Chronicling and critiquing the passion African American males have with the NBA, this thoughtful dialogue challenges athletes, parents, educators, the media, and the larger society to examine the obsession with basketball. With 91 percent of the NBA African American and only two percent of the African American community doctors, dentists, and engineers, a solution for the future is desperately needed, and this book tries to answer some of the tough questions posed by these alarming figures. Among the questions addressed is What happens to all the athletes who are unable to go into the NBA? and Has this obsession with basketball robbed the African American community of talent needed in other professions? These questions are accompanied by an examination of the attitudes and perceptions of the black sports culture. » Read more: Hooked on Hoops: Understanding Black Youths’ Blind Devotion to Basketball
Charting a curriculum for Educational Charity
A common guess will show anyone what the curriculum for an educational charity programme should look like. But one thing is certain; the curriculum is different from conventional education curriculum for schools. So when we talk of the possible curriculum for the above concept of education, then there is need to be careful enough as to avoid misplacing the values that really constitute the heart of the concept. The first point that must be noted down in determining what forms the curriculum reference points for the concept of educational charity is the fact that the kind of educational packages offered here moves beyond equipping the poor and the less privileged with the letters of the book only, but rather goes further to wholly empower them to be productively creative as a way of tackling their greatest problems; poverty, hunger and disease. Here education is not about acquiring formal certificate; rather it’s aimed at equipping the individual with the needed essential and life survival skills that will enable him or her to have unhindered access to minimum decent living. It is aimed at empowering the poor to break the chain of dependence perpetual on external intervention and charity as a way of alleviating the effects of poverty, hunger and disease on the poor. Educational charity centres on practical learning that gives the poor direct access to the immediate or remote labour market. An appropriate understanding of both the setting and the target group of the above concept of education is also needed to be able to render an effective service of charity or intervention. For example the curriculum of a program that has rural farming women as its target will definitely differ from the curriculum of an educational intervention program aimed at empowering the rural youth economically through ICT and similar packages. In the same sense, an educational programme after such manner meant for the children within the poor circles of the world will definitely focus on basic education to achieve minimum literacy. In whatever is the case a balanced curriculum for educational charity meant for the poor and the less privileged must definitely aim at two major objectives targeted at enlightening the poor towards literacy and empowering them towards productivity and self dependence.