Ah yes, it’s a wonderful idea, long overdue in fact. Wait, it’s actually simply business.
With the pool of affluent white high school graduates about to peak, those non-accountable entities known as colleges and universities now are trotting out their long-hidden (i.e., virtually non-existent) commitment to diversity and inclusion (t-shirts and bumper stickers available at full retail prices at the corporate bookstore on campus).
The headlines are there: “we, the esteemed keepers of the higher education torch, want to bring to our schools more high-achieving minority students.”
And so it happens, really good kids of color, exemplary of character and motivation, possessors of seemingly attractive high school GPAs, receive nice scholarship packages and enroll at e.g., Middlebury and Lafayette and Syracuse. (This essay is not about the tiny sliver relevant to the Ivy League, although many of the points made could be apropos.) In too many instances, they find the academic rigor of their intended major beyond their capabilities, a cold realization which hits immediately, as in the Fall semester of their freshman year.
Nobody relevant to the college/initial thought process about a major ever has had a heart-to-heart discussion with these students about the academic quality of their high school preparation, nor about what a particular job requires in terms of subject matter mastered. The students had gone to decent public or private Catholic schools. They had done well. The problem – an academically inadequate high school curricula/rigor – never surfaced until the student was hit in the face at college.
The various reactions which ensue include:
*significant slippage in self-confidence *downgrading of the major, e.g., from engineering to psychology *questions about whether the right college has been chosen *criticism of the college for not being more supportive *increased interest in a semester abroad, simply to be in a different environment *irritation at the quality and quantity of guidance counseling they have received at each step of the education letter *a desire to drop college and go home to the family which loves the student no matter what has happened*an emphasis on getting enough credits to finish (the phrase “get out” is sometimes heard) in four years, to have the diploma, even if the newly chosen major is not one with which the student is truly in love … and do not ask what career/job the student has in mind.
EVERY ADULT WHO CARES ABOUT THESE KIDS MUST FIGHT FOR BETTER EDUCATION IN THE K-12 PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM, WHICH INCLUDES CHARTER SCHOOLS. TO NOT DO SO IS TO BE DISENGENUOUS—YOU CANNOT ACCEPT THE CURRENT K-12 INADEQUACIES AND EXPECT LARGE NUMBERS OF “HIGH-ACHIEVING” MINORITY STUDENTS TO FLOURISH IN COLLEGE.
YOU CANNOT BE SILENT WHEN, E.G., ORGANIZATIONS LIKE THE NAACP SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE VERY PUBLIC SCHOOLS (FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE PUBLIC!) WHICH ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY SUCCESSFUL IN GETTING MINORITY STUDENTS FULLY READY FOR COLLEGE.
TEACHING IS THE NUMBER ONE PROFESSION; K-12 TEACHERS SHOULD BE PAID MORE. HOWEVER, YOU CANNOT BE SILENT WHEN TEACHERS UNIONS SEEMINGLY SAY THAT THE DEMANDS OF THEIR CONSTITUENCY ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE SUCCESS OF STUDENTS.
YOU CANNOT BE SILENT WHEN THE ADULTS IN THE POLITICAL BACKROOMS ARE SCREAMING ABOUT ADULT ISSUES AND IGNORING THE DAMAGE BEING DONE TO STUDENTS.
If you truly want more minority students to be collegians who graduate — with majors they want and are good at, you must speak out about the quality of their high school academic and counseling preparation. To not do so is to give the lie to all your warm-hearted sentiments.
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