Abstract
Our Universities: Where is the Leadership?
Leonard Pitts, in an April Fool’s Day editorial - no pun, just the facts - suggested that educational institutions are focused on the wrong issues. In New York’s public schools, dinosaur, birthday, pepperoni, and dancing, all make the NYC Department of Education’s list of forbidden utterances.
But then, America long ago forgot what education is for — a fact you can illustrate for yourself by scanning test scores, reading an online message board or stopping five people on the street to ask them when was the War of 1812. It is telling that, as we slide toward intellectual mediocrity, our greatest city busies itself trying to keep kids from being exposed to such troubling concepts as birthdays and dinosaurs.
Leonard Pitts, Syndicated Columnist