The national debate rages over whether the cure is worse than the disease with shutdowns destroying the economy.
Lost in the debate are the schools shut down.
We have all heard the expression "A mind is a terrible thing to waste".
That is exactly what's happening to millions of children that should be in school. Not only are they not learning as much, they are losing the discipline of the structured environment. The lack of repetition causes a loss in this discipline.
Online and at home educational endeavors work great for those that have been using these tools previously in home schooling(but even these may be suffering).
The vast majority of families that have completely relied on the in school education system to educate their children will not find a replacement that provides the same value.
Millions of minds are a terrible thing to waste!
Add this to the damage being done to the economy.
Many schools would be having the Summer break in a month or so and basically, we just wiped out 2 months of their ideal education life.
Not the end of the world but still a great loss. On the bright side, in some cases it may result in many parents playing a more active role in educating their kids.
Another profound item related to this is Spring high school sports and especially those in their senior year.
Baseball, track and golf seasons were cancelled. A tremendous loss in so many ways. A loss that is especially big for seniors that were counting on their performance to get them a scholarship in college, for instance.
The loss of athletics and potential scholarships is much greater for African Americans than whites.
Football and Basketball are the main sports in which blacks are physically superior and it earns them, by far the most college scholarships because of this.
However, the most gifted sprint event athletes in track are usually black as are, often the jumping events.
Baseball is more of a developed skill sport but speed and power are great contributors to the athlete. African Americans, on average are blessed with more of these attributes.
"At athletic powerhouse schools such Ohio State, Florida State, and the University of Southern California, Black men are more than 50 times as likely as White men to be on athletic scholarship."
A new study suggests the answer is yes.
Of the 65 universities studied, black men comprised 2.4 percent of all undergraduates but 55 percent of football team members and 56 percent of basketball team members. Total student-athlete graduation rate was 69.3 percent over six years, and 76.3 percent for all students, but only 55.2 percent for black male student athletes. It's not as if these numbers are in the process of improving. At 40 percent of the universities black male athlete graduation rates have dropped by 6.5 percent in the last two years.
Given the formidable revenue generating force of college athletics—especially football and basketball—these figures strongly suggest racial exploitation, the kind whereby black men are used primarily for their athletic skills to generate income for universities that educate mostly white graduates for successful careers.
I can agree to some extent on the previous article, however, the most gifted athletes at these elite schools, that are mostly black in football and basketball, that go on to make millions of dollars in the NFL and NBA are not people we should feel bad for.
However, this is a small % of blacks, even if they totally dominate those sports.
However, many of the black athletes at these schools are there to play their sport and would never have entertained going to college otherwise.
If they never graduate and never go on to sports at the next level, was their life better or worse because of the athletic scholarship and several years getting a partial education?
Of course their lives were enriched by this experience and of course they were at least put in a position, that would not have been possible that afforded them to enrich their education well beyond what would have been available.
My 41 year old daughter did her first year at the University of Cincinnati, where she was a cheerleader. My wife and I got a unique view of this dynamic.
She had always been a straight A student and picked her major as biology. After the first grading period, her grades plunged including the first D in her life..........in biology.
WTHeck!
Then we saw some of the classes that she picked for the 2nd grading period. WTHeck! Piece of cake electives with no connection to her major or field of study.
Where did this come from?
It came from being a cheerleader and hanging out with the students there to cheer and male athletes there to play their sport on scholarships. The number 1 priority of those athletes? Stay eligible to play by having a 2.0 grade point average. They knew all the piece of cake classes to take that would accomplish that and loaded their schedule with them. Since these were all of my daughters friends, they passed this information on to her. She also got invited to all the parties.
It was an educational disaster for somebody going there for the education.
My wife and I were going to get her out of there ASAP but she figured it out before we said anything and transferred to Indiana University and immediately reverted back to the straight A student.
After graduating, she got her masters in occupational therapy and did very well. She has been a geriatrics occupational therapist for the last 17 years.
But what if she had stayed at the University of Cincinnati?
With absolute certainty, she would never have been accepted into the occupational therapy program at the University of Indiana. They were only taking a small fraction of students that applied with very tough standards.
So the point is, that many college athletes on scholarship are there to play their sport and remain eligible. They did not come there to get an education or degree. Some of the best coaches will make that a priority but most are concerned that they keep up their grades to stay eligible. You don't keep more players eligible by encouraging them to take physics, calculus or chemistry. Sticking an inner city black kid with a poor education background that doesn't care about their education(just their sport) in a class like that is the recipe for failure.
Pushing them to graduate is another thing, regardless of their previous background. And the black kids there for more than their sport should be pushed to reach their potential............as doctors, lawyers or whatever but they have to want it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/opinion/coronavirus-schools-closed.html
 | Opinion | 50 Million Kids Can’t Attend School. What Happens to Them? - The New York Times America’s younger students will need help catching up. By The Editorial Board The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and ... www.nytimes.com |
This has profoundly effected colleges too.