President Obama Still Places Far Too Much

The Rich...should Beg The Poor To Forgive Us For The Bread We Bring Them. Healthy People Sometimes Feel They Need To Beg Forgiveness Too, Although There Is No Reason Why. Maybe We Simply Ask Forgiveness For Not Being Born Where These Poor Women Have Been Born, Knowing That If We Lived Here Too, Our Fate Might Well Have Been The Same.

On Mondays And Fridays In Early May, Nearly 18,000 Children-the Equivalent Of All The Elementary Students In Suburban Glencoe, Wilmette, Glenview, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Deerfield, Highland Park And Evanston-are Assigned To Classes With No Teacher.

Unlike These Powerful Grown-ups, Children Have No Ideologies To Reinforce, No Superstructure Of Political Opinion To Promote, No Civic Equanimity Or Image To Defend, No Personal Reputation To Secure.

As Damaging As The Obsessive Emphasis On Testing Often Proves To Be For Kids In General, I Believe That The Effects Are Still More Harmful In Those Schools In Which The Resources Available To Help The Children Learn The Skills That Will Be Measured By These Tests Are Fewest, The Scores They Get Are Predictably The Lowest, And The Strategies Resorted To By Principals In Order To Escape The Odium Attaching To A Disappointing Set Of Numbers Tend To Be The Most Severe.

So Long As These Kinds Of Inequalities Persist, All Of Us Who Are Given Expensive Educations Have To Live With The Knowledge That Our Victories Are Contaminated Because The Game Has Been Rigged To Our Advantage.