No doubt the dumbing of America is a fact. I blame both parents and the gubmint-run public education system (or teachers, if you will). Both should be attacking popular culture, endless political correctness, victim mentalities and the real racism - rationalization for unacceptable conduct, low scholastic performance, and a performance bar that is continually being lowered. but they don't.
The Kansas City experience is relevant regarding the folly of just throwing money at the problem of differences in achievement among different groups - in effect trying to affect change from the outside-in rather than the inside-out.
I know from my own personal observation, when we allowed my 12 year old daughter to go to a magnet school where she would be one of a small handful of white kids, so-called magnet schools, at least in Florida, are a total flop as to their intended purpose.
Driving her to school one morning I saw a large black man wearing a totally purple suit, purple shirt, purple pants, with a purple felt super-fly hat complete with a feather, and glossy purple paten-leather shoes, walking kids across the intersection. This is not an exaggeration. I said to my kid - "Hey check that out!" She said, oh that's Mr. So and So, he's the principle. He thinks he's a fashion dude."
My daughter is a delightful kid. Warm hearted, always cheerful, very outgoing chatterbox - a social butterfly. Her name is Brookie. Almost all the black kids loved her - she quickly got a nickname - "Lil' B." My daughter's black girlfriends always protected her from aggressive foul mouthed young black males. One time, they beat the living crap out of a kid who tried to grab my daughter - they took their shoes off and beat the snot out the kid with them. My daughter learned more foul language in the first day at that school than she had ever heard in her previous 12 years of life.
School orientation and subsequent visits to the school were a total joke. Almost all the teachers were black, and I'm guessing they must have attended colleges with special admissions programs for minorities. Any time you visited the school, events were poorly planned, mass confusion, parents walking around in circles trying to follow incorrect directions to classrooms, and worst of all, teachers speaking ebonics.
Notes to home from the teachers very often had misspelled words. This magnet school was a total disappointment even though my kid did well and adjusted well. This particular magnet school went from a "D" rating overall to an "F" rating for the school year, which according to the rules, allowed my daughter to switch to any other school in the county if she wished. So she now goes to a high rated school in a white part of town.
I still call her "Lil' B", though.
