Small nit, but science and math are generally considered part of a "liberal arts"education; Econ – for those that perform income studies – is also in the liberal arts
Tysons daughter is a sophomore at Harvard. I wonder what she is studying
@screenname48105 “Even his pediatrician, a black woman who gushes about him, seems to attribute his good grades to just being a “great kid” (i.e. not a trouble-maker) and spends more time asking about his sports activities. The message is very clear and really hard to steer against.”
I think that most of these influencers are well intended family members or other people in a position to influence young minds. Like the elementary school teacher telling a girl “That’s okay, I wasn’t good at math either.” This person actually means well. Or the doctor focusing the AA student on sports instead of their outstanding scholastic achievements.
It will be an uphill battle to change these outcomes until the adults who surround these kids have different beliefs and assumptions. Schools can certainly help, but until the parents understand the importance of school, homework, how to support their kids, guide them effectively at an early age, and correct the negative influences that others may be having on them, how can we make much progress? And how can parents who have never had much opportunity themselves obtain those advanced skills?
You all may be interested in some of the great work that has been going on at Caltech around STEM-oriented early childhood education. http://ecstem.org/ECSTEMARTICLES
@Much2learn, yes, all those who encourage “good” black kids do so with the best of intentions.
I firmly believe that almost all kids will do their best to live up to the expectations they’re raised with; where you set the bar becomes their “normal”. We’re still at a point where the bar for most black boys is “don’t get in trouble”. Take a bright boy with any athletic talent and it automatically becomes about an athletic scholarship to college. But there’s a reason why division 1 football players don’t go on to med school. It’s not because they’re not bright enough, it’s because they’ve spent 20+ hours a week during their their high school careers focusing on becoming a great football player in order to snag that scholarship. Just imagine if they had spent all that time time and money toward taking AP math and science, taking SAT prep classes and studying with a tutor. Tell a black family that their HS superstar basketball player should spend less time on basketball and focus on academics because he’s smart enough to go to engineering school? Not going to happen. And, yes, it’s up to what the student wants but if you’ve spent your entire life being told that excelling in sports is the “dream”, of course that’s what you’re going to want.
Case and point. My son plans to go to music school. He happens to be a pretty good baseball player and also really likes science; he’s taking calculus and physics this year. He has a 3.8 GPA. When it became clear that he was overloaded and needed to ease up on his schedule, most of the advice he got was to take an easier math class and drop physics since it wasn’t required. Everyone was shocked when he decided to stop playing baseball. Me, I was shocked that they were shocked. I contend that if he looked like an Asian kid, no one would have been surprised.
My point is that it’s not just about parents making school a priority. I’m so tired of this rhetoric I hear all the time about how HS sports is so important for black kids because it keeps them in school, motivates them and gives them access to colleges. The implication being that they need a different path to success. I think we really need to examine how much racial bias is built into even how “good” black kids are treated in our schools.
Re: #104
Some people do have strong interests in both music and math. Perhaps your son may want to consider schools with good programs in both if that applies to him.
@ScreenName48105 – thank you for your post #96. I encourage everyone on this thread to read it carefully.
@gator88ne The engineering graduation rate number comes from a recent brochure put out by the school of engineering.
It appears that the large number of Liberal Arts majors are dragging down the overall graduation rate at Tufts. 
I question the assertion that Detroit charter schools perform as well as suburban schools. Please provide some info on that. There are many reasons public schools are not doing well by impoverished kids. Some charters are doing better, some are doing no better, and some are doing worse. Public schools in some areas run by unionized teachers are doing a good job, others not.
Agree that schools need to do a much better job of informing parents about the slim chances of athletic success beyond high school and that parents need to listen. However, I think it also is accurate to say that for many athletic boys playing HS sports with academic requirements to stay on the team can be a strong incentive to stay in school and do well, regardless of whether they are going to play beyond high school. Not every kid that plays sports in HS is gunning for a scholarship and most see that the stars of the recent past aren’t getting scholarships. They play because they want to. Not every kid that quits the team is going to do more school work. They may end up making bad choices.
For a strong, motivated student quitting sports (or any other time consuming EC) may absolutely be the best choice for academic success.
This related article was in the WSJ today. I found it interesting.
@screenname58105 "My point is that it’s not just about parents making school a priority.
I’m so tired of this rhetoric I hear all the time about how HS sports is so important for black kids because it keeps them in school, motivates them and gives them access to colleges. The implication being that they need a different path to success. I think we really need to examine how much racial bias is built into even how “good” black kids are treated in our schools."
I think high school sports are great, but I agree with you that it has to be kept in perspective, and that all kids should be told that the path to college is through education. I don’t have first hand of experience about this issue with black kids, but I can tell you it is also an issue, although probably a smaller one, with white kids. Especially, boys. Many people in our community push kids who are good local athletes to prioritize sports over education too. The truth is that very very few of these students have legitimate chance at a pro sports, or the olympics, or even DI athletics.
The worst thing I see is the level of misinformation and uninformed opinion that students receive from parents coaches and people around them. I think that schools and counselors could do a better job of conveying to students how far they are from being a professional athlete or even a Division I athlete. If a student or parent thinks they can be a professional wide receiver, win the state championship in your state in the 100 yard dash, and then maybe you have a chance. I think that helping the vast majority of student athletes obtain a more clear understanding of exactly how good they are at their sport would be a huge benefit. Why don’t schools educate students about how much better their odds for having a good life are by making their education a priority than they are through competitive sports.
In 2013, five percent of black high school students had ACT scores which met all four college benchmarks, versus 43 percent of Asians. Thirty-one blacks scored 35 or 36 on the ACT versus 1,486 Asians. There are lots more comparisons which could be made, but you get the idea. When you have this kind of disparity on the front end, then of course their will be a disparity in the number of scientists produced.
I’ve provided a link to the ACT data below. Oddly enough, the ACT stopped providing this type of information after 2013, apparently because it makes it hard to blame everything on racism.
“Thirty-one blacks scored 35 or 36 on the ACT versus 1,486 Asians.”
Training for the 35-36 ACT may be considered a sport.
This sounds good in theory but it’s not really what I’ve seen in practice. Boys who were doing badly enough in school to either flunk out or drop out don’t actually do any better by joining a team that requires 2-3 hours commitment 6 days a week, plus missed classes and even longer game days. Those boys don’t make it past tryouts. And the boys who were constantly on academic probation didn’t suddenly start doing “well”. I’m not saying it never happens, and there are certainly enough Sports Illustrated stories to prove it, just that it doesn’t happen nearly enough for high school sports to be such a priority.
I’ll go as far as to say that the number of kids whose grades were hurt by the amount of time a sport required far outweighs those kids whose grades improved because they were motivated by playing.
My issue is that the reasoning of “sports can be a strong incentive to stay in school and do well” is all too often applied automatically to black boys, as if that’s the ONLY way a black boy can be motivated in school, and as if it’s unimaginable that a black boy could and would want to just excel in academics.
I have a related beef about how vocational education has been abandoned by our schools. It’s now college or bust. So a kid who may actually not be happy going to college but would be happy and productive in a trade simply gets pounded for four years and comes out feeling like a complete failure, with zero marketable skills. Evidently, sports is supposed to be the answer for those kids.
Okay, let’s go 33 and above. Lots of people score 33; we all know them. Black, 179; Hispanic, 1,079; Asain, 4,746; white, 29,706. Given these numbers if white and Asian scientists combined don’t outnumber black scientists 190 to 1, there is certainly racism at work, but it is racism against whites and Asians.
One does not need a 99th percentile 33+ ACT score to be a scientist. The average ACT score of science majors is ~24.
One also does not need to score well on a high school test that can and is gamed to be a scientist in later life. America does need to have a caste system
The average science major is very far from being a scientist. A philosophy major is not a philosopher, either.
Why is prudently preparing for an academic trial called “gaming”, but prudently preparing for an athletic trial called “training”?
If u think the ACT is so easily gamed, then black students should take the trouble to game it.
True, but one doesn’t need to have a 99th percentile 33+ ACT in order to be a scientist either, and the ACT score typically poses a direct barrier to undergrad admission and/or major, rather than later becoming a scientist steps, such as acceptance to higher level degrees or getting hired.