Teach Your Children Well

Children really are little sponges eagerly sopping up everything, good and bad, around them. Children are born hard wired to process enormous amounts of information and with an almost maddening amount of curiosity. As parents, and grandparents, we hold our small children on our laps and read aloud, pointing at the pictures and using different voices. Just as we reach the final page we hear, “read it again” and we do. We sing the ABC’s and count our 123’s and somehow manage to answer all those “whys.” Then one day we excitedly and nervously send our little ones to elementary school where we trust that the lessons we have begun will be continued. Imagine the pain and frustration of finding out that you’ve sent your child to a school where learning is discouraged.

The two students each received $50,000, and two family members who filed the suits on their behalf received $25,000 apiece ....

Title VI prohibits allowing a racially hostile educational environment in schools and programs receiving federal financial assistance and provides for a private cause of action for violations....

Both students were African-American, and so was most of the elementary school’s student body, according to [the students’ lawyer, Lawrence C.] Kobrovsky....

[The younger student] claimed she suffered emotional trauma because she was subjected to racial and sexual slurs at ... elementary school ... Despite complaints, school administrative staff and district officials allowed the abuse to “escalate to the point where [she] was physically threatened, assaulted and battered,” the suit alleged.

“You have a culture where to act like you want to do well in school is considered acting white. And that is part of why we’re saying that it was racial, even though the students were all of the same race because they weren’t acting how the others thought they should be acting as members of that race,” Kobrovsky said....

This is elementary school. At this early stage a child’s attitudes are formed by their home environment. This story says to me that children were taught by their parents that education has no value and that those who seek to become educated are to be mocked and in the case of the little girl, physically assaulted. Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. Yesterday Charles Payne related on the Glenn Beck Show that he was ridiculed as he was growing up for “acting white” because he excelled at academics. He credited his mother for instilling in him the value of education and her insistence that he do well in school.

The love of one’s child isn’t determined by race. The desire to see one’s child succeed in life is not determined by race. So why does it seem that the value of education, is determined by race?

When black children see Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Cosby, on and on and on, do they see people who are acting white or do they see successful people?

Parents of all races need to explain to their children that for every Ludacris or Eminem there are thousands on food stamps living day by day without hope or a chance of a brighter future. Children, all children, need to be taught at home, that succeeding at education is the ticket to succeeding at life.

h/t Instapundit