long.
Best wishes,
Laura Waterman Wittstock Southeast With three grandkids at Marcy
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