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THE POVERTY OF EDUCATION AND THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR
Ramon Sanchez
FOR THOSE OF US over thirty who are successful products of America's schools and colleges, it is surprising to discover that we have risen through the ranks of a society about which we learned next to nothing. Since the beginning of the civil rights movement, all sorts of facts have come to light which undermine our cherished notions about progress and the American dream. Little by little we are coming close to collective recognition that there is a dirty secret in American society: money values come first and human values come last.
This secret has been well kept, thanks in large part to the always favorable image of our society projected by our innocent teachers, our bland and optimistic textbooks. Not everyone, of course, has covered over ugly facts with inspiring slogans. For some, like Frederick Douglass, the facts were experiences too painful to be ignored. "You glory in...your universal education; yet you maintain a system [slavery] as dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation—a system begun in avarice, supported by pride and perpetuated in cruelty." But Frederick Douglass is barely known to most college graduates, let alone to the more numerous group of less educated people. And, needless to say, Negroes are and always have been among the very lowest status people in our society, so that a negative judgment by one of them, no matter how perceptive, has hardly been enough to cast doubt on the almost religious faith that Americans have had (until now) that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
More recently, truly startling revelations have come from very unlikely places, reports of presidential commissions. The latest one, from the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, stated that the cause of the 1967 riots lay in the "racial attitudes and behavior of white Americans towards black Americans." In particular:
[[footnote 1]] Dr. Ramon Sanchez is Assistant Professor, School of Education, City College, New York City.
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