The Week

The newest branch of the Committee To Abolish Original Sin is the Planetary Citizen Registration Campaign, founded by Norman Cousins with the help of the World Association of World Federalists and the Conference on Human Survival. It has taken out full-page newspaper ads to explain its premises and program, to wit: “. . . We have the obligation to place the human interest above national sovereignty. . . . We have the obligation to create a world order in which man neither has to kill or be killed. In order to carry out these obligations, we the people of this world assert our primary allegiance to each other in the family of man. We declare our individual citizenship in the world community and our support for a United Nations capable of governing our planet in the common human interest. . . .” Some of those who have pledged “to make this new allegiance practical and effective”: Robert Hutchins, Linus Pauling, U Thant, Gunnar Myrdal, and the Dalai Lama. Why don’t they issue a uniform?

Ahem. Why must we bus? To integrate. And why must we integrate? To ensure quality education for all; to rescue minority children from the vicious cycle of the ghetto; to promote racial harmony (because, in the dictum of social psychologist Gordon Allport, “contacts that bring knowledge and acquaintance are likely to engender sounder beliefs about minority groups”). Just so. But here comes liberal sociologist David J. Armor, with a study that demonstrates pretty convincingly that it ain’t necessarily so. Professor Armor studied integrated-by-busing school systems in Boston, Hartford, New Haven, White Plains, Ann Arbor and Riverside, California, and found: 1) Black children bused to formerly white, middle-class schools showed no significant improvement in academic achievement (in Boston, children left behind in ghetto schools actually performed somewhat better). 2) After busing, black children showed declines in “educational and job aspirations” and self-esteem. 3) “Integration increases racial identity and solidarity over the short run and, at least in the case of black students, leads to increased desires for separation.” About the only benefit Professor Armor could find was that bused black children tended to be “better ‘channeled’ into universities.”

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Presidential Election

The newest branch of the Committee To Abolish Original Sin is the Planetary Citizen Registration Campaign, founded by Norman Cousins with the help of the World Association of World Federalists and the Conference on Human Survival. It has taken out full-page newspaper ads to explain its premises and program, to wit: “. . . We have the obligation to place the human interest above national sovereignty. . . . We have the obligation to create a world order in which man neither has to kill or be killed. In order to carry out these obligations, we the people of this world assert our primary allegiance to each other in the family of man. We declare our individual citizenship in the world community and our support for a United Nations capable of governing our planet in the common human interest. . . .” Some of those who have pledged “to make this new allegiance practical and effective”: Robert Hutchins, Linus Pauling, U Thant, Gunnar Myrdal, and the Dalai Lama. Why don’t they issue a uniform?

Ahem. Why must we bus? To integrate. And why must we integrate? To ensure quality education for all; to rescue minority children from the vicious cycle of the ghetto; to promote racial harmony (because, in the dictum of social psychologist Gordon Allport, “contacts that bring knowledge and acquaintance are likely to engender sounder beliefs about minority groups”). Just so. But here comes liberal sociologist David J. Armor, with a study that demonstrates pretty convincingly that it ain’t necessarily so. Professor Armor studied integrated-by-busing school systems in Boston, Hartford, New Haven, White Plains, Ann Arbor and Riverside, California, and found: 1) Black children bused to formerly white, middle-class schools showed no significant improvement in academic achievement (in Boston, children left behind in ghetto schools actually performed somewhat better). 2) After busing, black children showed declines in “educational and job aspirations” and self-esteem. 3) “Integration increases racial identity and solidarity over the short run and, at least in the case of black students, leads to increased desires for separation.” About the only benefit Professor Armor could find was that bused black children tended to be “better ‘channeled’ into universities.”