Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

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/