No, this isn’t a commentary on last night’s interesting play calling at the end of another instant-classic Colts-Patriots game, but rather the astonishingly bad? … dumb? … pointless? … idiotic? … silly? … sorry, I’m just trying to pick out the right deprecative adjective for the idea presented in a story on the front page of the Indianapolis Fishwrapper Star this morning, titled “Is African boarding school the answer for Indiana’s inner-city kids?”
Some geniuses at my alma mater, Indiana University, have posited
Moving to western Africa (Ghana, identified elsewhere in the story), the professors say, could be just what’s needed for some children at risk of getting caught up in gangs or violence. They would see the world, get away from bad influences and be in a controlled setting focused on academics.
The classes would be taught by Indiana teachers using Indiana’s educational standards in a school overseen by the state of Indiana.
Just on a different continent.
OK, I’m confused here. Don’t libs always tell us we must spend more money on education? These guys have suggested shipping the state’s approximately $10k a kid it kicks in to the city of Indianapolis to Ghana so they can do the job that local teachers can’t do? (They think they can get $4M in donations to build a school.) Now as much as anyone I understand that the physical plant has nothing to do with what or how much you learn so let’s assume that’s not a factor here. However with a per capita income of slightly more than $700 I’m somehow guessing that even getting these kids a glass of clean water and a decent meal would end up being a daily adventure.
Leaving aside a host of obvious issues, like how we define “at risk” and then identify same, why Africa? What’s magic about Africa?
“The core idea is to pull kids out of an environment where they cannot thrive,” said Brown, an IU law professor, “and put them in one where they can.”
Really? Why can’t they “thrive”? What does it mean to “thrive”? Whatever happened to libs insisting we address “root causes”? Or does that force us to examine the responsibilities of parents and the teachers they seem to be anxious to run away from?
Is this why?
“It was often the case that an observer would say, ‘Why so far away, and why to Africa?’ ” he said. “That was not a question their parents would ask. They would say, ‘Wow, that’s exciting.’ “
Exciting? What’s exciting have to do with getting an education and learning life habits to carry you along? Any parent engaged in the real world, that should be their first question. Sending some kid from the inner city to Africa on the taxpayer’s dime is pointless. These parents would be much better served demanding accountability and results from that school down the block that’s apparently doing such a poor job that we have to ship the students to Africa to get it done.
BTW, does “jobs created or saved” include teaching gigs in Ghana?
