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Originally Posted by Pete F.
No, that's Sowell's claim of why Dunbar was a success in spite of being all black.
But then he specifically points to the entrance of inadequately educated, inadequately motivated, and disruptive students from the surrounding all black neighborhood as the reason for the change at Dunbar.
Where did the inadequately educated, inadequately motivated, and disruptive students suddenly appear from? Were they being educated prior to 1954?
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The Sowell article was a response to your "This re-segregation trend often concentrates minorities in schools with fewer resources that face challenges attracting and retaining quality teachers. A mounting body of evidence indicates that school segregation has negative impacts on short-term academic achievement of minority students and their success in later life. Integrated schools have a positive impact on all students through promoting awareness and mutual understanding and ensuring that they have the necessary tools to function in an increasingly multicultural society. Not taking intentional steps to ensure that all students have the opportunity to attend quality, integrated schools perpetuates injustice, allowing the mistakes of the past to haunt the future."
The Sowell article, though not specifically meant as a counterpoint to yours, points out that it is not necessary to integrate schools in order to provide quality education. Nor are the money or the so-called necessary tools which are supposedly more abundant in integrated schools necessary factors for education that leads to success.
Nor is he arguing against integrated schools.
His article, in effect, points out the necessary key ingredients for quality education. And he is proposing that it is those ingredients, regardless if a school is integrated or not, which are necessary for quality education.
I think he laments that the approaches taken by the successful all black schools have been cast aside for the implementation of various theoretical social and pedagogical notions which are obviously failing not only minorities but even most whites.
The approach taken by those historic black schools were successful not because they were "black." They were actually very white, Western civilization, pedagogy. They were classically rigorous. They demanded discipline. They molded good, industrious, citizens who were far better prepared to face a world in which the ability to think, with discipline and motivation, is required, than are the public schools in the urban black neighborhoods of today. And the leftist political resistance to charter schools, or school choice, or vouchers, or religious schools (all alternatives in their way similar to old Dunbar High), which give minorities a chance at a better education, keeps many black children stuck in failure.
Integration is perfectly fine. Certainly a desirable goal. But it is not the answer for quality education. Growing up in Detroit, I went to integrated schools. What was required of students in order to get the most out of what was being taught, were the very things that were required of students attending the old Dunbar high school and the other successful all black schools of the past. And that rigor and discipline was required of all students, black or white. Those who slacked, did poorly or not as well. Black or white. Those who were serious and disciplined, were prepared for a better life. Black or white.
There is a classical notion that personal responsibility is the key to success. There is the Progressive notion of collective responsibility directed by experts and enforced by government being the only truly viable and equitable path to success.
The classical path admired by Sowell is old school. The Progressive new school shuns the classical as elitist, repressive, unfair, even racist. There is a competition between the ideas, even in how and what to teach.
Yeah, the classical may work, but it is mean spirited and inconsiderate of the basic needs of the less advantaged. It breeds contempt and animosity. Conflict and rebellion. The Progressive is still in its experimental stage, but will lead us to a better world.
So they say. In the meantime, we have an educational wilderness.