Statement and criticism of it are making their way around the news.
Well it is a typical response to problems. the whole “you can do anything you want” and “pull the boot straps up to climb out of poverty”. It is a feel good common sense answer that many times just does not translate into reality.
Saying that poor inner city families can come together and fix the bad schools sounds like a great idea but it severely underestimates the challenges.
She clearly doesn’t know history, but it is true that a black student who is deciding to go to a black institution today is making a school choice…not to be on a diverse college campus.
As for her ‘too many students in America’…in JUST 10 Years…the number of foreign students went from 250,000 to over 1,000,000. And since we are on a topic of inequality…today 57% of students in ALL colleges are women and 43% are men. That is 14% difference in favor of women!
I don’t see the issue as long as they provide sufficient funding. Often local IS better. But not if there is no $ to pay for it.
Now whether this is historically accurate…different matter.
History matters. At least it should. The issue I have with her statement is that she takes it out of the context of the history that created the need for HBCUs. It wasn’t simply, there are too many students without access. It was students were not ALLOWED access. The context matters. Again, at least it should.
^ ^
Ineptitude would be letting DeVos off too lightly.
Especially considering the historical reason the “system wasn’t working” was that the prevailing society of the time, especially in the south had de jure segregation and officially barred/severely limited the numbers of Black and racial/ethnic/religious minorities from attending most of the established colleges/universities available back then.
Basically “separate but equal” in action where in practice, it was anything BUT equal as shown in the funding/resources given to non-White public schools in the south or other parts of the US.
This also brings up another related issue which was that public schools historically tended to be much more popular among Northern/NE states than in the southern states, especially before the antebellum because of the feudalistic attitudes among the prevailing southern White local elites who felt their taxes to support the education of poorer Whites was already offensive to their sensibilities…the idea of doing so to support the education of free Blacks or after the Civil War, the Black populace was considered by most of them to be beyond the pale.
Such attitudes have continued to have a great effect on the political contestation between pro and anti-public school advocates tending to overwhelmingly gravitate towards the pro-school choice/voucher ideas advocated by DeVos and fellow travelers.
Not too surprising considering how there were many migrations of former southern Whites to other parts of the country and racist/anti-immigrant movements which have come and gone throughout US history from the Know-Nothing movement* in the 1850’s to the present day.
- Especially ironic considering some current proponents of White racial superiority in the current administration and some of their supporters would not have been considered "White" by members of the WASP dominated vehemently anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party heavily targeted Irish Catholic immigrants back in the 1850's.
The people I know that are against school choice are homeschoolers or send their kids to charter schools. It’s OK for them to choose what kind of education their kids get because they can afford it and are capable of providing an alternative to their home-zoned public schools but others that don’t have that ability should not have a choice in their children’s education? I just don’t get it.
For full disclosure we home school until 9th grade and then send our kids to an out of district public school that they must apply to attend.
I am against school choice and I am neither a homeschooler nor did I send my pups to charter schools. I have volunteered in inner-city public schools for many years - even though my pups did not attend these. This is just something I choose to do to help my greater community.
The problems in our schools are complex, and cannot be boiled down to a single sound bite. If the answers were easy, they’d have been done by now.
John Howard Ferguson agrees.
Surprised that there is no endorsement included from that up-and-comer Fredrick Douglas.
@emilybee , that was eloquent and succinct.
Very clever, considering she’s a woman who never had children in public schools. She completely twisted the experience of Africans Americans seeking higher education to fit her agenda.
I guess you say that the founding of HBCUs provided African American students with a “choice,” But it was a Hobson’s Choice - they got to choose between attending a HBCU or nothing at all.
I’ve been a homeschooler for ~20 years and I’m against school vouchers because of the number of low income families I’ve met (many with special needs kids) who can’t afford to homeschool and wouldn’t be able to afford to pay the transportation costs to get their kids to private school even if they were given vouchers that covered tuition. I don’t believe vouchers would cover all of tuition, and even if they did in the beginning I wouldn’t trust them to remain that way. I do believe every kid has the right to a great education. I just don’t believe they should have to leave their community to get it.
Not surprised at all, considering the course. One quibble though. A poster above says that students at HBCU’s are making a choice to attend non-diverse colleges. As the parent of a student at an HBCU, I wanted to mention that this is a major pet peeve of many HBCU students. The campuses ARE diverse-there are students from urban AND rural locations, wealthy families AND lower income families, high stats kids AND lower stats kids, athletes, musicians, religious, non-religious and on and on. Most have white, Hispanic students and Asian students, although the majority are primarily black. There is plenty of diversity.
The one thing they do, though, is take being black and a minority at the schools out of the equation. Some kids, like DD, choose them after 12 solid years of being a minority in every class, many or most EC’s and so on. Others choose them after years of being in the majority population and wanting that to continue. Others go because they’re close to home, or because they offer solid merit money for lower stats than some PWI’s. There are many other reasons too.
You know, it’s like Satchel Paige taking advantage of team choice when he pitched in the Negro Leagues.
For better or worse, there’s always been a strong strain of anti-intellectualism in the United States but it was held in check by stronger strains of common sense. The idea was that you didn’t need a fancy college education to know how to make good decisions and rational arguments. DeVos posted a statement with “logical” connections that wouldn’t be accepted from a forth grader. She’s a hilariously bad standard bearer for the supposed advantages of private schooling.
So why did Betsy DeVos release the statement about HBCU’s?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-issues-executive-orders-on-hbcus-environmental-regulations/
Nice for the OP to bury the message on this. Fake news indeed.
@Zinhead While I can only speak for myself, I suspect I am speaking for others on this thread as well when I say, I am not questioning why the statement was released. I am questioning what the statement said. It gives the impression HBCUs were created from a modern day “school choice” decision because black citizens saw a lack of opportunity rather than, as someone upthread noted, a Hobson’s choice. I simply wish it had been presented in proper context is all. Good for this administration to continue funding higher education. It is needed.
Great follow up interview on NPR of a college pres from a HBCU. He said they were invited to a listening session where they were asked to give their input to Betsy DeVos…but instead ended up in a photo opp with the president.
In the interview this president said his input (never allowed) was to have been a plug for Pell grants, which 70% of his school’s students receive and which are proven to boost academic achievement for low income students from all backgrounds.
@zinhead They way I read this, it doesn’t really do anything except change a line of reporting? No specific support, funding or actions that actually provide support.