Apartheid. USA 1988

March 15, 1987:

Most children and young adults can read at a level appropriate for their age but only a small percentage can reason effectively about what they are reading and writing. This was the conclusion of a new report, ‘Learning to be Literate in America’ as published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress set up by the Federal Government

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to monitor the academic performance of the nation's schoolchildren. The burden of this wide-spread lack of effective reasoning skills will be borne mainly by American businesses. David T Kearns, chairman of the Xerox Corporation said in an introduction to the report, ‘If current demographic and economic trends continue, American businesses will have to hire a million new workers a year who can't read, write or count. Teaching them how, and absorbing the lost productivity while they are learning, will cost industry 25 billion dollars a year for as long as it takes - and nobody seems to know how long that will be,’ Mr Kearns added.^67.

New York City foster-care children are being bounced from home to home and institution to institution in far greater numbers and under more chaotic conditions, than officials, case-workers and other experts can recall. The children are buffeted by countless rejections and severe stress. They often become angry, depressed and violent. Few of them understand that they are the littlest victims of a system that, by all accounts, has been overwhelmed. ‘It's gotten to the point where we are sending kids home to bad circumstances because foster-care is such a terrible alternative,’ said Judge Daniel D Leddy Jr of Family Court in Manhattan. ‘It's not safe and it's exploding at the seams.’

Abandoned babies live in hospital cribs, and learn to walk while holding the hand of a nurse! A pregnant 13-year-old has been sleeping for weeks on a couch in a recreation room at a group home where 25 children live in a space meant for 18. Troubled teenagers languish for months in chaotic observation centers where, according to workers and legal advocates, physical abuse of children by other children has become a daily occurrence.^68.

67. The New York Times, from a report by Deirdre Carmody

68. The New York Times, from a report by Michael Oreskes, Suzanne Daley and Sara Rimer