NAACP & Education

Michael Meyers:

Third, the NAACP must make public education the civil-rights issue of our times. Everything else will fall into place if young blacks overcome illiteracy, stay in school, and are inculcated with a love for learning and for the pursuit of excellence instead of trained to accept mediocrity and quotas as a means of social advancement.

Holding school authorities accountable -- including black teachers and black-dominated school boards such as in Newark, N.J., and Washington, D.C. -- must be the priority. That means tutoring pupils and coaching teachers so that they pass standardized competency tests, and eschewing notions that such examinations are "culturally biased."

A revamped NAACP should not accept any alibis for blacks' academic underachievement. It would take the lead in answering those black educators and their paternalistic allies who develop ghetto industries for grants and careers explaining blacks' deficits. It would confront separatist schemes such as "black paradigms" of learning and Ebonics as the language of Africans in America.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 7, 2007 12:00 AM
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