Education

=__EDUCATION__= = =

=**School Integration**= The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case desegregated America's public schools, but most minority students still attend schools where they are the majority. Roger Wilkens: No. You can't say that the nation's schools are desegregated, but Brown accomplished an awful lot. There are a lot of people who try to say Brown was useless. That's wrong. If you were born in segregation, as I was, and went to segregated-- legally segregated -- schools and understood that segregation wasn't simply "go to this water fountain or that water fountain" or "sit in the back of the bus," but a massive, sustained, nationwide assault on the spirits of black people to disable us from being able agents of our own lives, Brown was enormously effective because the thing that made segregation so awful was that the government said it was so, that the government said it was right to treat us badly. Brown flipped it and took the government from the wrong side and put it on our side. And that just made the civil rights movement explode. So Brown accomplished an awful lot.

SHERYLL CASHIN: Well, I agree with Roger. The chief victory is that average Americans everywhere now embrace the view that America should be a free, open, integrationist society where no one is limited in their access to education or jobs or whatever, based on their race. Where we've fallen down, however, is we haven't yet made the beautiful integrationist vision of Brown true for people in their daily lives, particularly black and Latino school children, who are going on average to schools where they're surrounded by minorities, people like them, and also they're in... at least half of their classmates tend to be poor.

//derived from// [|//http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june04/brown_5-17.html//]

=**Diversity in Schools**=

The Harvard Civil Rights Project recently reported that though the American school system is becoming more diverse, ethnic groups remain isolated - 70 percent of African American students attend predominantly minority schools; whites on average attend schools where more than 80 percent of the student body is white. Is this a harmful situation for the future of race relations in the U.S.?

Robert Woodson's Response: Proximity to those of other races does not determine whether a person will or will not be fair-minded. I find it interesting that at the very institutions where professors decry the separation of races encourage it through black studies programs, black dorms, etc., in which the students become increasingly isolated.

Hugh Price's Rebuttal: Proximity enables people to practice and learn tolerance. I'm convinced that America has made so much progress in race relations because college campuses, public agencies, corporate workplaces and public accommodations are vastly more open and integrated than they were a generation ago. Racial tensions often arise these days in workplace settings where employees of all races who have high school degrees or less encounter one another for the first time. K-12 education in this country is very segregated. Young people emerging from high school often have had little exposure to peers of other races, much less much practice learning to work together. So I'd argue that the interracial interaction that comes with integration is educationally sound and promotes economic productivity.

//derived from// http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/society/debate2.html

=Affirmative Action=

Affirmative action is a government program that tries to increase access and representation of underprivileged minorities in educational and work institutions. If affirmative action were abolished nationwide today, how would you rate the chances of a young African-American for gaining admission into a top-flight university? Securing a well-paying job at a prestigious company?


 * Hugh Price's Response:** We've already seen the damage that ending affirmative action has done at highly selective public colleges and universities like the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Texas at Austin. Heightened reliance on quantifiable measure of merit, like SAT and ACT scores, overwhelms consideration of valid qualitative indices of talent, merit and potential, like drive, determination, leadership and communications skills. This trend has placed black and Latino youngsters at a decided disadvantage in the admissions process at highly selective public institutions. All of that said, there must be increased emphasis on boosting the achievement levels of K-12 children of color.


 * Robert Woodson's Rebuttal:** I disagree with affirmative action because it is trying to apply a downstream solution to an upstream problem. I agree with Hugh that there must be increased emphasis on boosting achievement levels of K-12 children of color. If we put the energy that has gone into arguing affirmative action into improving our education system, we would not have to be arguing about affirmative action.

//derived from// http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/society/debate1.html