 On Point Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes his On Point column most weekdays. He is also an author and freelance writer. Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com. |
Carroll: Whine receiver
Poor Brandon Marshall. Being a professional football player is such a burden. When you’re a celebrity, everyday events get blown out of proportion and it’s all so . . . you know, unfair.
“For my career to go through what it went through and my character and personality taking a hit over something that basically wasn’t valid was an eye-opener to the high profile that me as an athlete has,” the Denver Broncos receiver complained the other day after charges of domestic violence against him were dropped.
Here’s what Marshall means: Let’s say you find yourself in one of those raucous arguments with your girlfriend that typically ends with you in hot pursuit as she desperately hops into a cab, followed by an attempt on your part to use another vehicle to block the cab’s exit from an apartment complex. Surely you wouldn’t expect to see this trivial incident land in the media, would you?
How’s a fellow supposed to get his own Blackberry back, anyway? Appeal to the United Nations?
But when a guy like Marshall goes through life just trying to be his unleashed self, suddenly everyone want to talk about it. Now can you sense his frustration?
And by the way: Can you believe the nerve of the arresting officer, “to take me down for something that wasn’t a legit reason”?
Why would the officer even consider the possibility of a crime? All he’s got is a woman fleeing from a powerful, angry man. Oh, and a taxi driver who would later tell a reporter “He scared the s--- out of me, this guy,” in reference to Marshall. Come on, copper, a little adrenaline rush never hurt anyone. Lighten up.
Obviously the officer should have asked for Marshall’s autograph instead. For good measure, maybe he should have arrested the cab driver for failing to understand that Marshall simply wanted his phone/pager returned, and had adopted an energetic strategy for its retrieval.
This is America. Celebrities rule. At the very least they deserve every benefit of the doubt. No wonder Marshall can’t get over the injustice of it all.
Staggering implications
“Only 19 percent of Hispanic male eighth-graders enrolled in Denver Public Schools in fall 2001 graduated from a DPS high school in spring 2006, the lowest rate of any student group analyzed in the study.”
--Rocky Mountain News, May 30
Where will so many Hispanic male dropouts be in 20 or 30 years?
A few will achieve major success, of course, through entrepreneurial skill, hard work and occasional luck. Others will locate decent, secure jobs and migrate into the middle class.
But it’s also probably safe to say that many will have to claw and scrape to stay ahead in an economy that increasingly grants higher rewards to those who obtain advanced education and training.
“In 1980, an American with a college degree earned about 30 percent more than an American who stopped education at high school. But, in recent years, a person with a college education earned roughly 70 percent more,” write Nobel-winning economist Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy in the current issue of The American magazine.
Realistically, the likelihood that most young Hispanic males in Denver will be qualified to prosper in college any time soon is roughly zero. But if the present trend isn’t at least reversed, so that more begin to stay in high school, the implications for future social friction alone are simply staggering.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
Hey you can bash liberals all you want but lay off the Broncos. You will be run out of town on a rail if you rag at the blue and orange.
Posted by just sayin' on May 31, 2007 07:35 AMWhere will the dropouts be in 20 years? Many through hard work will claw their way up the economic ladder, pay taxes and be model citizens. Others will wind up on public assistance, in prison or otherwise not giving but taking from society. Guess who is more likely to be a Republican or Democrt.
Posted by Jerry on May 31, 2007 10:57 AMFor a column about whining, your tone is exactly that. If you want to be considered a serious columnist, your sarcastic disdain will have to go. You suck.
Posted by Carroll's a shlub on May 31, 2007 11:57 AMA single stat - "Only 19 percent of Hispanic male eighth-graders enrolled in Denver Public Schools in fall 2001 graduated from a DPS high school in spring 2006" can not indicate a trend - for that you would need graduation rates for 8th graders from previous years. That's just sloppy writing from Vince (no surprise there). That's not to say the 19% rate is good...
If it is a trend, you can't realistically reverse it if you don't know the cause, another thing Vince omits.
Posted by on May 31, 2007 12:09 PMWhile I share the Carroll's concerns about the social implications of the Hispanic dropout rate, I suggest that we need to rethink how we apply education statistics. I suggest that grouping engineering graduates with art majors is a statistically flawed approach. They are simply two different groups economically.
We need to start examining education to determine the economic value of areas of study rather than mindlessly telling everyone to go to college. I like to study. I enjoy learning. But counseling 18 year olds to borrow between $30,000 and $250,000 to get a degree with questionable economic value is, at best, irresponsible.
If students, who do not have the background to understand that an undergraduate degree in philosophy is unlikely to be worth $100,000 (the out of state four year tuition, fees, and books charge at CU), are counseled by colleges to spend that kind of money on it to improve their earning potential, the people and institutions making money off the student's ignorance are guilty of fraud.
Posted by Yaakov Watkins on June 1, 2007 06:56 AMYaakov, as many do, you totally overlook the intangible value of that college degree. If it's all about money invested in school = money earned, why don't we just convert everything into trade schools? Who the hell needs liberal arts? Who needs critical thinking? It doesn't pay.
But, if you insist on looking only at the monetary value, it seems you're also overlooking the potential growth in salary of the college v. non-college graduate.
Posted by anderson on June 1, 2007 05:26 PM