Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The Mis-Education Scam Part II

Meanwhile, as hundreds of billions are spent on "higher" education-- a way to determine where people fit in a stratified caste economy-- the nation's urban k-12 schools are in horrendous shape. It's a marker of the widening gulf between rich and poor that while U of Penn expands and builds by catering to society's most privileged darlings, a mere couple miles away in North Philadelphia students struggle in crumbling prison-like high schools of guards, gangs, and metal detectors not to become educated but to SURVIVE.

Little investment in basic education but massive spending post-high school after the social classes have been sorted.

Whatever the good intentions of liberal leaders, the lip service they pay to progress and change, the existence of this disparity guarantees there will be no equality of opportunity in this country in the coming decades.

What's most amazing to me is the blindness of the participants of privilege at the elite academies to what exists right in front of their eyes.

Ever been to Yale's campus? In one part of the town are the well-protected best and brightest. Several blocks away loiter the underclass. Ditto even for a school like Rutgers, much farther down the scale of hierarchy, where the downtown area is filled with dark-skinned non-English speaking recent immigrants working low-wage jobs serving middle-class students who wander away from the campus bastion of education to spend money.

Oh, but the immigrants are following the American dream! But are they-- when the public school system is broken and little attempt is made to bring their children up to speed? When reverse assimilation is practiced (the ethos of the politically correct) to ensure not one in a thousand will have the skills, standing, or money to enter the hallowed halls of places like Yale?

The new immigrants are here to be what they are in Cali-- helots; a permanent class generation-after-generation of economic slaves.

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