The Public Schools: America's Achilles Heel

In a 1973 paper in The American Psychologist, a case was made for why it would take many decades for Blacks to improve their performance on school achievement and other cognitive tests. The paper was in opposition to Jensen's conclusion which emphasized genetics. One important part of the argument was deliberately omitted in that paper. The present paper deals with that omission which concerns the fact that our schools violate what is known about context for productive learning, a fact by no means peculiar to city schools. The near total failure of the educational reform movement has had and will continue to have consequences beyond the educational arena, one of these being Black anti-Semitism. Our cities are social time bombs. When they will ignite and explode is unpredictable. If classrooms become context for productive learning, the predicted positive outcomes require changes outside the schools, that is, the work arena.