Tag: black kids

Walter Williams, Catholics, the Projects, and Schooling for Blacks: Something is Wrong Somewhere

Guest Post by

 

Some time ago I read a column  on the schooling of blacks written by Walter Williams, the black economist at George Mason University, who grew up in the black housing projects of Philadelphia in the Thirties. I have read Williams for years. He is an absolutely reliable witness. He reports that all the kids could read, and that classrooms were orderly and teachers respected. Today, by all reports, in the urban black schools the kids can’t read and chaos reigns. Black kids have not gotten stupider since the Thirties. Something is wrong somewhere.

I read similar stories about chaotic, violent, illiterate Latino kids in American schools, these things being attributed to low intelligence. I live in Mexico, and see nothing even faintly resembling these stories. The statistics agree. (Mexican literacy, CIA FactBook: 95%. American literacy, US Department of Education: 86%) Something is wrong somewhere.

In 1981, I wrote a piece for Harper’s on the overwhelmingly black Catholic schools of Washington, DC, and found them to be exactly as Williams described the schools in his projects: well-behaved, and all the kids could read. The article follows. shortly.

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Attack on Teachers

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

As the new school year begins, you might like to be updated on some school happenings that will no doubt be repeated this academic year. After this update, I have some questions one might ask the black leadership.

The ongoing and escalating assault on primary- and secondary-school teachers is not a pretty sight. Holly Houston is a post-traumatic stress specialist. She counsels teachers in Chicago public schools and reported, “Of the teachers that I have counseled over the years who have been assaulted, 100 percent of them have satisfied diagnostic criteria for PTSD.” It’s not just big-city schoolteachers traumatized. Dr. Darlyne Nemeth, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said last year, “I have treated many teachers with PTSD, and I am currently following a few of them.”

A Philadelphia seventh-grade girl with a history of incidents against her teacher sprayed perfume in the teacher’s face after telling her that she smelled “like old white pussy.” After telling her classmates “I’m about to kick this bitch’s white ass,” she shoved the teacher, knocking her to the floor. In 2014, a Philadelphia 68-year-old substitute teacher was knocked out cold by a student (http://tinyurl.com/orldslb). Earlier that year, two other teachers in the same school were assaulted. By the way, Philadelphia schools employ close to 400 school police officers.

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