{"id":2065,"date":"2011-05-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-06T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/everyone-agrees-theres-a-problem-with-education-pro-and-con-cuee-lcdp-2-may-2011.html"},"modified":"2011-05-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-06T16:00:00","slug":"everyone-agrees-theres-a-problem-with-education-pro-and-con-cuee-lcdp-2-may-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/everyone-agrees-theres-a-problem-with-education-pro-and-con-cuee-lcdp-2-may-2011.html","title":{"rendered":"Everyone agrees there’s a problem with education — pro and con CUEE @ LCDP 2 May 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"Pretty much everyone agrees there are problems with the two local\nschool systems in this county, those of Lowndes and Valdosta.\n

\nProponents and opponents of school unification even agree on many\nof the details.\nThey just don’t agree on the solution.\nCUEE believes that unification will somehow lead to solutions to all this,\nand\n\nbelieve<\/em> is the word they use,<\/a>\nbecause they have no evidence.\nOpponents such as me\n\ndon’t see any plan to get to better education<\/a>, and some think that unification\nwill cause problems that CUEE is not even considering,\n\njust like integration did in 1969.<\/a>\n

\nHere’s a pair of pie charts from 2008 from\n\nWho’s losing in Winnersville?<\/a>\na project unification opponent Dr. Mark George was involved in:\n

\n\n<\/a>\n

\nAnd here is a similar comparison\n\nfrom CUEE using data from 2009-2010.<\/a>:\n\n\n

\n\n<\/a>\n

\nCUEE goes on to detail various other statistics about the two school systems.\n

\n“Who’s losing” provides quite a bit of context, including this chart\nthat Dr. George passed out at the 2 May LCDP meeting:\n

\n\n<\/a>\n

\nThis graph illustrates that enforced school integration actually led\nto the problem becoming worse, with more segregation now than before.\nSome educational participants from back then, both pro and con unification,\nremember good aspects of the\nformer black schools that were discarded.<\/a>\nAnd the same Chamber of Commerce and real estate industry as we have today\n\nmade the problem worse by continually advertising Lowndes County schools.<\/a>\nThese points call into question using integration again, even if it is called\nunification this time, when it failed before.\n

\nIt may be satisfying to\ncry apartheid<\/a>\nand think that resolves the matter.\nBut it didn’t in 1969 and CUEE itself says that\n\nunification will not improve education.<\/a>\nBetter solutions are needed.\n

\nThoughtful proponents\n(such as\n\nRev. Leroy Butler<\/a>)\nand opponents\n(such as\n\nDr. Mark George<\/a>)\nof unification seem to agree that the problem is not just in the schools:\nit pervades the larger society.\nBy the problem I mean specifically race, which they discuss in those videos,\nbut also the web of interactions related to education (which we will\ncome back to in another post).\nThere is some anecdotal evidence that\nyounger folk may exhibit\nthese separations less than their elders.<\/a>\nBut the elders are still part of the web of interactions that reinforces\nthe problems.\n

\nI submit that it is the same web of interactions\n