Boring v. interesting.

"Since 1975, South Carolina has lost nearly half of its African-American teachers," reports Gina Smith of Columbia's The State. "The downward spiral flies in the face of a growing body of research that says minority students do better in class when taught by teachers from their same racial or ethnic group." Smith illustrates the point with an African American named Quincy Samuel, who teaches his fifth grade students with rhymes about Juneau, Alaska, Dover, Del., and other capitals set "to a thumping beat."

The reason for the decline in the number of black teachers is, of course, the same reason many brilliant women who taught when I was young do not teach today: Educated blacks have many other opportunities. There are two answers to this problem. One is the familiar one of better pay for teachers. The other, however, is not nearly as well known and it is just as badly needed. It is for us to get across to bright young people of all races that teaching can be much more interesting than many of the jobs that now seem more alluring to them. Consider the practice of law. Why doesn't someone create a popular television show that depicts the hero struggling to keep his eyeballs from glazing over as he plows through one boring law book after the other looking for the answer to some abstruse question of tax or corporate law?