It has less to do with "underfunded" schools and more to do with lack of parenting. Kids assault teachers and the teachers get fired. Black kids go to school with a "gangsta" mentality. Black students who do well in their studies are derided as trying to be white, while these same morons who refuse to learn scream r****m when they are denied entrance to college because they have spent 12 years learning nothing, or think it is somehow their due when they are given preferential treatment over far more qualified White and Asian students.
I attended college with a number of Cameroonian exchange students who were appalled by the behavior of American b****s. These were serioius students who spoke better English than the American students and had solid grounding in math and science. They could not believe that black students were allowed to get away with some of their behavior. One told me that such behavior in secondary schools in Cameroon would result in the offending students being publicly flogged. I don't know if this is true, but it's apparent they had strict discipline in their schools. Talk about underfunded, these African schools were dirt poor, but somehow managed to turn out students who were far better academically prepared than American B****s and a lot of American W****s.
White, Black and Asian students, (especially Asian) from poor rural communities do far better than most black students from poor urban environments. Given equal underfunding the urban black students almost always underperform compared to other students in similarly financially challenged rural school districts. New Jersey, for instance, has majority black school districts that are among the most well financed in the country yet they have an appalling dropout rate and the ones who graduate are largely functional illiterates.This is a problem of women who are nothing more than baby factories and fathers who refuse to take responsibility. Funding is not the problem. Lack of parenting is. You can scream raaaaaciiiiiism! and W***e S*******y all day long and throw billions more dollars at the problem but it won't go away without a fundamental shift in attitude by the miserable excuses for parents that let kids grow up on the street.

Most of the censorship, in fact all that I see, involves "woke" Liberal twits censoring conservative viewpoints they don't agree with. Conservative speakers are banned from college campuses while whack job Liberals with a bone to pick are welcomed. Political theory being expounded by professors who went from high school to college to grad school to reality proof tenure without ever experiencing the real world.
I personally think that the v****g age should be put back at 21, except in the case of serving or honorably discharged military between 18 and 21. When you have been supported your whole life by mommy and daddy you should not be allowed to cast a v**e potentially affecting millions of your fellow citizens when you have never had a job, or your own place, or even had to fill out a 1040 form, because you have no effing idea what you are doing.

This thread has been interesting in terms of the responses. At least they have, for the most part, been civil and we've avoided the slurs and name-calling for the most part.
I've been requested to provide sourcing for the most basic and obvious facts. I've had my conclusions challenged in many different ways. We've seen instances of bias in regards to race, even if they are wrapped in pseudo-scientific verbiage.

Let me pose a change in the definition of r****m, s******c r****m, and racial bias. It becomes clearer if we call it 'not-like-me-ism.'
An example of this would be if you were a white, male manager presented with two equally qualified candidates for a critical job opening in your company. One is a white male, the other is a black female. Which one would you choose? I'm sure that in the interests of being politically correct here, you'd say that you'd pick the best qualified one. But would you really, once it came down to making that actual decision? Would you prefer someone that you could sit down and have a drink with after work, or play a round of golf with on Saturday afternoon? Or would qualifications alone be the criteria? Here on the forum, you'd probably pound your chest and claim to be non-biased, but when it came to signing the actual person for the job, which would you choose?
This is a classic example of professing one thing publicly, and doing another (even if unconsciously) in real life. It is endemic, insidious and all of us do it. It is in our nature to want to be with people like us. We're tribal, and we can't help it. That tribalism extends not only to family and politics …it's evident in our fanatical support of our favorite sports teams and to our national politics. It's us and it's in our nature at a basic level.
It exists in both what we're taught over the years by both school and parents and our experiences in life.
Let me give you an example of the latter ...
As a child, you're playing on the sidewalk outside your home, when a man with red hair, a beard, and sandals comes up to you and, for no reason, kicks the hell out of you. You go crying into the house and eventually forget the incident. Fast-forward thirty years and you're the manager of a startup software firm and you've advertised for a systems engineer. You have a candidate that, on paper, is the one person that you've found that can take your company to the next level. The person that comes in for the interview has red hair, a beard, and is wearing sandals. Will you hire him? In this forum, you'll probably claim to be impartial, but will you really do so in that real situation?
This same concept holds true or almost all aspects of our nature. We tend to reject that which is not like us … be it skin color, religious beliefs or almost any other aspect of our being. It takes a really introspective person to truly discard the idea of 'not-like-me-ism.'
The reaction to a child announcing to their parents that they are gay. The white female teenager bringing home her boyfriend to introduce them to mom and dad …the boyfriend is black. These are just some of the endless biases that we possess.
The idea of s******c r****m is derivative of this human tendency. It isn't overt, it doesn't manifest itself in readily identifiable ways.
For the first two-hundred years of our republic, the entire federal judiciary was entirely white and male, and the product of the major Ivy-League law schools (Yale, Harvard, etc.). If you weren't in that league, your chances of being a federal judge were nil.
Until the 1920's, women weren't allowed to v**e. Why was that? Because they weren't smart enough? No, it was because women were (either overtly or subliminally) considered by men to be property … much like indentured servants or s***es. Bias again rears it's ugly head.
You can call it 's******c r****m', 'not-like-me-ism'. sexism, or any other term that you choose …it is a part of our nature, and by extension, our society. We are trying to fight it, but it's a tough fight to win. But we, as a nation, to fulfill the phrase 'all men are created equal', we have to try. While the founders used it in the context of white male property owners only, we have expanded it to all our citizens. There are those among us that would like to take us back to those days of white male supremacy, but they have to look deep into their own psyches and ask, 'is it right or Christian to be biased?'

This will be my final post on this thread.

Why is it wrong to teach about s***ery in our schools? It has existed since 1619 in America (proven fact). It wasn't called that back then, but "indentured servitude" was a definite thing in New England until the Civil War. In the South, of course, s***ery was a way of life until the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln in 1863. After the "War of Northern Aggression", s***ery existed for another century in an economic sense until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What's wrong with teaching this to our kids as factual history?

Economic s***ery exists to this day for minorities. Why can't we admit that and teach it to a younger generation?

S******c R****m (commonly called Critical Race Theory or CRT) is a fact of life. It exists, and even the most diehard conservative knows this, even if they won't admit it. I wonder what they will say when admission quotas are lifted at Harvard and other colleges and their student body will become over 50% Asian-American. What will be the story then? Why are there so few minorities on the Boards of Directors of major corporations (this includes women, by the way.)

The basis for all this is, of course, white male evangelical supremacy in all its glory … whether explicit or implied. The country was founded with that concept in mind, and it has perpetuated in various forms to this day. When that supremacy is challenged by the rise of minority rights or populations, it comes to the fore and becomes dogma for all kinds of suppression to those segments of society that oppose it. Witness v****g suppression in Republican-held states and challenges to minority v****g in national e******ns. This is a classic case of s******c r****m, i.e. maintaining that supremacy at all costs. To say that it is to insure the accuracy of the v**e and prevent fraud is an insult to the intelligence of any patriotic American. The e******n of 2020 was one of the fairest and most accurate e******ns in our history with virtually no fraud being detected despite numerous recounts and audits. The gutting of the V****g Rights Act of 1965 by the Supreme Court open the way for this particular try at suppression to happen.

These attempts at supremacy have failed every time they has emerged in this country. They will fail again, only to repeat a few decades from now. This cycle has only been temporarily broken when minorities and women were given the right to v**e, and v**er suppression is the latest attempt to maintain that superiority that is so endemic in our society.

The only way to keep from repeating the mistakes of the past is to learn from history. Sweeping large parts of our history under the rug because the older generation feels uncomfortable for their part in perpetuating those mistakes is not a reason for burdening the next generation with ignorance of them, thus dooming them to repeating those mistakes.

In the words of that ancient great philosopher, Gorgantus, "sic sophian, los triginomous." A literal t***slation, although difficult to t***spose, would be, "That's a heavy load of L*****t bovine scat."

America is the least r****t country in the world. We have taken huge step to raise up our minorities in fact, since Johnson's Great Society $23 Trillion has been "invested" in those efforts with negligible ROI.

I went to school in the 40's & 50's and we were taught about s***ery. Kids today are taught that America has always been a r****t nation and that America has always been an evil nation too. Educators tear down our Founders focusing on those who were s***e holders. Are W****s supposed to feel shame over the s***ery in our past. Not me, it has nothing to do with any American alive today. T***hfully, s***ery is benevolent compared to a******n. B****s are 12% of our population; they were 13% not long ago. 44% of all our a******ns are performed on wh**ever the small percentage of Black females of child bearing age is. B****s are accommodating Margaret Sanger's vision of their genocide.

Teach the t***h about history but keep it proportional to our entire history not the CRT agenda. Leave us alone, quit picking at the scab, stop the preferential treatment and the pandering. Get the bloody hell out of our schools.

The greatest problem within the Black communities today is their violent toxic Black culture and only they can fix it.

The following news story is from 1985, and is retrieved from the New York Times Archive:

"The factual history of the United States was routinely taught in the US for most of its existence. FUTURISTIC NOVELS WITH A BLEAK vision of the prospects for the free individual characteristically portray a society in which history - knowledge of the past - has been systematically eliminated. In Aldous Huxley's ''Brave New World,'' the regime successfully waged a ''campaign against the Past'' by banning the teaching of history, closing museums and destroying historical monuments.

If knowledge of the past is in fact relevant to our ability to understand the present and to exercise freedom of mind - as totalitarian societies, both real and fictional, acknowledge by stringently controlling what may be studied or published -then there is cause for concern about many Americans' sense of history. The threat to our knowledge of the past comes, more than from government censorship, from indifference and ignorance. The erosion of historical understanding seems especially pronounced among the generation under 35, those schooled during the period of sharp declines in basic sk**ls. While achievement in reading and mathematics is regularly tested by national and state educational agencies, the condition of historical knowledge is far more difficult to measure and the attempt is seldom made.

During the past generation (before 1985), the amount of time dev**ed to historical studies in American public schools has steadily decreased. About 25 years ago, most public high-school youths studied one year of world history and one of American history, but today, most study only one year of ours. In contrast, the state schools of many other Western nations require the subject to be studied almost every year. In France, for example, all students, not just the college-bound, follow a carefully sequenced program of history, civics and geography every year from the seventh grade through the 12th grade.

Does it matter if Americans are ignorant of their past? Does it matter if the general public knows little of the individuals, the events and the movements that shaped our nation? The fundamental premise of our democratic form of government is that political power derives from the informed consent of the people. Informed consent requires a citizenry that is rational and knowledgeable. If our system is to remain free and democratic, citizens should know not only how to judge candidates and their competing claims but how our institutions evolved. An understanding of history does not lead everyone to the same conclusions, but it does equip people with the knowledge to reach independent judgments on current issues. Without historical perspective, v**ers are more likely to be swayed by emotional appeals, by stirring commercials, or by little more than a candidate's good looks or charisma.

BECAUSE OF MY interest as a historian of education in the condition of the study of history, I have been involved during the last year, in collaboration with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, in planning a countrywide study of what 17-year-olds know about American history. In addition, my contacts with college students during the last year and discussions with other historians have led me to believe that there is cause for concern.

On the college lecture circuit this past year, I visited some 30 campuses, ranging from large public universities to small private liberal-arts colleges. Repeatedly, I was astonished by questions from able students about the most elementary facts of American history. At one urban Minnesota university, none of the 30 students in a course on ethnic relations had ever heard of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, which held racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. At a university in the Pacific Northwest, a professor of education publicly insisted that high-school students should concentrate on vocational pr********n and athletics, since they had the rest of their lives to learn subjects like history ''on their own time.''

The shock of encountering college students who did not recognize the names of eminent figures like Jane Addams or W.E.B. Du Bois led me to conduct an informal, unscientific survey of professors who teach history to undergraduates. ''My students are not stupid, but they have an abysmal background in American, or any other kind of, history,'' said Thomas Kessner, who teaches American history at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. ''They never heard of Daniel Webster; don't understand the Constitution; don't know the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties.''

This gloomy assessment was echoed by Naomi Miller, chairman of the history department at H****r College in New York. ''My students have no historical knowledge on which to draw when they enter college,'' she said. ''They have no point of reference for understanding World War I, the Treaty of Versailles or the Holocaust.'' More than ignorance of the past, however, she finds an indifference to dates and chronology or causation. ''They think that everything is subjective. They have plenty of attitudes and opinions, but they lack the knowledge to analyze a problem.'' Professor Miller believes that ''we are in danger of bringing up a generation without historical memory. This is a dangerous situation.''

IN SEARCH OF SOME explanation for why so many high-school graduates do not know much history, I visited several social-studies classes last spring. In one New York City high school, where most of the 3,000 students are black, Hispanic and/or recent immigrants, a teacher said, ''Our students don't see the relevance to their own lives of what dead people did. American studies means more to them than American history.''

I observed a class in American studies, where the lesson for the day was state government, its leaders and their functions. When the teacher asked, ''Does anyone know what the Attorney General of New York State does?'' a girl answered tentatively, ''Isn't he the one that says on the cigarette box that you shouldn't smoke because it gives you cancer?'' The teacher responded, incorrectly, ''Yes, but what else does he do?''

The teacher went on, earnestly trying to connect the duties of New York's state officials with the students' daily lives. Watching their impassive faces, I thought that a discussion of the Crusades or the Salem witchcraft trials or s***ery would be infinitely more interesting, and relevant, to their adolescent minds.

When I expressed surprise about the complete absence of traditional, chronological history, the department chairman said: ''What we teach is determined by guidelines from the State Education Department. In the late 1960's, the state decided to de-emphasize chronological history and to focus instead on topical issues and social-sci-ence concepts. We followed suit.'' A teacher chimed in to explain, ''We don't teach history, because it doesn't help our students pass the New York State Regents' examinations in social studies.''

The absorption of history into the field of social studies is itself a problem. As the number of social-studies courses expands, the time available for history contracts. One study concluded that social-studies teachers ''have given up on any attempt to agree on what their students should learn.''

To some teachers, social studies means the study of the social sciences, and many schools now offer courses in sociology, economics, psychology and anthropology; to others, it consists of studies that promote understanding of current social problems. Still others see it as a field whose purpose is to teach good behavior and good citizenship. A currently popular definition holds that its purpose is to teach values, critical thinking and respect for cultural diversity.

Because of the ill-defined nature of the field, it is easily invaded by curricular fads. Whenever state legislatures or interest groups discover an unmet need, a new program is pushed into the social-studies curriculum. Social studies now embrace aspects of such diverse concerns as energy education, environmental education, gun-control education, future studies, consumer education, free-enterprise education and a host of other courses prompted by contemporary issues. Yet despite the persistent emphasis on social relevance and student interest, surveys regularly show that students find social studies to be less interesting and less important than their other school subjects.

According to Lloyd Bromberg, assistant director for social studies of the New York City Board of Education, about 25 to 30 percent of the city's high schools choose to follow the state curriculum of American studies instead of the city's American history. Beginning in 1987, the state curriculum will become more chronological than at any time since the late 1960's.

Mr. Bromberg has expressed concern about the number of social-studies teachers who have no background in history. New York, he points out, is one of several states that offer a ''generic'' social-studies certificate, which means that a person can be certified to teach social studies without ever studying history in college. All that is required is that an applicant must have taken 36 hours (12 courses) in the social sciences in colleges.

PROFESSORS DIFFER ABOUT whether their students know more or less history today than pupils knew 20 years ago. John A. Garraty of Columbia University believes that while his students are as good as those in the past, their study in high school of unrelated ''topics'' or ''themes'' has left them without historical context. Stephan Thernstrom, a historian at Harvard University, tells of a colleague who was once thanked by a senior for explaining World War I. ''I've always wondered,'' the student said, ''why people kept talking about a Second World War.''
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Indentured servitude was a form of labor in which an individual contracted to work without a salary to repay an indenture or loan within a certain time frame.

Indentured servitude was popular in the United States in the 1600s as many European immigrants were enabled to work a set time period in exchange for the price of their passage to America.

FYI, there were no Mastercards or Visas during that time period. It was pay as you go.

The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1865 at the end of the Civil War before the Southern states were restored to the Union. The Senate passed it in April 1864, the House initially did not. At that point, Lincoln took an active role to ensure its passage through Congress. It made indentured servitude illegal in the U.S.

Today, it is banned in nearly all countries.

Why is it wrong to teach about s***ery in our schools? It has existed since 1619 in America (proven fact). It wasn't called that back then, but "indentured servitude" was a definite thing in New England until the Civil War. In the South, of course, s***ery was a way of life until the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln in 1863. After the "War of Northern Aggression", s***ery existed for another century in an economic sense until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What's wrong with teaching this to our kids as factual history?

Economic s***ery exists to this day for minorities. Why can't we admit that and teach it to a younger generation?

S******c R****m (commonly called Critical Race Theory or CRT) is a fact of life. It exists, and even the most diehard conservative knows this, even if they won't admit it. I wonder what they will say when admission quotas are lifted at Harvard and other colleges and their student body will become over 50% Asian-American. What will be the story then? Why are there so few minorities on the Boards of Directors of major corporations (this includes women, by the way.)

The basis for all this is, of course, white male evangelical supremacy in all its glory … whether explicit or implied. The country was founded with that concept in mind, and it has perpetuated in various forms to this day. When that supremacy is challenged by the rise of minority rights or populations, it comes to the fore and becomes dogma for all kinds of suppression to those segments of society that oppose it. Witness v****g suppression in Republican-held states and challenges to minority v****g in national e******ns. This is a classic case of s******c r****m, i.e. maintaining that supremacy at all costs. To say that it is to insure the accuracy of the v**e and prevent fraud is an insult to the intelligence of any patriotic American. The e******n of 2020 was one of the fairest and most accurate e******ns in our history with virtually no fraud being detected despite numerous recounts and audits. The gutting of the V****g Rights Act of 1965 by the Supreme Court open the way for this particular try at suppression to happen.

These attempts at supremacy have failed every time they has emerged in this country. They will fail again, only to repeat a few decades from now. This cycle has only been temporarily broken when minorities and women were given the right to v**e, and v**er suppression is the latest attempt to maintain that superiority that is so endemic in our society.

The only way to keep from repeating the mistakes of the past is to learn from history. Sweeping large parts of our history under the rug because the older generation feels uncomfortable for their part in perpetuating those mistakes is not a reason for burdening the next generation with ignorance of them, thus dooming them to repeating those mistakes.

This thread has been interesting in terms of the responses. At least they have, for the most part, been civil and we've avoided the slurs and name-calling for the most part.
I've been requested to provide sourcing for the most basic and obvious facts. I've had my conclusions challenged in many different ways. We've seen instances of bias in regards to race, even if they are wrapped in pseudo-scientific verbiage.

Let me pose a change in the definition of r****m, s******c r****m, and racial bias. It becomes clearer if we call it 'not-like-me-ism.'
An example of this would be if you were a white, male manager presented with two equally qualified candidates for a critical job opening in your company. One is a white male, the other is a black female. Which one would you choose? I'm sure that in the interests of being politically correct here, you'd say that you'd pick the best qualified one. But would you really, once it came down to making that actual decision? Would you prefer someone that you could sit down and have a drink with after work, or play a round of golf with on Saturday afternoon? Or would qualifications alone be the criteria? Here on the forum, you'd probably pound your chest and claim to be non-biased, but when it came to signing the actual person for the job, which would you choose?
This is a classic example of professing one thing publicly, and doing another (even if unconsciously) in real life. It is endemic, insidious and all of us do it. It is in our nature to want to be with people like us. We're tribal, and we can't help it. That tribalism extends not only to family and politics …it's evident in our fanatical support of our favorite sports teams and to our national politics. It's us and it's in our nature at a basic level.
It exists in both what we're taught over the years by both school and parents and our experiences in life.
Let me give you an example of the latter ...
As a child, you're playing on the sidewalk outside your home, when a man with red hair, a beard, and sandals comes up to you and, for no reason, kicks the hell out of you. You go crying into the house and eventually forget the incident. Fast-forward thirty years and you're the manager of a startup software firm and you've advertised for a systems engineer. You have a candidate that, on paper, is the one person that you've found that can take your company to the next level. The person that comes in for the interview has red hair, a beard, and is wearing sandals. Will you hire him? In this forum, you'll probably claim to be impartial, but will you really do so in that real situation?
This same concept holds true or almost all aspects of our nature. We tend to reject that which is not like us … be it skin color, religious beliefs or almost any other aspect of our being. It takes a really introspective person to truly discard the idea of 'not-like-me-ism.'
The reaction to a child announcing to their parents that they are gay. The white female teenager bringing home her boyfriend to introduce them to mom and dad …the boyfriend is black. These are just some of the endless biases that we possess.
The idea of s******c r****m is derivative of this human tendency. It isn't overt, it doesn't manifest itself in readily identifiable ways.
For the first two-hundred years of our republic, the entire federal judiciary was entirely white and male, and the product of the major Ivy-League law schools (Yale, Harvard, etc.). If you weren't in that league, your chances of being a federal judge were nil.
Until the 1920's, women weren't allowed to v**e. Why was that? Because they weren't smart enough? No, it was because women were (either overtly or subliminally) considered by men to be property … much like indentured servants or s***es. Bias again rears it's ugly head.
You can call it 's******c r****m', 'not-like-me-ism'. sexism, or any other term that you choose …it is a part of our nature, and by extension, our society. We are trying to fight it, but it's a tough fight to win. But we, as a nation, to fulfill the phrase 'all men are created equal', we have to try. While the founders used it in the context of white male property owners only, we have expanded it to all our citizens. There are those among us that would like to take us back to those days of white male supremacy, but they have to look deep into their own psyches and ask, 'is it right or Christian to be biased?'

This will be my final post on this thread.