Education - still the answer

Education -- still the answer

Colleges and universities have had their commencements. High school seniors will receive their diplomas this month. It is time for blacks to evaluate the state of education in African America.

As one might expect, there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that all of the seniors graduating from Boston's Jeremiah Burke High School have been admitted to a two-year or four-year college.

All of the seniors from the Burke are to be congratulated for their achievement. But this success points out a serious deficiency in many black students. There is a tendency to underperform. Where is the motivation to achieve academic success?

There was a time, not too long ago, when education was highly regarded. However, because of the availability of high paying jobs for laborers, youngsters in families with serious financial difficulties were expected to get a job as soon as possible.

That was once a reasonable short-term decision. In 1979 a man with some college education earned only a little more than a high school graduate. But even then a high school drop-out could earn only 75 percent of a graduate. The income of a family headed by a high school drop-out was about $26,842 in 1979.

But the economy has changed. By 1994 the average family income of drop-outs had declined to $22,664. On the other hand income levels of those with four years or more of college have greatly increased since 1979. That trend will continue because of the highly technological nature of the modern economy.

Nothing illustrates the issue more clearly than the unemployment rates for various education levels in 1999, a year when the economy was strong. Among black high school drop-outs, 11.6 percent were unemployed. That rate dropped to 6.3 percent for high school graduates, 4.7 percent for those blacks with some college and only 2.7 percent for college graduates.

It appears that black women understand the economic reality more than black men. In 1997 almost one million black women were enrolled in higher education compared with only 600,000 black men. The disparity was even greater in graduate school. About 90,000 black women were enrolled compared with only 41,000 black men.

The demands of academic success are rigorous. Hard work is required for a period of years. Unfortunately, too many young black males believe that they can circumvent the process for achieving financial security by dallying in criminal adventures. Now the prisons are filled with strong black men who took such a misstep.

Blacks emancipated from slavery understood that education was the avenue to success in America. But somewhere that understanding was lost. Often black students who perform at a high level have to conceal their success from friends to avoid social ostracism. They are sometimes accused of trying to be white because they are academically oriented.

This is foolish self-abnegation. Throughout human history blacks have been intellectually prominent. It is time for the African American culture to revive an awareness of black intellectual prowess.