2-5-13
William J. Barber II amd Tim Tyson: McCrory’s Intellectual Dead End
Roundup: Historians' Taketags: education reform, North Carolina, Pat McCrory, liberal arts, William J. Barber II, Tim Tyson
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is president and Dr. Tim Tyson is education chair of the N.C. State Conference of NAACP Branches.
...“You got to throw the corn down where the hogs can get to it,” Georgia race-baiter Gov. Eugene Talmadge used to crow. In much the same spirit, North Carolina’s new governor appeared on William Bennett’s nationally-syndicated radio program last week and sneered at the UNC system for “offering courses that have no chance of getting people jobs.”
Bennett seems an odd assistant to help McCrory toss those stale hushpuppies to the tea party. The former secretary of education usually bemoans the failure of today’s youth to read Aristotle. The author of “The Book of Virtues” admits to losing something like $10 million in the casinos and he once speculated that even though it would be wrong for America to abort all African American babies, “the crime rate would go down.”
McCrory keeps poor company but he had facts, even if he didn’t understand them. Yes, only six percent of UNC’s undergrad majors offer hope of immediate employment in that field. Fifty years ago, the figure would have been smaller; in those days, Americans respected college degrees but did not expect them to change a tire. If the only measure of a B.A. is a j-o-b, somebody has to tell the kids to burn the Bible, mulch Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” along with Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf, and offer choice of three majors – sweet tea, cornbread or biscuit....
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