Detroit: The Educational Disaster

Public schools are on the attack again, and the debate lies no where else than Detroit itself.  A city that’s warped with black on white racism, and completely deteriorating from the inside.

The common theme adopted when addressing public schools continues to be money.  That was made apparent with President Obama’s proposal of sending 530 million dollars to the deteriorating Detroit school system.  A school system that has a graduation rate of 35%, and almost every school within it’s system has failing test scores.

Image via Wikipedia

Bill O’Reilly took it upon himself to address some of Detroit’s floundering schools on Monday, 3/16/09.  He pointed out the number of superintendents that have been fired, and he also talked about the schools misuse of tax funds.  With that aside, he finally opened up to the real problem that faced the Detroit school system, the people in the community themselves.

This is the same community that stood out just a few weeks ago and told all the white people to go home at a city council meeting.  The same community that had it’s City Council President tell a man that he wasn’t allowed to say President Obama’s name because of the color of his skin.  No other place can you find a plentiful source of diversity at it’s finest.

In Detroit, you have a situation that can only be mirrored by the history of South Africa, or Haiti.  No amount of money in the world can fix the educational problems in this city.  White flight has taken place since the race riots in the 60’s, and the community got exactly what it wants, a black majority megaplex. 

A phrase comes to mind that describes the solution to this problem.  “You break it, you buy it”.  The community itself is to blame for the shape that it’s in, and they should be the ones to pull itself out of the gutter they worked so diligently to put themselves in.  Fixing problems at home, starts at home, not the White House.  You can’t save people who don’t want to be saved in the first place.