The College Diploma Fraud

For more than a half-century, government has tried to close racial gaps in educational attainment.  Sad to say, those gaps have proven intractable.  Nevertheless, the impulse remains as heartfelt as ever (perhaps due to its financially lucrative character), but the emphasis is now shifting from actual learning to equality of graduation rates.  President Obama has spoken of adding 5 million graduates to the workforce by 2020, and credential-mania is now all the rage.  This shift is a disaster in the making; imparting knowledge is commendable, but just handing out diplomas is harmful deception.  A cynic might aver that the shift from knowledge to graduation rates is a tacit admission that the gap-closing quest is futile.

Consider a recent Washington Post story, "Md's Towson University conquers 'graduation gap.'"  The story explains how Towson is now among the tiny few that have equalized graduation across blacks, whites, and Hispanics.  The article's tone was clearly celebratory.  Meanwhile, a report prepared by The Education Trust (cited in the Post story) that examines the topic more broadly insisted that equal graduation rates "would be a very big step in putting our country on a path to a better and more equitable future." 

The tip-off to this educational chicanery is the silence regarding actual learning.."

Okay, here's the deal broken down so that even those tuning in from Rio Linda can understand what's going on:

Let's say I am a black man. And a diabetic. You are a white man, also a diabetic. For me, it takes 100 milligrams of medication a day to control my diabetes. You, the whitebread dude, need 80 milligrams of the same medication to control your diabetes.  

The medical profession (hah) takes note of this and becomes worried that treating black men and white men differently will result in an in-balance of the universe itself, soon ripping the space-time continuum to absolute shreds.

To remedy this, the medical profession (hah) comes up with two possible plans to save the world as we know it. Have pharmacies label ALL medications the same, be they 80 or 100 milligrams so as not to appear to be favoring one race or another...or...to force me the black guy to take the same dose as you the white guy because after all it isn't curing the disease that's important but treating the problem EQUALLY. 

The later is what the education profession (hah) has decided to do with minorities. Enter them in the same college-prep classes as non-minorities, whether they are deserving or not, because just like the diabetes medicine, to do otherwise would be to create an imbalance in the space time yadda yadda.

For obvious cultural reasons, minority children make up less than 20% of what are called "gifted children". So a classroom of gifted kids would therefore be 5 to 1 whitebread heavy and that just ain't gonna happen no mores. 

Fuck the education. Fuck learning. Give them ALL the same treatment... and that means gifted classes must leave out some truly deserving kids because the room must be reserved for undeserving kids taking up the limited amount of space. Not everyone is suited for college-prep courses. But idiots like Barry Soetoro want an equal amount of kids in college-prep courses because, well, JUST BECAUSE.

Wouldn't want to call him and his entourage racists so lets leave it at that. The end result is there are an awful lot of brainy kids left out in the cold but who cares, they're white. Soon enough the colleges are chockablock with mediocrity but on paper they are very, very, equal.

And....

Just like the black guys on diabetes, soon to expire.