President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle are covering Essence mag yet again. In the upcoming March issue, they spoke to the mag about education and how they deal with educating First Daughters Sasha and Malia:
“Malia will tell you, my attitude was, if she came home with a B, that’s not good enough because there’s no reason why she can’t get an ‘A’…”
—President Barack Obama
According to the press release:
ESSENCE kicks off the first of its three-part education series, Teaching Our Children, with a White House exclusive—an interview with President Barack Obama. In his first interview of 2010, he talks tough with ESSENCE editor-in-chief Angela
Burt-Murray, Deputy Editor Tatsha Robertson and Washington Correspondent Cynthia Gordy about holding teachers accountable, closing the education gap between Black and White students, how he and First Lady Michelle Obama encourage daughters Malia and Sasha to love learning, and how you can do the same with your own children.
0 responses to “The Obamas Cover Essence Magazine in March”
Black students graduate three years behind White kids..Black students have a drop-out rate of 53%..If we combine this drop-out rate with the highly conservative estimate that 16% of these students will fail to pass state required exit exams, we arrive at a figure, indicating that only 37% of Black students will receive high school diplomas..Functional illiteracy is one indicator of the demise of a community…The Black community presently has an adult illiteracy rate of over 44% and climbing…A great deal of young adult and juvenile Black male offenders are incarcerated at alarming rates within our correctional institutions…A large percentage of these offenders are “functionally illiterate”..If you don’t read, you don’t know and will never find out”..(Green)..Illiteracy remains that villian which continues to cause so many of the problems of the Black community and problems confronting other minorities..”Between the Rhetoric and Reality” Lauriat Press;Simpkins&Simpkins,2009..written by two African American brothers, can be previewed on either “Amazon.Com, or Borders”..History teaches us that ” men and nations behave wisely, when they have exhausted ll other alternatives”..(Abba Eban)..