Separate And Unequal Didn't Work 100 Years

I Once Made A Check Of All Books In My Fourth-grade Classroom. Of The Slightly More Than Six Hundred Books, Almost One Quarter Had Been Published Prior To The Bombing Of Hiroshima; 60 Percent Were Either Ten Years Old Or Older.

Separate And Unequal Didn't Work 100 Years Ago. It Will Not Work Today.

But What Is Now Encompassed By The One Word (“school”) Are Two Very Different Kinds Of Institutions That, In Function, Finance And Intention, Serve Entirely Different Roles. Both Are Needed For Our Nation’s Governance. But Children In One Set Of Schools Are Educated To Be Governors; Children In The Other Set Of Schools Are Trained For Being Governed. The Former Are Given The Imaginative Range To Mobilize Ideas For Economic Growth; The Latter Are Provided With The Discipline To Do The Narrow Tasks The First Group Will Prescribe.

During The Decades After Brown V. Board Of Education There Was Terrific Progress. Tens Of Thousands Of Public Schools Were Integrated Racially. During That Time The Gap Between Black And White Achievement Narrowed.

Instead Of Seeing These Children For The Blessings That They Are, We Are Measuring Them Only By The Standard Of Whether They Will Be Future Deficits Or Assets For Our Nation's Competitive Needs.