Self-Esteem Über Alles
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As the civil-rights movement settles into stagnation and one nostrum after the next fails to move the needle, public rituals celebrating the faith have become de rigueur. Nowhere is this religion-like activity more visible than when people beseech prestige universities to open their doors for more blacks and graduate them by hook or by crook. The college diploma has taken on a magical quality, the ticket to the middle class as if “the middle class” were an exclusive club requiring a BA to get by the doorman. That this give-us-a-diploma mania has been going on for decades with little to show for it makes scant difference—gotta keep the faith.
The latest public ceremony occurred on January 16, 2014. Here President Obama, egged on by First Lady Michelle, held a daylong White House “summit” attended by scores of college presidents, corporate heads, and nonprofit leaders. As the price of admission, all participants were obligated to bring a plan to increase minority college enrollments.
It was axiomatically assumed that intellectually talented black high-school students abound but that top colleges ignore them. Furthermore, these potential college graduates were allegedly often clueless regarding the admission process. Particularly odious according to the president were standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT that impede access to top schools. (In the civil-rights lingo, when blacks cannot pass a test, it is “a barrier.”) The president called for doubling of the National College Advising Corps where recent college graduates help students in “underserved” high schools complete the college admission process. He also advocated hiring new advisers and subsidizing college prep classes routinely available to rich white and Asian students. . . .
http://takimag.com/article/self_esteem_ueber_alles_robert_weissberg/print#ixzz2rpXoJYqZ
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