As we age, we don’t get smarter and/or wiser, we just develop a different perspective of life. Where once the world was our oyster, now our vision is narrowed to ourselves and the world in our immediate vicinity.
I once was going to go out into the world and make a difference. My life was going to be significant, important, influence others, and leave a lasting mark on the world. Today, I’m all about checking to see if I wake up each morning. I don’t have the time, the energy, or the personal resources to take on the world, and I’m beginning to think that is okay with the rest of the world as it appears to go on without my input.
There were so many injustices that I wanted to address and, perhaps, fix, but fewer and fewer people share my world vision. My goal was uniqueness, but the world view is mediocrity, and the world is winning. Why educate the gifted and allow them to rise to the power positions when we can use race/ethnicity as the sole criteria for granting power to the people? Who cares if an individual is intelligent, capable, and competent when we can simply judge the book by its cover?
Thankfully, I’ve sat through my last staff meeting as my administrators assure me that education is not about information, but it’s all about the kids. I’ve been assured for the last time that our clientele cannot be held accountable for attendance, homework, or academic success because it’s not part of their culture: our demographic doesn’t value education, so we have to replace core content with pictures and projects.
Thankfully, for the last time, I have had to provide a “pass” mark for a senior who barely was able to complete his third try at sophomore English!
Thankfully, I’ve had to acquiesce for the last time to the profound silence about our standardized testing scores. The fact is that non-Hispanic whites and Asians perform significantly better on standardized testing—with or without targeted performance classes—and both Hispanics and African Americans don’t. “Significantly” means that the whites and Asians are well into the upper echelons, while both the Hispanics and A-As firmly anchor the bottom performance levels.
But we don’t talk about that because it’s “racist"; instead, we make it educational, and we work frantically to completely restructure the quality educational programs across the nation to address the bottom of the academic barrel, sacrificing the students at the top of the performance index in the process.
The end result is a mediocre system that, as Atticus Finch explains in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, “…promote[s] the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority.”
In my world view, it is far worse to be “stupid and idle” than it is to be held accountable for learning during childhood and held back a grade until the basics that allow a child to complete the educational journey are firmly mastered. A job should be earned based on ability, not ethnicity. A person who can do the job should be hired, retained, and promoted in the position; a person who cannot do the job should not be hired in the first place, and if performance is not up to the standards required by the position, fired.
If the world believes that a person needs to be both educated and able to demonstrate competent performance in a position, perhaps that expectation will become the national standard, rather than the expectation that Hispanics and A-As don’t have to be well-educated because their culture doesn’t value education.
Of course African-Americans don't value education: slaves didn’t need knowledge. They needed strong backs to work on the plantations and ignorance so they wouldn’t complain about it. Of course Mexicans don't value education: the majority of poor Mexicans don’t have access to education or jobs in Mexico, so they come to the US to earn quick cash, not to create a career path. If a person is in a country illegally, all that person wants to do is make it from one day to the next without being caught by ICE and deported.
It is up to the system to demand that academic standards are met by all students, not just those whose culture values education. What worked for Mexicans and Afro-Americans when they came to this country three centuries ago does not work today: reliance on a patron or an owner to provide them with a place to live in exchange for hard, physical labor and menial, non-skilled jobs. The global marketplace is evolving faster than these cultures are willing to adapt, and the jobs that demand academic knowledge and specific job performance are going to go to those who have the education and the skills, leaving the cultures that don’t “value” education less and less able to move beyond menial employment.
The US, rather than instilling the value of education into its new residents, as was the goal in the huge immigration wave at the beginning of the 20th century, has set that standard to the side. We no longer expect anyone to learn English because we accommodate a plethora of languages by creating little clusters of the country of origin, where both the heritage language and lifestyle are the way of life. These sub-communities recreate the lifestyle in the villages of the homeland, not adapt to the wide open spaces and opportunities of the US of A. The barrios and ghettos trap residents by ethnicity, and rather than offering unlimited opportunity to the people who inhabit these restricted areas, they condemn themselves to live the lifestyle they bring with them.
Once upon a time, I believed not just in the American dream, but in the American educational system. I no longer hold that belief. We have lowered our standards so there are no standards, but we continue to talk the talk so no one knows how few high school graduates are capable or competent to enter the work force and be productive citizens of this country.
Oh, they “feel good” about that piece of paper, but I don’t want them administering my medication in the hospital, or checking the mechanical soundness of my airplane, or filling out my social security paperwork!
When the crash comes, and it will come, there are going to be only so many ethnic restaurants, only so many swimming pools, only so many resorts that need gardeners and maids, only so many professional athletes, only so many music moguls required to meet the needs of the very wealthy who survive the fall. Everyone else will have to rely on education and job skills to survive and rebuild the nation and its economy.
Maybe we’ll also rebuild our educational system to reflect the demand for solid basic knowledge and academic excellence, rather than continuing to “promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious.”
And, maybe, one day I will enjoy 24 hours without being my job.
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