SmallGovTimes.com

By: Lee Ellis | Published on 03/12/07    

In South Africa, Oprah Winfrey has started a “Leadership Academy for Girls.” It is for 10-12 year-olds whom she believes have a destination for leadership in their country. Here they will live and learn.

When asked why she did not do this in America, it is reported that she had worked with enough schools here to know that the tremendous desire for advancing in life via much education was simply not present in many of our young students.

Yet, on the far side of the world, Oprah has found many African girls with a great zeal to learn. More importantly, she has built a school whose very structure and architecture appeal to the senses of well being and comfort, one of the essentials of setting the tone for study and the desire for learning. The 28-building campus boasts computer and science laboratories, a library and theater along with a wellness center. Oprah has also included dress uniforms for all, along with expected higher standards of behavior and cleanliness. Her academy received 3,500 applications from across the country of Africa. A total of 152 girls ages 11 and 12 were accepted. "I wanted to give this opportunity to girls who had a light so bright that not even poverty could dim that light," Winfrey said at a news conference according to the Associated Press.

In watching some of these young children, on TV, as they applied for the school, I could understand why Ms. Winfrey built near Johannesburg rather than in a major city in America. There, these young “tweens” had the ability to use English with a refined vocabulary and a better syntax than most high school graduates seem to have here. Their demeanor was one of poise, faith and determination to succeed in life, something not often seen in many of our grammar or junior high schools.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many private and public schools in the USA that are meeting the needs of children, and these students speak and act well, too. Additionally, there are organizations that have been started to offer better training for both parents and educators. Basics Project.org, for example, develops unique education programs designed to promote higher level thinking skills with real life application. These are the exceptions, though, rather than the rule. A CBS study, in the 90s, found the modern college diplomas were on a par with the high school diplomas of 1946 and that current high school diplomas were worthless.

Pat Buchanan has written that although millions of dollars have been thrown at education. the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams known as the "nation's report card” do not reveal the desired results for this money.

A NAEP test of 12th-grade achievement was given to what The New York Times called a "representative sample of 21,000 high school seniors attending 900 public and private schools from January to March 2005."

What did the tests reveal?

* Since 1990, the share of students lacking even basic reading skills has risen by a third, from 20 percent to 27 percent.

* Only 35 percent of high school seniors have reached a "proficient" level in reading, down from 40 percent.

* Only 16 percent of black and 20 percent of Hispanic students had reached a proficient level in reading.

* Among high school seniors, only 29 percent of whites, 10 percent of Hispanic students and 6 percent of black students were proficient in math.

Mr. Buchanan went on to say, “This is only the half of it. Among the kids whose test scores on reading and math were not factored in were the 25 percent of white students and 50 percent of black and Hispanic kids who had dropped out by senior year.”

What has gone wrong? Here are my thoughts:

In the 1920s and early 30s, many mothers never praised their children because, as they told friends, they didn’t want one of their kids to get “a big head.” This happened to many children back in those years because parents of that era were confused about the different meanings of “egotistical.” They could not separate “ego” into the edges of this behavioral spectrum from self-confidence to vanity.

They tended to think of having an ego as being “conceited.” This often had a strong effect on many kids who began to think that they did not have the ability to succeed or that they had to do double duty in order to make it. Thus, while some kids gave in to this training and did not do much in their lives, many became “perfectionists” in order to do well. As the next three or four decades showed, this caused many adults to become successful entrepreneurs or to quickly move up a career ladder to become VPs or even CEOs. But this need to do double duty or work 80 or more hours per week left a trail of broken marriages and new kids growing up without a father in the home when he was needed.

Decades later, parents overcame this shortcoming in parenting by first praising their kids for their good behavior and also scolding them for their bad. This helped produce children with a balanced outlook and would have helped our society if it had continued. But, by the late 80s, parents started going a step too far by constantly praising children, even if they were failing. Thus began what some call the “Me Generation.”

Some schools echoed this pattern to where, in many schools, an “F” for failure was no longer used, nor was marking wrong answers with red pens. It was felt that this might give children a feeling of low self-esteem. We couldn’t let children think that they had failed at something, educators claimed. Society, especially the new academicians, had decided to defy Aristotle’s formula that something cannot be A and Non-A at the same time. They had forgotten that children can trod a path of both successes and failures, learning from each as they went along. A failure can teach as much as a success when one can experience both. Success is never the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Life is composed of little successes and small failures daily as we walk through this passage of life. As we learn from a failure, we gain an increase in our daily allotment of successes.

Recently, Bill O’Reilly, on his radio show, talked about the “Narcissus effect” that now shows up in many people of today’s generation, where too many people today think in terms of only themselves with no thought of others. Too many now practice rude behavior with a complete lack of courtesy and civility. (This term, “narcissus,” comes from a classic myth about a youth who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool and was transformed into the flower we call “narcissus.”)

Educators also forgot that for children to have faith in themselves, they must also have faith in God. If we are governed by a higher power, then we feel the need to prize and use the talents given us as a gift from God. But, civics and history forgotten, political forces along with school districts took on a false interpretation of our Constitution and by using a phrase never in this esteemed document --- separation of church and state---, steered children away from belief in God to a form of secularism or even atheism. The word, “God” has never referred to any specific religion or denomination in America. Our forefathers only wanted to keep God free from any specific faith and not held captive by one denomination as the English Kings had done.

Civilization, as we know it, is but a thin veneer of good when viewing this earth from its beginning. When the people of Germany lost faith in the 30s, Hitler’s horrors took over its so-called civilization. Today, as much of Europe has discovered, its current loss of faith has allowed the Fundamental Islamic followers to start a take-over, bringing with it another possible holocaust that supposedly could never happen again.

Now, in this new century, some parents and some school faculties are finally beginning to understand and teach children that self esteem comes not from without, but rather from within, by being able to achieve through their own efforts successes in finding solutions to problems. Many teachers, once again, are beginning to have high expectations of their students. Some schools, especially charter and private schools, are beginning to raise all standards of both education and discipline, even demanding a dress code. This has not spread to many schools or colleges yet, but hopefully it will.

Perhaps, Oprah Winfrey, regarded as a liberal by many, has given a gift of conservatism to many young people and educators by reminding us all that high standards of manners, dress and behavior combined with a good education is essential, not just for each person, but for the good of a nation and, indeed, the entire world.

Original URL:
http://www.smallgovtimes.com/story/07mar12.oprah.education/index.html