Schools are the mirror of America, Juan Williams tells Convention-goers |
On Board Online • November 5, 2012
By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief
When journalist Juan Williams visited a Minneapolis high school and asked to meet with student leaders as well as top scholars and athletes, two-thirds of the students had something in common: They were all girls.
“Young women set the pace for achievement in school,” Wiliams said, noting that women outnumber men in all graduate programs except physics and engineering.
In fact, a college admissions officer told him that boys seem more in need of an affirmative action-style edge in admissions than minorities.
That’s just one example of many changes that deserve the attention – and thoughtful response – of school district leaders, Williams told attendees in the keynote speech at NYSSBA’s 93rd Annual Convention and Education Expo in Rochester.
“It’s unbelievable what’s happening in education,” Williams said. “There is constant change impacting our society,” and every societal shift has some effect on public education.
As an analyst for Fox News, Williams listens to both power brokers and ordinary people to try to get a sense of how big trends are playing out. His conclusion is that schools are “in the currents of history” as we adjust to not only a changing economy but an ever-evolving national identity.
Consider our demographics, he said. One-quarter of Americans are under age 18, and one-third of Americans are now people of color amid fast-paced immigration. Something has driven the U.S. population past 300 million, and it’s not rising birth rates of Hispanics as one might guess. Look at a U.S. Census Bureau chart of the birth rate of children of immigrants and you’ll find “it looks like the arrow will go through the roof.”
At the same time, the ranks of seniors are growing as people live longer. He said population trends could be compared to a barbell that society has to lift, with large numbers of immigrant children and seniors on either end.
Every demographic, fiscal, political and social trend reverberates in some fashion in the public schools, Williams said. That’s why “you guys are heroes,” he said. A strong public school system is vital to give Americans access to “that first step on the ladder of mobility.”
Schoolchildren “may not know your name,” but that does not diminish the fact that the decisions that school board members make have great significance in their lives. “They depend on you.”
The TV personality also expressed appreciation for a Convention attendee who emitted a witty greeting earlier in the day: “Juan Williams! It’s good to put a body with the talking head!”