- ISBN13: 9780743265225
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
The racial gap in academic performance between whites and Asians, on the one hand, and Latinos and blacks, on the other hand, is America’s most urgent educational problem. It is also the central civil rights issue of our time, say Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom. Unequal skills and knowledge are the main sources of ongoing racial inequality, and racial inequality is America’s great unfinished business. A wide and tragic gap in learning is evident in affluent suburb… More >>
No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning
Tags: abigail, academic performance, affluent suburb, asians, civil rights issue, Closing, education, educational problem, Excuses, gap, latinos, learning, racial, racial gap, racial inequality, unfinished business
#1 by Anonymous on January 28, 2010 - 1:37 am
The eternal puritan thus speaks through this book:we should be angry at nature for endowing a branch of the family tree with less innate intelligence than others.What we should be infuriated with is the gap between the slogans used by people like the authors and the actual truth on these matters.There exists an unbridgeable gulf between integrationist fantasy and reality.That’s nature.Deal with it!How long must we put up with this criminal farce of taxing the public to death and bludgeoning the productive people of this country with govt. power to force them to integrate with those we know are fundamentally incompatible with a prosperous,civilized order?You want a clue?Take a good look at the horrors now engulfing Zimbabwe and South Africa.That is where delusions of equality necessarily lead.It is amazing the Thernstrom’s in 350 pages never even accidentally stumbled anywhere near the fundamental,ugly truth that this society refuses to face.Is that willful self-deception or simple deception of the public?I think i know the answer to that one…
In 50 or so years,after our New Soviet P.C. society follows the ordained path of all societies built on fatuousness,liberal fantasies,deliberate hiding and outlawing of truth,books like this will be looked back upon with the same bewilderment,scorn and a feeling of queesiness-as though having stepped in something foul-that we now look back upon the demented writings of the Communist-Marxists.
Rating: 1 / 5
#2 by J. Mason on January 28, 2010 - 3:42 am
This book incorrectly glorifies the “No Child Left Behind” act and denounces the academic excellence perpetuated by many so-called “progressive” schools across the country. Because of “No Child Left Behind” schools are forced to display their educational achievement via standardized testing as never before. The problem with such is that IT’S STANDARDIZED! And, no child fits the “standard mold.” Testing should be individualized and not used to compare one school to another. As a parent, I want to see my child’s individual progress, not as he or she compares to a school 300 miles away. Schools today have become OBSESSED WITH EQUITY and forced to deal with an issue that is all-together natural. Thernstrom is right that the “achievement gap” is due to the communities in which different races live, however, he’s wrong in relating that standardized testing and an increased orientation to standards-based education will overcome this point of contention. In short, education is not the GREAT EQUALIZER for American society. Schools and the teachers that make them great are only a minute part of a child’s life. If a child lives in poverty, no matter what the color of the skin, that child will have a more difficult time adjusting to school both academically and socially. Hence, as long as society is unequal…. so will education. Special initiatives need to be designed to help individual students achieve, and this can ONLY be done on a case-by-case basis. Books like Thernstrom’s set back the educational community possibly 5-10 years from going in the right direction. As a teacher, I see this book as damaging to public education. Read the various works of Alphie Kohn instead.
Rating: 1 / 5
#3 by Jenny on January 28, 2010 - 5:40 am
Just another example of white racist rhetoric! For a thoughtful analysis of the genesis of this thinking, read Ron Walter’s White Nationalism…the truth shall set you free!
Rating: 1 / 5
#4 by Anonymous on January 28, 2010 - 7:50 am
The reader from Florida exemplifies why schools are failing black students. He/she is a teacher who does not believe in minority students’ abilities. Evidently, this is not a wise teacher; this is one who has adopted the racist dogma of Murray, Levine and others. (Dogma that can not be scientifically proven. this teacher would be surprised to know that tests show that black babies & toddlers are more advanced than white babies and toddlers.) This person should not be allowed to teach in schools where he does not believe in the students’ abilities.
Black students quickly sense and tune-in to racism–they know when someone is being condescending or does not respect
Rating: 4 / 5
#5 by Liza on January 28, 2010 - 9:35 am
The best part of reading this book was finishing it, and turning directly to Jonathan Kozol’s “Shame of the Nation”. The Thernstroms bombard readers with “facts”, graphs, charts, and a whole lot of stereotypes and dangerous assumption. For starters, they must have a different place in mind when they describe the “affluent town” of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Clearly they’ve never stepped outside the Ivy walls of Harvard Square. If they did, they would see first hand the gross injustice being done in the shadows of these walls…an urban public high school that is nowhere near the profile that they provide. They go on to describe, with great confidence, different groups as chapter titles as crass as “Asians” “Hispanics” and “Blacks”. Don’t bother with this…pick up anything by Kozol, Deborah Meier, Gary Orfield, Richard Elmore, or Richard Rothstein instead.
Rating: 1 / 5