George Will,
writing here for the
New York Post, talks about the mess in the Chicago schools. In the process, he says some wise things about schools in general. Will strongly infers that the Chicago city schools are largely non-residential reform schools or youth prisons, he writes:
Teaching is necessarily subordinated to the arduous task of maintaining minimal order.
What leads to this problematic behavior? Will summarizes:
Abundant data demonstrate that the vast majority of differences in schools’ performances can be explained by qualities of the families from which the children come to school. (snip) Much the most important variable (is) the number of parents in the home. In Chicago, 84 percent of African-American children and 57 percent of Hispanic children are born to unmarried women.
To give you a handle on what those illegitimacy statistics mean, Will adds:
Chicago schools are 86 percent black and Hispanic.
