Rice Denounces State of Education

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice invoked her own life story and family in calling attention to and criticizing the state of American education, which she said threatens to damage the United States’s power in the world, in a speech yesterday at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Addressing education in the U.S., she said that the system continues to fail its students, and that there is a distinct difference in the quality of education students receive.

“Today, I’m concerned about this [inequality] when I can look at the zip code and tell whether or not you’re going to get a good education. This is terrifying,” Rice said.

Rice said that she is concerned that inequality in education threatens to have deep, serious ramifications for the U.S., including its position on the world stage and its economic competitiveness.

“As an educator, it’s the lost potential, as a former secretary of state, it’s the loss of leadership, but as an American, I worry about one other thing,” she said. “The great national myth—to come from humble circumstances and do great things—is what unites this country.”

Rice invoked the concept of the “Talented Tenth,” a term coined by W.E.B. Du Bois, that refers to the need to provide educational opportunity for talented black men in arguing that education today must target the underprivileged to ensure equality among talented minorities. Du Bois was the first black man to receive a Harvard Ph.D.

Rice said that her family had placed an early emphasis on education—forgoing vacations to national parks for trips to college campuses—and for that reason she said “I should have ended up where I did... becuase a long time ago in the history of [her family] people believed that education was transformative.”

As a Presbyterian minister in Birmingham, Ala., Rice’s father had conducted social work educating underprivileged children, some of whom, Rice said, went on to become university presidents and Pulitzer prize winners.

Rice spoke for the third and final time yesterday in a lecture series sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute to a crowded room of about 200 people.

Earlier this week, Rice spoke about United States foreign policy in Africa and multiethnic democracy in America.

According to Vera I. Grant, the Institute’s executive director, Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. invited Rice to speak, and her appearance had been planned for a long time. Gates directs the institute.

Speaker invitations, Grant said, are “up to Dr. Gates and his intellectual interactions with high profile people.” In addition, she said speakers must deliver talks which reflect Du Bois, a prominent black leader in the early 1900s. Grant said that Rice’s discussions of “African Americans in conjunction with foreign policy” did just that.