t literacy rates for an industrialized country; one out of four or five adult Americans is functionally illiterate" (Manning, 1990).
Two facts stand out from these statistics. One: something is wrong with an educational system that drops out from a third to half of its children. Two: something is unfairly skewed and possibly discriminatory in an educational system that seems to grossly favor a numerically shrinking population group over numerically significant and growing groups. The Reagan Administration's A Nation at Risk called for education reform. The problem is that not everyone agrees on what and how to reform... and just about everybody is unwilling to pay for it. Meanwhile, our industry needs to go abroad to find educated workers, and our cities teem with unemployment, illiteracy, and crime.
What's wrong with our society and our educational system? Are they not "democratic"? Are they blatantly discriminatory? Or is it that they have failed to recognize and/or address the profound demographic, social, economic, political worldwide changes taking place--the New World Order?
"The old premises with their emphasis on Western culture are Eurocentric and thus ill-suited for a nation that is increasingly diverse in ethnicity, race, language, and culture. Moreover, young Americans will live in a world that is more heterogeneous and interdependent than in the past" (Fonte, 1991).
Should we replace Eurocentric education by another ecentrism"? Blacks clamor for Afrocentrism under the unproven theory that all civilization emerged from Africa and that heretofore Eurocentric America "owes" such historical reparation to Afro-Americans. Was Cleopatra Black? seems of more concern to many than Can we retain our rich African heritage and yet be Americans? Latinos remind us that they were here before "Anglos" and perforce Spanish should be one of our two national languages. (Strangely enough, the Russians have not y...