Booker T. Washington And NYC Schools

I wasn't going to post anything today because I was busy on other things, but this grabbed my attention.

37% of (New York) city students are repeatedly out so far, according to the DOE — a percentage that, if it persists through the end of the year, would be far higher than any year-end chronic absence rate going back at least to 2000.

Who cares? Certainly not the students and not the parents. Can you imagine what Booker T. Washington would say? He worked on the docks of Richmond and slept underneath the raised sidewalks to make money to finish his trip to the Hampton Institute.

He slept under the sidewalk.

Please don't give me any rubbish about racial disparities or white supremacy. My bet is that the absenteeism has a decent white component, which should silence the George Wallace clan. Going back to Booker T ...

The Negro worshipped books. We wanted books, more books. The larger the books were the better we liked them. We thought the mere possession and the mere handling and the mere worship of books was going, in some inexplicable way, to make great and strong and useful men of our race.

So why aren't the kids going to school? Simple. They don't value it.

It's hard to complain about your life when you've read about his.