The Star of course is trying once again to stir the race and class war pot, as social democrats are inclined to do to keep themselves relevant. There's a whole lot of arguments that can be made here, such as systemic racism by whites is keeping blacks behind while "Islamophobia" is holding Muslims back. Or that poorer people cannot afford school supples and books. I guess poor people have never heard of a library. (They loan you books, for free!) However, there is one huge problem that the Star completely misses, and that is that on average half of Toronto third graders can't read! That is alarming considering that this is a first world country with a properly funded education system. Typically, people like the Star would blame Mike Harris, despite the fact he hasn't been premier for some seven years now. When these children started school, the self styled "education premier" Dalton McGuinty had already been in power for two years. Obviously the education system is failing our students. Of course I still remember my first hand experience with this. I was never taught how to write an essay properly until grade 12 when I finally had a teacher intelligent enough to show me. Children are forced to deal with vague instruction and lack of help from lazy educators and even lazier parents. Ironically, after all those years of getting bad marks on high school papers, it turned out to be my strongest skill in university. Earlier, my weakness in math was blamed on attention deficit disorder. Of course I didn't have it, and once again poor educators were to blame. All I needed was better motivation and my parents pushed me to do better. I learned that I had to only rely on myself. When things went wrong, I was the only one to blame, and that made things easier. When I think back to my school days, I had a startling number of really bad teachers who had no business in that profession.
What about the race aspect though. Why are 20% fewer backs able to read than whites are? A lot of it has to do with culture. African-American culture doesn't exactly encourage its members to excell, just the opposite. They're fed the same old garbage that whites are always going to keep them down so therefore there's no point in trying. As much as I dislike Obama, one has to admit he is a well read individual and I have known many other blacks who are the same. Why are they excelling while they others aren't. Simple; their parents pushed them to do so. If you are constantly told you'll never make something of yourself and that's somebody else's fault, you're going to start believing that. Then again, that's what liberals do, and is why the Star is framing the story this way. According to them, when you or your children fail, it's always somebody else's fault, never yours. By using this thought process, the black community is sabatoging the future of its own youth. The same goes for Latinos and Middle Eastern kids. By the same token, there's still the issue that less than two thirds of white kids can read, yet they're supposed to be the ones in society's good graces getting the best of everything. How well one does in school has nothing to do with their race or parental income; it has everything to do with their drive to succeed. We're seeing these numbers because parents and educators are failing to encourage students to do well. Race based schools won't fix this problem, but hiring better educators who are dedicated to those they teach will. Somebody just needs to give these kids a good swift kick up the backside.
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