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The Parlous State of Education
| Article
# : |
11902 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1987 |
1,487 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
The most serious problem facing the United States is that of education. The economy is creating more jobs and a higher percentage of the population is employed than ever before in the history of the United States. And these tend to be not low-paying jobs at McDonald's but on the whole among the more highly paid, myths to the contrary notwithstanding.
At the same time, a higher percentage of the population than ever before is becoming unfit to hold jobs in an increasingly sophisticated economy. It is less welfare dependency than occupational unfitness that produces this result. And this unfit portion of the population tends to be concentrated among black and hispanic minorities.
A United States in which there is a permanent underclass will be a United States in which our institutional values are threatened. Unlike Europe, where status played a major role, the glory of the American dream has always been the ability of the most humble to rise to the top. Even if the Horatio Alger novels misrepresented the ease of the process, there have always been enough cases of poor immigrants rising to the top to validate the theme.
For the first time in our history, groups concentrated in particular areas are being cut off from the quintessential American dream, except for an occasional basketball player or drug merchant. It does not matter where blame lies. The important consideration is that something must be done to validate the American dream.
The great power of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech was that it expressed a hope for inclusion in
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