Education at a Crossroads: Part II

By Thomas Sowell

By Thomas Sowel
Editors Note: While Thomas Sowell has retired from weekly editorials we have a few more of his works left to publish. This is one. Enjoy.

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- One of the painful realities of our time is that most public schools in most low-income, inner-city neighborhoods produce educational outcomes that are far below the outcomes in other neighborhoods, and especially in more affluent neighborhoods.

Attempts to assign blame are too numerous to name, much less explore. But as someone who has, for more than 40 years, been researching those particular minority schools that have been successful, I am struck both by their success and by how varied are the ways that success has been achieved.

In doing research for a 1976 article, “Patterns of Black Excellence,” I discovered that the educational methods used to educate low-income, minority children in successful schools ranged from very traditional and strict methods in some parochial schools to very different approaches in other schools.

One of the most successful schools I visited was in an aging building in a rundown ghetto neighborhood in New York, where a friend told me that I was “brave” — he …Read the Rest

Source:: AmmoLand