Carnival Lines Splendor to do “Green Cruise”

Heard on the radio today: In a few years the Carnival cruise line will duplicate the currently aborted Splendor cruise – and charge double for it, calling it a “Green Cruise.”

Using no fuel for propulsion, the “Green Cruise” will not heat hot water for showers; flush only when necessary; serve primarily vegetarian fare of crackers and crab with a side of Spam for those who want something approximating meat; and turn out most lights except for emergency lighting.

(It should be a liberal’s delight!)

Education as a “Civil Rights” Issue

Since we have not been able to improve our public schools by simply pointing to their overall academic failures – perhaps we should make improvement a “civil rights issue.”

It certainly is!

“Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.”

In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower.”

The study referred to in the NY Times report suggests that the reasons are cultural  — not specifically racial – and I am not surprised. There was a recent article saying that there is a 72+% single motherhood among Blacks, and that alone could account for the difference in scores.

Whatever it is, money cannot solve it. For decades, Washington D.C. has scored at the very bottom (yes, even lower than California, but barely) in the U.S. Department of Education National Report Card on which the data in this article is based, and more money has been spent per student in D. C. than anywhere in the country.

We need serious educational reform – and to his credit President Obama is leading the fight on this issue, but it needs FAR more emphasis and public support in order to overwhelm the main opponent to reform, the teachers unions.