More on Black Education
Oddly enough I'm still having discussions on Bill Cosby's comments. One such conversation with a Professor revealed that black parents allow thier children to watch more tv than any other group in America. This isn't just poor blacks, but blacks across the socio-economic spectrum. She went on to discuss the recent evidence that children who are exposed to television during the first 2 years of thier lives are at high risk for developing ADD-HD. Now we do know that ADD is overdiagnosed in black children (and children in general) but what she pointed out was that the studies showed how the brains of these young children who are weaned on TV are actually wired differently ( much like a crack baby). Furthremore, we are witnessing the first full generation of children raised on 24 hour Cable television.
After having this discussion I took a gander at The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (no 24, Spring 2004) where I stumbled across an article attempting to discuss the general low-scores of blacks on the SAT. Among the 14 points discussed ETS, two immediatlty jumped out at me:
12) Reading to Young Children: Almost two thirds of all white children ages three to five are read to every day. Only 48 percent of black children in this age group are read to daily.
13) Television Watching: In black households, 42 percent of fourth-graders watch six or more hours of televisions each day. Only 13 percent of white fourth-graders watch six or more hours of television each day.
Point 13 is perhaps the most condemning point. six hours of television a day represents 30 hours of television a week. or the equivalent of just under the hours of full-time employment. rto put this in perspective if we look at another article in the same Journal, which discusses gradutaion rates of black High Schoolers, we would note that the national average for black graduation is 50.2 percent and in New York 35.1 percent graduate and in New Jersey the rates is 62.3%. therefore we have corresponding drop-out rates of 49.8%, 64.9% and 47.7% respectively. With the exception of the New York rates, one can theoretically make a direct correlation between television watching and drop-out rates. Remember tv watching and the development of 24 hour entertainment directed at children and teenagers (Cartoon Network and the various iterations of MTV) are relatively recent phenomena so tv watching is currently going up, not down.
To be fair the ETS report did discuss other factors such as nutrition, parental involvement, class sizes and the like, but I'm quick to dismiss this because some years ago while reading Tony Brown's Black Lies, White Lies I found a reference to an article in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Spring 1994) no 92. The article entitled "Black Africans Now the Most Highly Educated Group in British Society" Stated that
26 percent of adult black Africans, compared to only 13.4 percent of white adults, in the United Kingdom hold academic qualifications higher than "A" or college level. Thus Blacks in the United Kingdom with African origins are outperforming British Whites by two to one. Asians who are dominating the American education scene and swamping Blacks in achievement and the Caribbean Blacks who best Whites in the United States take a back seat to the Africans in the United Kingdom. where race conflicts are even more contentious and where the academic and scholarly cultures are "centerpieces of Western Eurocentrism.
What are Africans in the UK (and here but I currently only have ancedotal evidence to African Achievement in the US) doing that blacks in the US aren't. What are Caribbean blacks doing that black americans aren't? In my estimate it comes down to culture. Many Black Africans come from places where television is an out of reach expense and when it isn't the local programming is nothing like what is broadcast in the US ( This is changing). Similarly, in the caribbean 6 hour tv days is not happening. The time when you see African and caribbean students having issues (aside from normal differences between people) is when they have been absorbed into or influenced by black American culture. It is small wonder then why many new Black immigrants from Africa, etc. do thier best to keep away from Black Americans. This does not mean that they are right to do so, but you can see from a perspective why it would make sense.
Ultimately we need to do as the Group MAZE suggested:
Change our ways.
Links:
http://www.jbhe.com/
(17 years of informed commentary)
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Monday, May 24, 2004
Don't hate on Cosby
Recently, Bill Cosby set off a commotion by making a commentary on a known issue within the black community, which resulted in all kinds of talk regearding whether Cosby was right or wrong. Below a summary of Cosby's statements:
quote:
Cosby said, according to Leiby: "Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'
He added: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
The Post said Cosby also targeted imprisoned blacks.
"These are not political criminals," he said. "These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
Many conscious blacks claimed that Cosby should have pointed fingers at middle class blacks for abandoning "poor blacks." Perhaps he should have but that doesn't change what he did observe. Here at Garvey's Ghost we have president for the posiition that it is indeed the responsibility of the oppressed to shake off the yoke of oppression given that oppressors never act in the interest of the oppressed. Marcus Garvey left us a good document on reading and it's importance:
You must never stop learning. The world's greatest men and women were people who educated themselves outside of the university with all the knowledge that the university gives, as [and?] you have the opportunity of doing the same thing the university student does---read and study. One must never stop reading. Read everything that you can that is of standard knowledge. Don't waste time reading trashy literature. That is to say, don't pay any attention to the ten cents novels, wild west stories and cheap sentimental books, but where there is a good plot and a good story in the form of a novel, read it. It is necessary to read it for the purpose of getting information on human nature. The idea is that personal experience is not enough for a human to get all the useful knowledge of life, because the individual life is too short, so we must feed on the experience of others. The literature we read should include the biography and autobiography of men and women who have accomplished greatness in their particular line. Whenever you can buy these books and own them and whilst you are reading them make pencil or pen notes of the striking sentences and paragraphs that you should like to remember, so that when you have to refer to the book for any thought that you would like to refresh your mind on, you will not have to read over the whole book.
You should also read the best poetry for inspiration. The standard poets have always been the most inspirational creators. From a good line of poetry, you may get the inspiration for the career of a life time. Many a great man and woman was first inspired by some attractive line or verse of poetry. There are good poets and bad poets just like there are good novels and bad novels. Always select the best poets for your inspirational urge.
Read history incessantly until you master it. This means your own national history, the history of the world---social history, industrial history, and the history of the different sciences; but primarily the history of man. If you do not know what went on before you came here and what is happening at the time you live, but away from you, you will not know the world and will be ignorant of the world and mankind. You can only make the best out of life by knowing and understanding it. To know, you must fall back on the intelligence of others who came before you and have left their records behi[n]d.
To be able to read intelligently, you must first be able to master the language of your country. To do this, you must be well acquainted with its grammar and the science of it. Every six months you should read over again the science of the language that you speak, so as not to forget its rules. People judge you by your writing and your speech. If you write badly and incorrectly they become prejudiced toward your intelligence, and if you speak badly and incorrectly those who hear you become disgusted and will not pay much attention to you but in their hearts laugh after you. A leader who is to teach men and present any fact of truth to man must first be learned in his subject.
Never write or speak on a subject you know nothing about, for there is always somebody who knows that particular subject to laugh at you or to ask you embarras[s]ing questions that may make others laugh at you. You can know about any subject under the sun by reading about it. If you cannot bu[y] the books outright and own them, go to your public libraries and read them there or borrow them, or join some circulating library in your district or town, so as to get the use of these books. You should do that as you may refer to them for information.
You should read at least four hours a day. The best time to read is in the evening after you have retired from your work and after you have rested and before sleeping hours but do so before morning, so that during your sleeping hours what you have read may become subconscious, that is to say, planted in your memory. Never go to bed without doing some reading[.]
Never keep the constant company of anybody who doesn't know as much as you or [isn't] as educated as you, and from whom you cannot learn something or reciprocate your learning, especially if that person is illiterate or ignorant because constant association with such a person will unconsciously cause you to drift into the peculiar culture or ignorance of that person. Always try to associate with people from whom you can learn something. Contact with cultured persons and with books is the best companionship you can have and keep.
By reading good books you keep the company of the authors of the book or the subjects of the book when otherwise you could not meet them in the social contact of life. NEVER GO DOWN IN INTELLIGENCE to those who are below you, but if possible help to lift them up to you and always try to ascend to those who are above you and be their equal with the hope of being their master.
Continue always in the application of the thing you desire educationally, culturally, or otherwise, and never give up until you reach the objective---and you can reach the objective if other[s] have done so before you, proving by their doing it that it is possible.
In your desire to accomplish greatness, you must first decide in your own mind in what direction you desire to seek that greatness, and when you have so decided in your own mind[,] work unceas[i]ngly toward it. The particular thing that you may want should be before you all the time, and whatsoever it takes to get it or make it possible should be undertaken. Use your faculties and persuasion to achieve all you set your mind on.
Try never to repeat yourself in any one discourse in saying the same thing over and over except [when] you are making new points, because repetition is tiresome and it annoys those who hear the repetition. Therefore, try to possess as much universal knowledge as possible through reading so as to be able to be free of repetition in trying to drive home a point.
No one is ever too old to learn. Therefore, you should take advantage of every educational facility. If you should hear of a great man or woman who is to lecture or speak in your town on any given subject and the person is an authority on the subject, always make time to go and hear him. This is what is meant by learning from others. You should learn the two sides to every story, so as to be able to properly debate a question and hold your grounds with the side that you support. If you only know one side of a story, you cannot argue intelligently nor effectively. As for instance, to combat communism, you must know about it, otherwise people will take advantage of you and win a victory over your ignorance. Anything that you are going to challenge, you must first know about it, so as to be able to defeat it. The moment you are ignorant about anything the person who has the intelligence of that thing will defeat you. Therefore, get knowledge, get it quickly, get it studiously, but get it anyway.
Knowledge is power. When you know a thing and can hold your ground on that thing and win over your opponents on that thing, those who hear you learn to have confidence in you and will trust your ability.
Never, therefore, attempt anything without being able to protect yourself on it, for every time you are defeated it takes away from your prestige and you are not as respected as before.
All the knowledge you want is in the world, and all that you have to do is to go seeking it and never stop until you have found it. You can find knowledge or the information about it in the public libraries, if it is not on your own bookshelf. Try to have a book and own it on every bit of knowledge you want. You may generally get these books at second hand book stores for sometimes one-fifth of the original value.
Always have a well equipped shelf of books. Nearly all information about mankind is to be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. This is an expensive set of books, but try to get them. Buy a complete edition for yourself, and keep it at your home, and whenever you are in doubt about anything, go to it and you will find it there.
The value of knowledge is to use it. It is not humanly possible that a person can retain all knowledge of the world, but if a person knows how to search for all the knowledge of the world, he will find it when he wants it. A doctor or a lawyer although he passed his examination in college does not know all the laws and does not know all the techniques of medicine but he has the fundamental knowledge. When he wants a particular kind of knowledge, he goes to the medical books or law books and refers to the particular law or how to use the recipe of medicine. You must, therefore, know where to find your facts and use them as you want them. No one will know where you got them, but you will have the facts and by using the facts correctly they will think you a wonderful person, a great gen[iu]s, and a trusted leader.
In reading it is not necessary or compulsory that you agree with everything you read. You must always use or apply your own reasoning to what you have read based upon what you already know as touching the facts on what you have read. Pass judgement on what you read based upon these facts. When I say facts I mean things that cannot be disputed. You may read thoughts that are old, and opinions that are old and have changed since they were written. You must always search to find out the latest facts on that p[a]rticular subject and only when these facts are consistently maintained in what you read should you agree with them, otherwise you are entitled to your own opinion.
Always have up-to-date knowledge. You can gather this from the latest books and the latest periodicals, journals and newspapers. Read your daily newspaper everyday. Read a standard monthly journal every month, a standard weekly magazine every week, a standard quarterly magazine every quarter and by this you will find the new knowledge of the whole year in addition to the books you read, whose facts have not altered in that year. Don't keep old ideas, bury them as new ones come.
How to Read
Use every spare minute you have in reading. If you are going on a journey that would take you an hour carry something with you to read for that hour until you have reached the place. If you are sitting down waiting for somebody, have something in your pocket to read until the person comes. Don't waste time.
Any time you think you have to waste put it in reading something. Carry with you a small pocket dictionary and study words whilst waiting or travelling, or a small pocket volume on some particular subject. Read through at least one book every week separate and distinct from your newspapers and journals. It will mean that at the end of one year you will have read fifty-two different subjects. After five years you will have read over two hundred and fifty books. You may be considered then a well read man or a well read woman and there will be a great difference between you and the person who has not read one book. You will be considered intelligent and the other person be considered ignorant. You and that person therefore will be living in two different worlds; one the world of ignorance and the other the world of intelligence. Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.
Your language being English you should study the English language thoroughly. To know the English language thoroughly you ought to be acquainted with Latin, because most of the English words are of Latin origin. It is also advisable that you know the French language because most of the books that you read in English carry Latin and French phrases and words. There is no use reading a page or paragraph of a book or even a sentence without understanding it.
If it has foreign words in it, before you pass over [them] you should go to the dictionary, if you don't know the meaning and find out the meanin[g]. Never pass over a word without knowing its meaning. The dictionary and the books on word building which can be secured from book sellers will help you greatly.
I know a boy who was ambitious to learn. He hadn't the opportunity of an early school education because he had to work ten hours a day, but he determined that he would learn and so he took with him to his work place every day a simplified grammar and he would read and me[m]orize passages and the rules of grammar whilst at work.
After one year he was almost an expert in the grammar of his language. He knew the differen[t] parts of speech, he could paraphrase, analyse and construct sentences. He also took with him a pocket dictionary and he would write out twenty-five new words with their meanings every day and study these words and their mords [forms?] and their meaning. After one year he had a speaking vocabulary of more than three thousand words. He continued this for several years and when he became a man he had a vocabulary at his command of over fifteen thousand words. He became an author because he could write in his language by having command of words. What he wrote was his experiences and he recorded his experiences in the best words of his language. He was not able to write properly at the same age and so he took with him to work what is called in school a copying book and he practised the copying of letters until he was able to write a very good hand. He naturally became acquainted with literature and so he continued reading extensively. When he died he was one of the greatest scholars the world ever knew. Apply the story to yourself.
There is nothing in the world that you want that you cannot have so long as it is possible in nature and men have achieved it before. The greatest men and women in the world burn the midnight lamp. That is to say, when their neighbours and household are gone to bed, they are reading, studying and thinking. When they rise in the morning they are always ahead of their neighbours and their household in the thing that they were studying[,] reading and thinking of. A daily repetition of that will carry them daily ahead and above their neighbours and household. Practise this rule. It is wise to study a couple of subjects at a time. As for instance---a little geography, a little psychology, a little ethics, a little theology, a little philosophy, a little mathematics, a little science on which a sound academic education is built. Doing this week after week, month after month, year after year will make you so learned in the liberal arts as to make you ready and fit for your place in the affairs of the world. If you know what others do not know, they will want to hear you. You will then become invaluable in your community and to your country, because men and women will want to hear you and see you everywhere.
As stated before, books are one's best companions. Try to get the[m] and keep them. A method of doing so is every time you have ten cents or twenty five cents or a dollar to spend foolishly[,] either on your friends or yourself [,] think how much more useful that ten or twenty five cents or dollar would be invested in a book and so invest it. It may be just the thing you have been looking for to give you a thought by which you may win the heart of the world. The ten cent, twenty five cent or a dollar, therefore, may turn out to be an investment of worth to the extent of a million dollars. Never lend anybody the book that you want. You will never get it back. Never allow anybody to go to your bookshelf in your absence because the very book that you may want most may be taken from the shelf and you may never be able to get one of the kind again.
If you have a library of your own, lock it when you are not at home. Spend most of your spare time in your library. If you have a radio keep it in your own library and use it exhaustively to listen to lectures, recitals, speeches and good music. You can learn a lot from the radio. You can be inspired a lot by good music [lines repeated]. Good music carries the sentiment of harmony and you may think many a good thought out of listening to good music.
Read a chapter from the Bible everyday, Old and New Testaments. The greatest wisdom of the age is to be found in the Scriptures. You can always quote from the Scriptures. It is the quickest way of winning approval.
Therefore Cosby didn't say anything that hasn't been known by Black Nationalist since 1920, long before Brown v. Board of Education. if 50 years after Brown V. Board Blacks have not figured out the importance of reading and the mastery of the primary language in the country in which one lives then exactly who's fault is that? Don't get mad at Cosby
Links:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38565
Recently, Bill Cosby set off a commotion by making a commentary on a known issue within the black community, which resulted in all kinds of talk regearding whether Cosby was right or wrong. Below a summary of Cosby's statements:
quote:
Cosby said, according to Leiby: "Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'
He added: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
The Post said Cosby also targeted imprisoned blacks.
"These are not political criminals," he said. "These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
Many conscious blacks claimed that Cosby should have pointed fingers at middle class blacks for abandoning "poor blacks." Perhaps he should have but that doesn't change what he did observe. Here at Garvey's Ghost we have president for the posiition that it is indeed the responsibility of the oppressed to shake off the yoke of oppression given that oppressors never act in the interest of the oppressed. Marcus Garvey left us a good document on reading and it's importance:
You must never stop learning. The world's greatest men and women were people who educated themselves outside of the university with all the knowledge that the university gives, as [and?] you have the opportunity of doing the same thing the university student does---read and study. One must never stop reading. Read everything that you can that is of standard knowledge. Don't waste time reading trashy literature. That is to say, don't pay any attention to the ten cents novels, wild west stories and cheap sentimental books, but where there is a good plot and a good story in the form of a novel, read it. It is necessary to read it for the purpose of getting information on human nature. The idea is that personal experience is not enough for a human to get all the useful knowledge of life, because the individual life is too short, so we must feed on the experience of others. The literature we read should include the biography and autobiography of men and women who have accomplished greatness in their particular line. Whenever you can buy these books and own them and whilst you are reading them make pencil or pen notes of the striking sentences and paragraphs that you should like to remember, so that when you have to refer to the book for any thought that you would like to refresh your mind on, you will not have to read over the whole book.
You should also read the best poetry for inspiration. The standard poets have always been the most inspirational creators. From a good line of poetry, you may get the inspiration for the career of a life time. Many a great man and woman was first inspired by some attractive line or verse of poetry. There are good poets and bad poets just like there are good novels and bad novels. Always select the best poets for your inspirational urge.
Read history incessantly until you master it. This means your own national history, the history of the world---social history, industrial history, and the history of the different sciences; but primarily the history of man. If you do not know what went on before you came here and what is happening at the time you live, but away from you, you will not know the world and will be ignorant of the world and mankind. You can only make the best out of life by knowing and understanding it. To know, you must fall back on the intelligence of others who came before you and have left their records behi[n]d.
To be able to read intelligently, you must first be able to master the language of your country. To do this, you must be well acquainted with its grammar and the science of it. Every six months you should read over again the science of the language that you speak, so as not to forget its rules. People judge you by your writing and your speech. If you write badly and incorrectly they become prejudiced toward your intelligence, and if you speak badly and incorrectly those who hear you become disgusted and will not pay much attention to you but in their hearts laugh after you. A leader who is to teach men and present any fact of truth to man must first be learned in his subject.
Never write or speak on a subject you know nothing about, for there is always somebody who knows that particular subject to laugh at you or to ask you embarras[s]ing questions that may make others laugh at you. You can know about any subject under the sun by reading about it. If you cannot bu[y] the books outright and own them, go to your public libraries and read them there or borrow them, or join some circulating library in your district or town, so as to get the use of these books. You should do that as you may refer to them for information.
You should read at least four hours a day. The best time to read is in the evening after you have retired from your work and after you have rested and before sleeping hours but do so before morning, so that during your sleeping hours what you have read may become subconscious, that is to say, planted in your memory. Never go to bed without doing some reading[.]
Never keep the constant company of anybody who doesn't know as much as you or [isn't] as educated as you, and from whom you cannot learn something or reciprocate your learning, especially if that person is illiterate or ignorant because constant association with such a person will unconsciously cause you to drift into the peculiar culture or ignorance of that person. Always try to associate with people from whom you can learn something. Contact with cultured persons and with books is the best companionship you can have and keep.
By reading good books you keep the company of the authors of the book or the subjects of the book when otherwise you could not meet them in the social contact of life. NEVER GO DOWN IN INTELLIGENCE to those who are below you, but if possible help to lift them up to you and always try to ascend to those who are above you and be their equal with the hope of being their master.
Continue always in the application of the thing you desire educationally, culturally, or otherwise, and never give up until you reach the objective---and you can reach the objective if other[s] have done so before you, proving by their doing it that it is possible.
In your desire to accomplish greatness, you must first decide in your own mind in what direction you desire to seek that greatness, and when you have so decided in your own mind[,] work unceas[i]ngly toward it. The particular thing that you may want should be before you all the time, and whatsoever it takes to get it or make it possible should be undertaken. Use your faculties and persuasion to achieve all you set your mind on.
Try never to repeat yourself in any one discourse in saying the same thing over and over except [when] you are making new points, because repetition is tiresome and it annoys those who hear the repetition. Therefore, try to possess as much universal knowledge as possible through reading so as to be able to be free of repetition in trying to drive home a point.
No one is ever too old to learn. Therefore, you should take advantage of every educational facility. If you should hear of a great man or woman who is to lecture or speak in your town on any given subject and the person is an authority on the subject, always make time to go and hear him. This is what is meant by learning from others. You should learn the two sides to every story, so as to be able to properly debate a question and hold your grounds with the side that you support. If you only know one side of a story, you cannot argue intelligently nor effectively. As for instance, to combat communism, you must know about it, otherwise people will take advantage of you and win a victory over your ignorance. Anything that you are going to challenge, you must first know about it, so as to be able to defeat it. The moment you are ignorant about anything the person who has the intelligence of that thing will defeat you. Therefore, get knowledge, get it quickly, get it studiously, but get it anyway.
Knowledge is power. When you know a thing and can hold your ground on that thing and win over your opponents on that thing, those who hear you learn to have confidence in you and will trust your ability.
Never, therefore, attempt anything without being able to protect yourself on it, for every time you are defeated it takes away from your prestige and you are not as respected as before.
All the knowledge you want is in the world, and all that you have to do is to go seeking it and never stop until you have found it. You can find knowledge or the information about it in the public libraries, if it is not on your own bookshelf. Try to have a book and own it on every bit of knowledge you want. You may generally get these books at second hand book stores for sometimes one-fifth of the original value.
Always have a well equipped shelf of books. Nearly all information about mankind is to be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. This is an expensive set of books, but try to get them. Buy a complete edition for yourself, and keep it at your home, and whenever you are in doubt about anything, go to it and you will find it there.
The value of knowledge is to use it. It is not humanly possible that a person can retain all knowledge of the world, but if a person knows how to search for all the knowledge of the world, he will find it when he wants it. A doctor or a lawyer although he passed his examination in college does not know all the laws and does not know all the techniques of medicine but he has the fundamental knowledge. When he wants a particular kind of knowledge, he goes to the medical books or law books and refers to the particular law or how to use the recipe of medicine. You must, therefore, know where to find your facts and use them as you want them. No one will know where you got them, but you will have the facts and by using the facts correctly they will think you a wonderful person, a great gen[iu]s, and a trusted leader.
In reading it is not necessary or compulsory that you agree with everything you read. You must always use or apply your own reasoning to what you have read based upon what you already know as touching the facts on what you have read. Pass judgement on what you read based upon these facts. When I say facts I mean things that cannot be disputed. You may read thoughts that are old, and opinions that are old and have changed since they were written. You must always search to find out the latest facts on that p[a]rticular subject and only when these facts are consistently maintained in what you read should you agree with them, otherwise you are entitled to your own opinion.
Always have up-to-date knowledge. You can gather this from the latest books and the latest periodicals, journals and newspapers. Read your daily newspaper everyday. Read a standard monthly journal every month, a standard weekly magazine every week, a standard quarterly magazine every quarter and by this you will find the new knowledge of the whole year in addition to the books you read, whose facts have not altered in that year. Don't keep old ideas, bury them as new ones come.
How to Read
Use every spare minute you have in reading. If you are going on a journey that would take you an hour carry something with you to read for that hour until you have reached the place. If you are sitting down waiting for somebody, have something in your pocket to read until the person comes. Don't waste time.
Any time you think you have to waste put it in reading something. Carry with you a small pocket dictionary and study words whilst waiting or travelling, or a small pocket volume on some particular subject. Read through at least one book every week separate and distinct from your newspapers and journals. It will mean that at the end of one year you will have read fifty-two different subjects. After five years you will have read over two hundred and fifty books. You may be considered then a well read man or a well read woman and there will be a great difference between you and the person who has not read one book. You will be considered intelligent and the other person be considered ignorant. You and that person therefore will be living in two different worlds; one the world of ignorance and the other the world of intelligence. Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.
Your language being English you should study the English language thoroughly. To know the English language thoroughly you ought to be acquainted with Latin, because most of the English words are of Latin origin. It is also advisable that you know the French language because most of the books that you read in English carry Latin and French phrases and words. There is no use reading a page or paragraph of a book or even a sentence without understanding it.
If it has foreign words in it, before you pass over [them] you should go to the dictionary, if you don't know the meaning and find out the meanin[g]. Never pass over a word without knowing its meaning. The dictionary and the books on word building which can be secured from book sellers will help you greatly.
I know a boy who was ambitious to learn. He hadn't the opportunity of an early school education because he had to work ten hours a day, but he determined that he would learn and so he took with him to his work place every day a simplified grammar and he would read and me[m]orize passages and the rules of grammar whilst at work.
After one year he was almost an expert in the grammar of his language. He knew the differen[t] parts of speech, he could paraphrase, analyse and construct sentences. He also took with him a pocket dictionary and he would write out twenty-five new words with their meanings every day and study these words and their mords [forms?] and their meaning. After one year he had a speaking vocabulary of more than three thousand words. He continued this for several years and when he became a man he had a vocabulary at his command of over fifteen thousand words. He became an author because he could write in his language by having command of words. What he wrote was his experiences and he recorded his experiences in the best words of his language. He was not able to write properly at the same age and so he took with him to work what is called in school a copying book and he practised the copying of letters until he was able to write a very good hand. He naturally became acquainted with literature and so he continued reading extensively. When he died he was one of the greatest scholars the world ever knew. Apply the story to yourself.
There is nothing in the world that you want that you cannot have so long as it is possible in nature and men have achieved it before. The greatest men and women in the world burn the midnight lamp. That is to say, when their neighbours and household are gone to bed, they are reading, studying and thinking. When they rise in the morning they are always ahead of their neighbours and their household in the thing that they were studying[,] reading and thinking of. A daily repetition of that will carry them daily ahead and above their neighbours and household. Practise this rule. It is wise to study a couple of subjects at a time. As for instance---a little geography, a little psychology, a little ethics, a little theology, a little philosophy, a little mathematics, a little science on which a sound academic education is built. Doing this week after week, month after month, year after year will make you so learned in the liberal arts as to make you ready and fit for your place in the affairs of the world. If you know what others do not know, they will want to hear you. You will then become invaluable in your community and to your country, because men and women will want to hear you and see you everywhere.
As stated before, books are one's best companions. Try to get the[m] and keep them. A method of doing so is every time you have ten cents or twenty five cents or a dollar to spend foolishly[,] either on your friends or yourself [,] think how much more useful that ten or twenty five cents or dollar would be invested in a book and so invest it. It may be just the thing you have been looking for to give you a thought by which you may win the heart of the world. The ten cent, twenty five cent or a dollar, therefore, may turn out to be an investment of worth to the extent of a million dollars. Never lend anybody the book that you want. You will never get it back. Never allow anybody to go to your bookshelf in your absence because the very book that you may want most may be taken from the shelf and you may never be able to get one of the kind again.
If you have a library of your own, lock it when you are not at home. Spend most of your spare time in your library. If you have a radio keep it in your own library and use it exhaustively to listen to lectures, recitals, speeches and good music. You can learn a lot from the radio. You can be inspired a lot by good music [lines repeated]. Good music carries the sentiment of harmony and you may think many a good thought out of listening to good music.
Read a chapter from the Bible everyday, Old and New Testaments. The greatest wisdom of the age is to be found in the Scriptures. You can always quote from the Scriptures. It is the quickest way of winning approval.
Therefore Cosby didn't say anything that hasn't been known by Black Nationalist since 1920, long before Brown v. Board of Education. if 50 years after Brown V. Board Blacks have not figured out the importance of reading and the mastery of the primary language in the country in which one lives then exactly who's fault is that? Don't get mad at Cosby
Links:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38565
Monday, May 17, 2004
Brown V. Board anniversary
Today marks the 50'th anniversary of the first Brown decision in the US. The deeply flawed decision that legally brought down the principle of "Separate but Equal" is it applied to education and public accommodation. 50 years out many studies are showing that school and housing segregation are just as bad, if not worse than at the time of the Board decision. Of course I disagree with such reports as there is no legal segregation whatsoever. What I found interesting was a video presentation over at the New York Times website where Skip Gates and Cornell West debated the issues around so called segregated education. One thing that did bother me was that Cornel West attributed the idea that white Americans would be generous up until circumstances dictated they look after themselves to Derrick Bell. This idea was vocalised by Marcus Garvey and Martin Delany long before Derrick Bell. This underlines a problem with much of Black Academia. They, in their drive to shore themselves up and to "produce" and form their various cliques, will attribute ideas that are not even original to them to themselves, which makes them look like genius' when in fact they are merely repeating the ideas and conclusion reached by others before them. Nothing is more illustrative of this as the conflict between Dubois and Garvey. Dubois is highly regarded among Black Academics and relatively social elite whereas Garvey and his type are at best glossed over and simplified and usually outright ignored while the ideas are appropriated by more "friendly" and less "militant" persons or organization. But that's off topic.
I hope that this year, Black academics and others will finally get the point that socializing may be good for networking but does nothing in terms of learning. Education comes down to highly motivated teachers, students and parents. There are mastermind black students coming out of Countries that spend fall less on education than the US does and nary a white face around.
Also, I ran across an article by Thomas sowell entitled : Half a Century after Brown Where surprisingly I find myself in near total agreement with Mr Sowell's points:
Quote:
The landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education was immediately about schools, even though it quickly became a precedent for outlawing racial segregation in other government-controlled institutions and programs.
What was the basis for that landmark decision and what have been the actual effects of Brown v. Board of Education on the education of black students?
The key sentence in the Brown decision was: "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It was not just that the previous "separate but equal" doctrine was not being followed in practice. Rather, the Supreme Court argued that there was no way to make separate schools equal. All-black schools were inherently inferior.
It so happened that, within walking distance of the Supreme Court where this sweeping pronouncement was made, there was an all-black high school that had produced quality education for more than 80 years. Back in 1899 this school outscored two out of three white high schools in Washington on standardized tests.
Today, in the 21st century, it would be considered Utopian even to hope for such a result. Moreover, this was not an isolated fluke. This same school had an average IQ of 111 in 1939 %97 fifteen years before the Supreme Court declared such things impossible.
Most schools for blacks were in fact inferior, mainly because most were in the South, where the educational standards for blacks and whites alike tended to be lower. Racial discrimination, as distinguished from segregation alone, tended to make black schools the worst of all.
This was not due to their being all black, however. Back in the early 1940s, the black schools in Harlem had test scores very similar to those in white working class neighborhoods on New York's lower east side. Sometimes the Harlem schools' scores were a little higher than those of schools on the lower east side, and sometimes they were a little lower, but these scores were always comparable.
In short, it was not segregation, as such, that made schools inferior. If this seems like hair-splitting, consider the consequences of the Supreme Court's reasoning.
Once you say that racial separation makes the education itself inferior, you are launched on a course that leads straight to court-ordered busing of school children hither and yon to mix and match them racially, in hopes of educational improvement.
The polarization and bitterness of this crusade has lasted for decades %97 and has left black children still far behind educationally. Many are now much further below national norms than black students were in Harlem more than half a century ago....
More broadly, both the explicit language and the implicit assumptions of the Supreme Court in Brown depicted the answer to problems of blacks in general as being essentially the changing of white people. This was yet another line of reasoning that led straight into a blind alley.
Today, there are all-black schools that succeed, all-black schools that fail, and racially mixed schools that do either. Neither race nor racial segregation can explain such things. But both can serve as distractions from the task of creating higher standards and harder work.
The judicial mythology of racial mixing has led to an absurd situation where a white student can get into a selective public high school in San Francisco with lower qualifications than a Chinese American student. This farcical consequence of judicial mythology about a need for racial mixing does nothing to improve education for blacks or anyone else.
Unfortunately Mr. Sowell goes off into left field and discusses the supposed foolishness of the Miranda Warning given to people who are arrested.
Quote:
Under the much disdained "traditional" approach of criminal law, murders had been declining dramatically over the years. The murder rate in 1960 was just under half of what it had been in 1934.
All of that changed quickly and dramatically for the worse after the Warren Court began imposing its own notions about crime in the 1960s. The most famous of these changes was the "Miranda warning" that police have to give suspects, stating that they have a right to remain silent and to have an attorney supplied free.
For more than a century and a half, not one of the great Supreme Court Justices %97 not Holmes, not Brandeis, nor anybody else %97 had ever discovered any such requirement in the Constitution of the United States. Nor had Congress passed any law requiring any such thing.
Not only is his point way off the topic, but he fails to realize that Miranda was not created to protect the criminal but to inform the innocent. The Miranda Warning reminds the citizen of their constitutional right not to say anything that may incriminate themselves. It is entirely possible for an innocent person to incriminate themselves, The provision for a lawyer underscores the fact that the suspect, under the US constitution has a right to due process and equal accesmeansch menas that he should have at least a lawyer to defend him or her should they not afford one just as The State hires an attorny ( the DA) to prosecute it's behaf.
Thomas. Sowel started out with an unusually poignant idea but got himself lost.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/videopages/2004/05/16/books/20040516_BROWN00_VIDEO.html
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/pe_columnists/article/0,2071,NPDN_14960_2886784,00.html
Today marks the 50'th anniversary of the first Brown decision in the US. The deeply flawed decision that legally brought down the principle of "Separate but Equal" is it applied to education and public accommodation. 50 years out many studies are showing that school and housing segregation are just as bad, if not worse than at the time of the Board decision. Of course I disagree with such reports as there is no legal segregation whatsoever. What I found interesting was a video presentation over at the New York Times website where Skip Gates and Cornell West debated the issues around so called segregated education. One thing that did bother me was that Cornel West attributed the idea that white Americans would be generous up until circumstances dictated they look after themselves to Derrick Bell. This idea was vocalised by Marcus Garvey and Martin Delany long before Derrick Bell. This underlines a problem with much of Black Academia. They, in their drive to shore themselves up and to "produce" and form their various cliques, will attribute ideas that are not even original to them to themselves, which makes them look like genius' when in fact they are merely repeating the ideas and conclusion reached by others before them. Nothing is more illustrative of this as the conflict between Dubois and Garvey. Dubois is highly regarded among Black Academics and relatively social elite whereas Garvey and his type are at best glossed over and simplified and usually outright ignored while the ideas are appropriated by more "friendly" and less "militant" persons or organization. But that's off topic.
I hope that this year, Black academics and others will finally get the point that socializing may be good for networking but does nothing in terms of learning. Education comes down to highly motivated teachers, students and parents. There are mastermind black students coming out of Countries that spend fall less on education than the US does and nary a white face around.
Also, I ran across an article by Thomas sowell entitled : Half a Century after Brown Where surprisingly I find myself in near total agreement with Mr Sowell's points:
Quote:
The landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education was immediately about schools, even though it quickly became a precedent for outlawing racial segregation in other government-controlled institutions and programs.
What was the basis for that landmark decision and what have been the actual effects of Brown v. Board of Education on the education of black students?
The key sentence in the Brown decision was: "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It was not just that the previous "separate but equal" doctrine was not being followed in practice. Rather, the Supreme Court argued that there was no way to make separate schools equal. All-black schools were inherently inferior.
It so happened that, within walking distance of the Supreme Court where this sweeping pronouncement was made, there was an all-black high school that had produced quality education for more than 80 years. Back in 1899 this school outscored two out of three white high schools in Washington on standardized tests.
Today, in the 21st century, it would be considered Utopian even to hope for such a result. Moreover, this was not an isolated fluke. This same school had an average IQ of 111 in 1939 %97 fifteen years before the Supreme Court declared such things impossible.
Most schools for blacks were in fact inferior, mainly because most were in the South, where the educational standards for blacks and whites alike tended to be lower. Racial discrimination, as distinguished from segregation alone, tended to make black schools the worst of all.
This was not due to their being all black, however. Back in the early 1940s, the black schools in Harlem had test scores very similar to those in white working class neighborhoods on New York's lower east side. Sometimes the Harlem schools' scores were a little higher than those of schools on the lower east side, and sometimes they were a little lower, but these scores were always comparable.
In short, it was not segregation, as such, that made schools inferior. If this seems like hair-splitting, consider the consequences of the Supreme Court's reasoning.
Once you say that racial separation makes the education itself inferior, you are launched on a course that leads straight to court-ordered busing of school children hither and yon to mix and match them racially, in hopes of educational improvement.
The polarization and bitterness of this crusade has lasted for decades %97 and has left black children still far behind educationally. Many are now much further below national norms than black students were in Harlem more than half a century ago....
More broadly, both the explicit language and the implicit assumptions of the Supreme Court in Brown depicted the answer to problems of blacks in general as being essentially the changing of white people. This was yet another line of reasoning that led straight into a blind alley.
Today, there are all-black schools that succeed, all-black schools that fail, and racially mixed schools that do either. Neither race nor racial segregation can explain such things. But both can serve as distractions from the task of creating higher standards and harder work.
The judicial mythology of racial mixing has led to an absurd situation where a white student can get into a selective public high school in San Francisco with lower qualifications than a Chinese American student. This farcical consequence of judicial mythology about a need for racial mixing does nothing to improve education for blacks or anyone else.
Unfortunately Mr. Sowell goes off into left field and discusses the supposed foolishness of the Miranda Warning given to people who are arrested.
Quote:
Under the much disdained "traditional" approach of criminal law, murders had been declining dramatically over the years. The murder rate in 1960 was just under half of what it had been in 1934.
All of that changed quickly and dramatically for the worse after the Warren Court began imposing its own notions about crime in the 1960s. The most famous of these changes was the "Miranda warning" that police have to give suspects, stating that they have a right to remain silent and to have an attorney supplied free.
For more than a century and a half, not one of the great Supreme Court Justices %97 not Holmes, not Brandeis, nor anybody else %97 had ever discovered any such requirement in the Constitution of the United States. Nor had Congress passed any law requiring any such thing.
Not only is his point way off the topic, but he fails to realize that Miranda was not created to protect the criminal but to inform the innocent. The Miranda Warning reminds the citizen of their constitutional right not to say anything that may incriminate themselves. It is entirely possible for an innocent person to incriminate themselves, The provision for a lawyer underscores the fact that the suspect, under the US constitution has a right to due process and equal accesmeansch menas that he should have at least a lawyer to defend him or her should they not afford one just as The State hires an attorny ( the DA) to prosecute it's behaf.
Thomas. Sowel started out with an unusually poignant idea but got himself lost.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/videopages/2004/05/16/books/20040516_BROWN00_VIDEO.html
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/pe_columnists/article/0,2071,NPDN_14960_2886784,00.html
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Be careful what you find on the net
There is a reason why i sometimes don't post on an issue right away. First is because I don't allways have time. Second, I may have already commented on something similar so I don't see the point. I'm not THAT vain. Thirdly, there is a lot of mis-information out there and sometimes I'm waiting to see if I can get verification on a particular piece of information before posting on it. So it comes as little surprise to me to find out that the photo's of a purported gang rape of an Iraqi woman were in fact fake. over at the Bush Wars blog there is a post with a good breakdown of why those images are fake:
quote:
a) First, and most resoundingly, the soldiers are wearing dark green jungle camouflage gear, which--understandably, if you think about it--was not issued in Iraq.
b) The faces are camo-painted, too. Have you seen any other Abu Ghraib torture image in which a soldier tries to conceal his/her face? Isn't the lesson of the prison photos we've seen so far that anything went--that there was no sense of shame or circumspection about anything they were doing?
c) A forensic point: Look at the body posture of the woman in the first photo. She's standing under her own power. I have read a few accounts of rape over the years, in police files and in books, and I've heard of very few in which the woman did not strain physically--reflexively--to recoil from her attacker. This woman stands almost languidly. It's porn, and coarse, standard-issue porn at that.
d) A compositional point: Look at the third shot, of the "rapist"'s penis entering the "victim"'s mouth. In the rough and tumble of a real, forced sexual encounter that involved 2-3 guys crowded around a victim, this would be a very difficult photo to take. Not impossible, but extremely unlikely. On the other hand, this very shot is an obligatory part of any porn production, still or video.
I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis here. As much as I am against the war, I will not stoop to the use of fake porn to suport my case. Indeed there may have in fact been rapes of some sort done in Iraq, I don't know of a war that did not have some type of rape involved but These picturesaren't them.
What is worse is that we have the beheading of a "civiilian" by a group claiming to be a part of Al-Qaida. This group indicated that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners as seen on the media and the web was at least partially responsible for their decision to brutally behead this man. And let's be clear, regeardless of the bloodyness and inhumanity of this act, it is a direct result of the Illegal war in Iraq. Unfortunately Al-Qaida did not do their cause any good by broadcasting the beheading as most Americans, who still think themselves immune from the repercussions of the government, will believe that the right response is to get back at the "barbarians." Very poor PR on AQ's part.
Links:
http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/sperry/2004/05/10#a729
There is a reason why i sometimes don't post on an issue right away. First is because I don't allways have time. Second, I may have already commented on something similar so I don't see the point. I'm not THAT vain. Thirdly, there is a lot of mis-information out there and sometimes I'm waiting to see if I can get verification on a particular piece of information before posting on it. So it comes as little surprise to me to find out that the photo's of a purported gang rape of an Iraqi woman were in fact fake. over at the Bush Wars blog there is a post with a good breakdown of why those images are fake:
quote:
a) First, and most resoundingly, the soldiers are wearing dark green jungle camouflage gear, which--understandably, if you think about it--was not issued in Iraq.
b) The faces are camo-painted, too. Have you seen any other Abu Ghraib torture image in which a soldier tries to conceal his/her face? Isn't the lesson of the prison photos we've seen so far that anything went--that there was no sense of shame or circumspection about anything they were doing?
c) A forensic point: Look at the body posture of the woman in the first photo. She's standing under her own power. I have read a few accounts of rape over the years, in police files and in books, and I've heard of very few in which the woman did not strain physically--reflexively--to recoil from her attacker. This woman stands almost languidly. It's porn, and coarse, standard-issue porn at that.
d) A compositional point: Look at the third shot, of the "rapist"'s penis entering the "victim"'s mouth. In the rough and tumble of a real, forced sexual encounter that involved 2-3 guys crowded around a victim, this would be a very difficult photo to take. Not impossible, but extremely unlikely. On the other hand, this very shot is an obligatory part of any porn production, still or video.
I agree wholeheartedly with the analysis here. As much as I am against the war, I will not stoop to the use of fake porn to suport my case. Indeed there may have in fact been rapes of some sort done in Iraq, I don't know of a war that did not have some type of rape involved but These picturesaren't them.
What is worse is that we have the beheading of a "civiilian" by a group claiming to be a part of Al-Qaida. This group indicated that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners as seen on the media and the web was at least partially responsible for their decision to brutally behead this man. And let's be clear, regeardless of the bloodyness and inhumanity of this act, it is a direct result of the Illegal war in Iraq. Unfortunately Al-Qaida did not do their cause any good by broadcasting the beheading as most Americans, who still think themselves immune from the repercussions of the government, will believe that the right response is to get back at the "barbarians." Very poor PR on AQ's part.
Links:
http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/sperry/2004/05/10#a729
Monday, May 10, 2004
Sequential Equation
I have a lot on my plate right now so I haven't been able to post on a lot of the stuff I've seen in the news but I like to cite things that underscore previous points and posts. When this blog first started I put up a post about the sequential equation. One part that some people didn't quite get, including myself at first was the following portion.
"Military aims presupose political objectives"
Today th New York Times ran an article
that gave an excellent example of the above statement:
quote
Instead, some of Mr. Bush's senior aides conceded in conversations over the weekend, the far larger question hanging over Mr. Bush's encounter with his embattled secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the nation's military leaders is whether the revelations of prisoner abuse have so undermined American political objectives for remaking Iraq that the military challenges have suddenly become a secondary problem.
Hence when the Black Panther Party, among others proclaimed that politics comes from the barrel of a gun, they were not proclaiming empty rhetoric.
Links:
See Ujimaa
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/politics/10ASSE.html?hp
I have a lot on my plate right now so I haven't been able to post on a lot of the stuff I've seen in the news but I like to cite things that underscore previous points and posts. When this blog first started I put up a post about the sequential equation. One part that some people didn't quite get, including myself at first was the following portion.
"Military aims presupose political objectives"
Today th New York Times ran an article
that gave an excellent example of the above statement:
quote
Instead, some of Mr. Bush's senior aides conceded in conversations over the weekend, the far larger question hanging over Mr. Bush's encounter with his embattled secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the nation's military leaders is whether the revelations of prisoner abuse have so undermined American political objectives for remaking Iraq that the military challenges have suddenly become a secondary problem.
Hence when the Black Panther Party, among others proclaimed that politics comes from the barrel of a gun, they were not proclaiming empty rhetoric.
Links:
See Ujimaa
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/politics/10ASSE.html?hp
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