TheLoop21.com

By: Paul Mondesire (Add to your loop)
Mon, 12/22/2008 - 01:00

Improving education should be a priority for everyone.

The power of the Internet to connect people is profound. Someone I met at the 2003 ENLACE (Engaging Latino Communites for Education) conference sponsored by the WK Kellogg Foundation sent me the following quote: 

"I believe we need to get the whole country involved in educating the populace. Create a grassroots driven Manhattan Project or Apollo Mission for this generation that leverages the strengths of the innovative minds this country produces in abundance (even in these strange times) and the ability to communicate via the Internet."

I believe the quote is even more true today than ever.

We need to network, share the best practices, pool together resources, work the philanthropic organizations, get our business leaders to allocate human and financial resources to help provide solutions. We should force politicians to put financial and human resources behind the rhetoric of the No Child Left Behind Act, force the state and local legislatures to step up and do the same, get the Ivory Tower academics (I am still looking for this Tower) to speak to the people on the ground to connect their policies to human beings. And everyone needs to work to improve public, parochial, and private schools. (If I left anything out, please feel free to add to this list.)

That should be our collective mission in my opinion. That previous paragraph is daunting but it's what we all need to do. The nice thing is that we can rally the troops RIGHT HERE!

"So let us all go our there today to kick a--, and take names for our collective future. Rah!" - Paul Mondesire, Project Director - Bronx Council on the Arts/Bronx Educational Alliance/ENLACE

Those words I wrote back then are stunning to me because: 1) I know much more about education today than I did then; and 2) I could never have been as succinct now.  

The appointment of Arne Duncan by President-elect Obama will mean little if we do not have a serious and nuanced discussion of what educating the current and following generations means. Let's add becoming a nation of "Life-Long Learners" to that as well. We are in for tough times, but nobody said it was going to be easy.

Paul Mondesire is a native New Yorker working in the non-profit arena. He has a passion for education, life-long learning and writes because he believes we must eliminate ignorance by any means necessary.

Are American students taught enough about the Black role in American history?

Yes, it has improved

Maybe, in some places

No, that's pretty obvious

I don't know

Does it even matter?