My School Journal

8/4/2019 My School Journal

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My School Journal: A Concerned CitizensReflections on Public Education in Guilford

County

Edward L. Whitfield

August 2001


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Education Dollars or Democracy?

Both are Necessary - Parents are Key

May 04, 2001

Because of the importance of children be-ing educated in wholesome and nurturing en-vironments, few people would openly ques-tion the importance of parents being involvedin the education of their children. It is theparents of school children and the commu-nity that embraces them that know that thepurpose of education goes beyond produc-ing good employees and good citizens. Theyknow that the educational system needs tohelp produce all around good people who will

grow to become good parents, themselves, aswell as good guardians of the environment,good maintainers of the community and goodtransmitters of the culture.

Except to the extent that they fall for thelies, confusion and prejudices of the dominantculture, it is the parents, more than anyoneelse, who believe in their children. They lovetheir children like no one else. They recog-nize their childrens individuality rather than

just their membership in a group, race or cul-ture. Parents recognize their childrens pe-culiarities and sense their childrens poten-tial. Parents and other concerned membersof our community want to see our youth de-

velop into wholesome, healthy, happy respon-sible and capable adults. And quite frankly,parents are the experts on making that hap-pen not those in front of the classrooms, inthe offices, and at the central administration

building.

Parental involvement has become a well-worn catch phrase in school circles. Nearlyeveryone gives lip service to it, but not muchthat is genuine is being done to promoteit. Particularly, since the merger of the Guil-ford County Schools, groups within Greens-boros black community have struggled withthe merged Guilford County School Boardto break through the bureaucracy and putthe resources and policies together to supportmeaningful parental and community involve-ment in the schools. This would be the key tobreak through the tracking, the stereotyping,the disrespect and the low expectations thathold back the potential development of toomany of our children. The Education Com-mittee of the local NAACP, the Pulpit Fo-rum, and the North Carolina Racial JusticeNetwork, in particular, along with grass roots

groups like the Dudley High School PTA andalumni, have been involved in organized ne-gotiations with the School Board and SchoolAdministration concerning parental involve-ment. In addition groups like the Greens-

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boro Community Initiative and the Unity

Task Force have lent their voice to concernsabout extending democratic community in-volvement is schools and school issues.

Every time a school budget comes up, orany change in school policy requiring ap-proval beyond the school systems internaldecision making apparatus the communitycries out for more involvement and moremeaningful involvement in decision makingand in the education of the children. Everytime the school system resists that involve-

ment. The essence of the message from theofficials to the public is, While your involve-ment may be nice, trust us. We are the ex-perts. We know what you need. We knowwhat you want. We know what to do. Justgive us what we tell you we need and approveour plans and methods.

Every time a budget comes up there hasbeen a crisis and sides are chosen. We aretold that we must be either for or against chil-dren. We are told that support for the schoolsystems plans and policies is critical. It issaid to be the only thing that will allow forthe continued progress of the region and forthe proper support for the children. Any op-posing view is called treachery against chil-dren. Never is there any serious discussionfrom the officials of how we got into the sorrystate of affairs that we are now in with themat the helm. Parents are blamed for notcaring enough about their children, or for

not doing what they need to do at home tohelp their children learn. Nowhere do theschool officials really admit that they needmore of our direct involvement rather thanless. While some concessions are made to

democratic input, we often see just the form

of it without the real content. Lip service ispaid to the importance of the communitysinput. Then, some deals are made, and whilethe school system gets its money, little or noreal progress is made with involving parentsin the schools. Parents are still made to feeluncomfortable being involved with their chil-drens education. Then, in another year, thewhole process repeats itself and we hear it allover again.

The process described above is what hap-

pened around the merger decision. It hap-pened again around redistricting. In thatcase the democratic discussions and inputfrom the public was thrown away and theschool system revealed its own plan andfought to implement it with little discus-sion. The same process occurred each timethere was a bond referendum. It happenedwith the plans for school construction. It hashappened with discussions concerning clos-ing the achievement gap, high stakes test-ing, magnet schools, zero tolerance disciplinerules and on and on. The community hasimportant things to say and the school sys-tem does not want to hear it. This reachits lowest point with the jailing of parentsand other concerned citizens for continuing toraise questions they felt were not being ade-quately answered in school board meetings onredistricting. Ervin Brisbons ongoing legacyis that he would not stop demanding the com-

munity involvement that our children need.What we need to do is devise specific

plans and structures that involve parents andsupport them in advocating for their chil-dren. Churches, civic organizations, neigh-

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borhood groups and concerned individuals

need to band together and coordinate effortsto work with our children. The school sys-tem should facilitate this taking place, ratherthan resisting it. That means they shouldmake the time, space and resources availableto help it happen. The heavy-handed tacticswe see coming from the central administra-tion must be opposed because they will notlead to our children being all that they canbe.

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High Stakes Testing

May 8, 2001

End-of-grade and other high-stakes testsdo not measure the whole child. They

were never designed to make decisions onindividual students, but rather to gauge ina general sense the content and progress ofschools. One of the big problems is that someof the most important intellectual skills thatwill sustain one throughout his life, such ascritical thinking and analysis, are not testedat all.

A recent report on the Paideia program re-vealed that it did not improve scores on stan-dardized tests even though it stresses the im-portance of developing critical thinking skills.The problem is that the the standardizedtests do not measure critical thinking. Seri-ous educators and child psychologists recog-nize the multi-dimensional character of intel-ligence. One researcher has identified eightdifferent intelligences that can be analyzed,developed and evaluated.

The standardized tests that are being usedfor crucial decisions about the potential of

students and the progress they are makingonly attempt to measure two of these eightdifferent forms of intelligence. In particu-lar, only verbal skills and mathematical skillsare examined. Other skills - spatial, kines-

thetic, intra-personal, inter-personal, musicaland naturalistic - are not evaluatedon thesetests.

Many tests, in fact, simply measure the

retention of dry facts when the real worldin which we are living is much more dy-namic. Our children must function in a realworld which requires critical thinking andflexibility as well as the capacity to contin-uously learn new things. The preparation forthis world is sadly lacking in our schools andnot measured on the standardized tests.

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Rulers Measuring Balls TheProblem of Standardized Testing

October 22, 2000

No amount of enhancement, augmentationor gilding will transform a straight ruler intoan accurate instrument for measuring the vol-ume of a solid ball. We can make the rulerlonger, we can put finer divisions on it, wecan make it out of precious metals we canmake it thicker and heavier and it still wontdo very well measuring the volume of irregu-lar solids.

The same is true with standardized test-ing that attempts to reduce the multidimen-sional intellectual development of our multi-dimensional children to a single, straight line,one-dimensional numberthe test score.

The only way to even begin to make suchmeasurement work is to transform the shapeinto a longer and longer form that becomesone-dimensional so it can be effectively mea-sured. That is what is happening in ourpublic schools today where decisions are be-ing made to drop science, social studies, mu-

sic and other classes because they will not beon the end of grade tests.

The ball starts to look like a football, thena long skinny balloon, then finally like a kitestring something clearly measurable by a

good ruler.

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The Secret Mission of the PublicSchools: Preparing our Children fora Lifetime of Failure

October 18, 2000

When you get right down to it, the pub-lic schools in this country are very successfulat doing what they have to do. The prob-lem is that some people want the schools tohave a mission differing from their real role,which is to prepare the next generation fortheir various places in society. Those peo-ple look to public schooling as a leveler ofthe playing field and a gateway to oppor-tunity when in fact it is a very successfulsupplier of exactly those social roles neededto keep America great and growing.

Each year our schools produce enough Doc-tors, and engineers and space scientists andcorporate lawyers and business managers andmilitary leaders to maintain our position asthe leader of the free world and at thispoint the undisputed, unchallenged super-power. The public schools produce enough

dropouts, and unemployed to keep the stockmarket happy. (If you dont believe me watchthe Dow Jones Industrial Average drop whenunemployment figures get too low.) Schoolsalso produce enough fast food workers to keep

hamburgers cheap on the way home from theskating rink. Our school system produceswinners and losers, and, by golly, our societyneeds them both in order to function the wayit does.

We have to be careful then, when we talkabout school reform, that we dont get caughtup in some type of egalitarian, utopian ideas.We have to be careful that we dont forgetthat while children are learning machineswith almost unimaginable capacities to learnand to create, the role of public schoolingis to sort them out neatly so that some arewell prepared for a lifetime of failure. Wealso should not forget that those who are wellserved by the status quo would not be terriblyinterested in the social upheaval that wouldresult from all our young people learning theirtrue capacity and potential and demandingthat our society make room for them.

The national trend toward accountabil-

ity that leads toward increased standardizedtesting and more national standards, will in-evitably widen the various achievement anddiscipline gaps that help to sort kids intothe winner and loser categories so needed by

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this society. In as much as the standards

are normed around white middle class chil-dren, black children will never become some-thing they are not, and completely close thegaps until all the other gaps in the society areclosed or unless the tests are rewritten. Thisis not to say that little black children are anyless intelligent or less creative or less capa-ble in any way than little white children, butit is to say that in this society their histo-ries and their contemporary realities are suf-ficiently different that the same test is not

very likely to produce the same results fromeach group. It would be interesting to takesome wealthy kids from the suburbs and testthem on inner city survival skills. We couldprobably get a different achievement gap thatway.

All children need to be loved and respectedfor who they are. All children should be en-couraged to respect their families and com-munities and be involved in their betterment

while coming to understand that none ofthose families or communities are or will everbe perfect. All good education should startfrom where children are in order to get themanywhere, but even the destination needs tobe connected to life in community ratherthan academic and other forms of abstrac-tion.

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There is Nothing Wrong with Being aCarpenter

October 20, 2000

A former high school teacher once ex-pressed his frustration with some of what wedo to young people when he told me thatsome of his science students just wanted tobe carpenters and that there was nothingwrong with that. We both lamented thefact that before they could become carpen-ters they would have to fail at being collegepreparatory students headed toward becom-ing neurosurgeons. Then once they werestigmatized as unable to make it toward thegoals they did not even have, then they couldshamefully begin to learn what they neededto know to become carpenters. I know for afact that there is nothing wrong with work-ing with your hands. It can be satisfying andrewarding both in an emotional and financialsense. Such work is also needed in our com-munity. Why must a young person be madeto fail first at something else before he can doit?

There is nothing wrong with being a car-penter, or a plumber, or a baker, or a hair-dresser. There is also nothing wrong withbeing a neurosurgeon or a rocket scientist or acorporate lawyer or a religious leader. There

is nothing more inherently satisfying in doingone of these jobs than the other. A good edu-

cational system would encourage young peo-ple to pursue their goals and dreams and begood at what ever they choose to be. Itwould not approach everyone from a liberalarts cookie cutter point of view and then al-low the trimmed off students to pursue thelower possibilities only after their failure atgetting ready for college. Sometimes inthe name of having high expectations for allstudents we cause unnecessary hardships onsome who would be happy and need not bestigmatized for wanting to be carpenters.

I once heard a black administrator from aschool system in eastern North Carolina sayThirty percent of our minority students aregoing on to college. That means that seventypercent of them are going nowhere. I shud-dered to think that he had been expressingsuch sentiments to his students. Some of hisnon-college-bound students could have endedup making $75-$100/hr as plumbers and liv-

ing in a house nicer than his. But I am surehe wanted to convince them first that theyhad not made it and that they were failures.

Nothing that I am saying should make uscomfortable with the tracking that goes on

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is some schools. Very young students are

evaluated with very imperfect measurementtests and then their entire academic life ismapped out before them. They are discour-aged from even attempting more challengingmaterial because of the assumptions that aremade about their capacity to learn. Some-times the level of subjectivity and bias thatgoes into such evaluations is such that entireblocks of students that have nothing more incommon than race or economic standing orgender are all assigned to the slower tracks in

spite of their real desires or capabilities. Thisis wrong. This is reprehensible. These prac-tices must be stopped.

Every child must be encouraged to developand pursue their own legitimate goals, how-ever different they may be from what is instyle for certain elites at the moment. Forsome that will be a career in academia. Forothers it will be a career in science and tech-nology. Others yet will be involved with out-

door work of some type. Still others willwork with their hands. But we must remem-ber: There is nothing wrong with being a car-penter, if that is what you want to be. Justbe a good one.

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To Please Adults and to AcquireTheir Skills and Power*

September 9, 2000

One day when I was rehearsing for a perfor-mance of Langston Hughes Black Nativityat A&T State University, I noticed how excit-edly the student performers gathered aroundthe musical director, hanging on his everyword, and trying to impress him with theirdeveloping performance skills. It becamevery apparent to me that each one was tryingvery hard to please the director and learn asmuch from him as possible. That, it seems tome is the essence of how young people behavearound adults they respect, and in a sense itis the essence of how education takes placeto please adults and to acquire their skills andpower.

These are the concrete manifestations ofaccommodation and assimilationthe es-sential activity of all living organismsin thedevelopment of a child. This accommoda-tion and assimilation has been carefully ob-served and documented by Piaget in his land-

mark works on child development. Here wesee the accommodation taking place as theyoung people adjust their activities such thatthey will please adults and the assimilation inthem trying to absorb as much of the ability

of the adults as possible.As we ponder the question of the education

of black youth, we should ask ourselves: Whowould we like black children to accommodateand to assimilate? Who do we want themto please, and whose skills and power do wewant them to aspire to?

If we can answer those questions, we wouldhave the essential outline of what educationin our community should look like. What wewould do then is to set up the opportunity formeaningful contact between those people wewould like our children to please and emulate.

I think the answer to that question Who?would include many if not all of the fol-lowing: Their parents, respectable commu-nity members, potential future employers,business people, political leaders, scientists,artists, spiritual leaders, and responsible peo-ple - thinkers and doers of all kinds. At thecurrent time, there is no process to encour-age the involvement or presence of such peo-ple in the schooling of our children. Thisis a problem that is addressed when we talkabout increasing parental and community in-volvement in the public schools.

We need to do an obstacle analysis:

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What stands in the way of meaningful

contact between young people and theadults they should emulate and please?

We also need to do a pathology analysis:What are the pathologies in our commu-nity that play into these obstacles? Forexample, lack of powerful people: lackof skilled people, lack of entrepreneurs,frustration, etc.

On the basis of understanding theseproblems, and on the basis of the schoolsystem opening up its doors in such away to facilitate this contact, we can dosomething really wonderful for our chil-dren.

*Power is force times distance accomplish-ment at a given effort. In this context I pri-

marily mean the ability to get something done

to go from idea to reality to be creative and

bring desired things into existence. Power

includes the power to tell the truth, the powerto be kind, the power to care, and the power

to love as well as to protect and to provide

for those you love. Some people who seem

to have a lot of power are understood to be

powerless when these types of power are con-

sidered.

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Lets Look at Diversity

April 16, 1999

The Price of DiversityThose of us who support neighborhoodschools know that there is an argument tobe made for diversity. People can and shouldlearn from each other. Cross-cultural con-tact is an important part of the overall ed-ucational process and is very important in amulticultural society. But as we seek theseadvantages we must ask the price.

Certainly it would be unfair to Black chil-

dren if we required them to accept the statusof lab experiments, to be studied and exam-ined for the benefit of white childrens educa-tion. Certainly it would be unfair to them ifwe required that they always explain or de-fend the actions and attitudes of all the othermembers of their race. Certainly it would beunfair to them if we consistently put them insituations where the economic disparity be-tween their communities and others was anongoing source of ridicule. Certainly in would

be unfair for us to force them to go to schoolsso far out of their communities that they feltalienated, isolated and unloved. The sad factis that we have done all these things and morein the name of diversity.

The busing of children from the areaaround English Village and MorningsideHomes to Claxton elementary school borderson being criminal. Small children from the

poorest part of Greensboro took long busrides each morning to the wealthiest partof Greensboro. There, too many of themwere made to feel insecure, inadequate andunloved in a remote, hostile and unfamiliarsurrounding. The parents of these childrenfelt uncomfortable on those occasions whenthey could find a way to the school to be in-volved with the children. How do childrenwho didnt get to go to Emerald Point duringthe summer talk about their vacations with

those who spent the summer on the Riviera?It isnt fair, and it isnt necessary.

Building True Understanding

We need to know that it is not simply con-tact between people, but rather, it is the in-teraction of different people as equals thatbuilds understanding and respect betweenthe races. During slavery there was a con-

siderable amount of contact at all levels (eco-nomic, social, and personal intimacy) be-tween Blacks and whites, yet no mutual re-spect emerged. Each party acted out his rolein a historically staged play with the pre-

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dictable consequence that everyones precon-

ceived notion was reinforced by what he saw.Relations of power and domination generatedthe inequity of the interaction. It was like ac-tors standing behind their masks in a Greekplay where their real features and their realhumanity was invisible to the audience andto themselves. This is pretty much what hasbeen observed in many of the relations devel-oped in public schools in the period of forcedbusing.

White students and teachers who want to

think of Black people as lazy and ignoranthave been reinforced in that self-fulfilling per-ception by what they saw in these institu-tions that they had created for themselves.To the extent that many Black youth feltalienated and abused by the educational sys-tem, whites saw their behavior in responseto this as proof of the existing stereotypes.Black people, who felt that whites were hos-tile, insensitive and deceptive, felt justified

with their observance of the conduct of manywhite students playing out those roles.The interaction as equals, that builds true

understanding and respect between people, isonly possible when our youth have a senseof their own identity and self worth alongwith the tools and skills they need to suc-ceed. They must feel self-confident, sociallyaware and have their creative energies un-leashed. Supportive and nurturing neighbor-hood schools can play a role in creating the

atmosphere in which this takes place.We will need to develop more situations

and processes where people do come into con-tact with each other as equals. This may in-clude athletic competition, extramural aca-

demic interaction, cultural expositions and

conscious dialog sessions. The public schoolshave so far not proven to be very good at this.The task of creating opportunities for inter-action as equals may be difficult at first, giventhe history of racism, cultural isolation andcultural chauvinism. But it can and must beworked out.

The Problem with Magnet Schools

Magnet schools have been raised as a means

of developing diversity without coercion, butthey too present many serious problems.Magnet schools were developed as a methodof achieving integration without forced bus-ing. The idea was to create super schoolsusing the latest innovation, best teachers andbest resources and put these schools insidethe Black community to attract white stu-dents. Seats in these schools were set asidefor the white students who were being sought.

It is ironic that one of the results of astruggle by Black people for access to bettereducational resources for their children wasthe establishment of institutions, in the Blackcommunity, that are not concerned with bet-ter educating Black children, but rather serveonly the purpose of attracting white children.There were instances where quotas were es-tablished and Black children were excludedfrom magnet school programs in their com-munities with empty seats for the purpose of

saving spaces for white children who did notwant to go.

This was the insanity of using segregation- the forceful exclusion of some children be-cause of their race - to fight for integration

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- the mixing of Black and white children in

school buildings. It never made any sense,but when it was questioned, the responsewas that the federal guidelines required it.Two things are fundamentally wrong with themagnet school concept: First, if we know bet-ter what children really need for their edu-cation, we have a responsibility to providedit for all the children, not just for a selectfew who get into magnet programs. Sec-ond, it obviously makes no sense at all toseek to correct the exclusion of Black chil-

dren from better educational opportunitiesby excluding them from the best schools thatare placed in Black communities to attractwhite children. The results of the magnetprocess are as ridiculous as the assumptionsupon which it rests. We end up with twoseparate schools, one overwhelmingly Blackand poor, the other majority white and af-fluent, with different teachers and differentclassrooms for different students all housed

under one roof, sharing only toilet and lunchfacilities.

Going Hungry is Not Good Prepara-tion for Famine

Another argument some people will make fordiversity is that it will prepare our childrenfor the problems they will face as adults. Theidea that we should throw our children intohostile educational environments at an early

age so they can learn to deal with the racismand animosity of the society is pure foolish-ness. You dont practice for a famine by fast-ing. All that might do is condition you tothe pain you will encounter but it will not

give you the stored up nutrition that will al-

low you to make it through it. If you knowyou are going where food is scarce, it is betterto overeat for a while.

Our children will see enough real racism,discrimination and isolation in the world asadults. As children we need to fill them sofull of themselves that they are self-confidentand no one can make them doubt themselves.That is why the idea of a wholesome, nur-turing educational environment controlled bythe community is so important. When our

children face the irrationality and insanity ofthe society, they should question the societyand not themselves. It is out of creativelyquestioning the society with a deep sense ofcommitment and responsibility to our com-munity that we can inspire the thinking re-quired to answer to the question how do wefix what is wrong?

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Education and Community

March 9, 1999

These are some educational principlesbased on African traditional education that

I have found and updated to our context:1. Education is not limited to school.

2. Children learn all the time.

3. Everyone is an educator. Children learnfrom all that they see and hear and from ev-eryone they are around.

4. Education should be linked to the real-ity of the environment.(Environmentally con-scious.)

5. Education should be linked to the reality

of the community. (Socially conscious.)6. Education should be linked to produc-

tive work. (Economically conscious.)

7. Education should foster sense of com-munity identity and responsibility.

8. The whole community has a responsi-bility to be concerned about all the childrenseducation.

9. A good society is in balance.

10. Science and mathematics plays a key

role.11. Spiritual matters are important and

must be respected in all aspects of life.

12. Parents play a particularly importantrole in the education of their children.

13. Children should be taught to respectand appreciate their elders.

14. Culture should be respected and ad-vanced.

15. Reading and writing are fundamental.

Long before there were schools, there werealways processes by which young people, intheir transition from childhood to adulthood,came to know what was required of them(their responsibilities) and came to be armedwith the information and skills to dischargethose requirements. We can think of the edu-cational process in its most general terms, asthe immersion in ones culture - real culture,not the static, sometimes mummified culturewe put on display in museums and on stages,but the dynamic day to day culture of exis-tence.

Humans are not born knowing very much.While young horses can stand and even runwithin hours of their birth, humans developmuch more slowly and are armed with farfewer instincts to help assure our survival.We have to learn almost everything. We re-

quire long periods of adult guidance, supportand protection to acquire the necessary intel-lectual and physical tools to be self sustainingand productive.

The educational process is necessarily in-

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tergenerational. That is, it involves one gen-

eration interacting with another and passingalong its experiences and knowledge and in asense, its spirit, to another. There was a timewhen everyone was naturally involved. Tolearn how to do something, you took instruc-tions by working beside and learning fromsomeone who already knew how to do it.You learned how to sow and cultivate froma farmer. You learned how to hunt froma hunter. You learned shoe making from ashoemaker. You learned what it meant to be

a member of the community from the com-munity members all around you.

The advent of schools as separate institu-tions took these intergenerational processesout of the hands of the whole community andplaced them in the hands of specialists whose

job was teaching school. The arena for edu-cation moved from the whole community intothe schoolhouse. This came about as societybecame more and more specialized and frag-

mented. The social division of labor musthave seemed to require it. We can lamentthe fact that this took place, but it remainsa fact.

It tends to explain some of the socialand economic problems that our society has.Those who would be shoemakers are taughtby those who have never made a shoe. Wewonder why some young people find it so diffi-cult to fit into their communities in a healthyand wholesome way when they are instructed

in civics by those who hold their communitiesin contempt, and who are not familiar withits realities. More and more, most adults feelalienated from the process of the educationof children. We have accepted too limited a

role because we are not the experts, the ed-

ucators, the teachers and the school admin-istrators. This leaves education barren andoften abstract - disconnected from life andcommunity, and not well serving the childrenin their transition to adulthood.

It is easy to see why community control ofeducation is so important. It helps to min-imize the distance that schooling as a spe-cialty has created between the realities ofour childrens communities and the educationthat must prepare them for their futures.

This is not to say that there are no goodteachers. This is not to say that there isno specialty requiring skills for the teachingof children. It is to say that whatever isintended to be included in education insidethe special institutions that are schools canand historically has been taken care of in-side the functioning community as a whole.Moreover, if we are to increase the relevanceof educational institutions, we must reinte-

grate adults who are not school specialists,but rather who specialize in other areas backinto the process.

Before there were schools, the preparationfor adulthood must have very naturally in-cluded information about maturing, and ma-turity. Rites of passage for young men andyoung women existed under the supervisionof the community. Now days, there is an in-formal mix of activities that goes on. It in-cludes sex education talks on the street cor-

ners, activities and training in church andSunday school, summer camp, informal dis-cussion in the home, with parents, with sib-lings - all these things make up aspects ofthe education young people receive. Why,

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though, are we not satisfied with the small

part of this overall process that takes place informal educational institutions? Because, forfar too many of our young people, the thingsthat they get outside of school are insuffi-cient, and what they get inside school contra-dicts rather than adds to their overall prepa-ration for productive involvement in societyas adults. This includes an understanding oftheir role in the society and responsibility toimprove that society.

There is a certain curiosity and excitement

about learning that is natural in young peo-ple. Although humans dont seem to havemany instincts, the drive to explore and tolearn and to understand seems to be hardwired and almost universal. For babies even,learning is its own reward. The tragedy isthat weve got schools that can rip this cu-riosity and natural love for knowledge andlearning right out of our young people by thetime they are in the third or fourth grade.

Children in our society often end up iso-lated and divorced from the very things thatmake up the world they live in. They haveno knowledge of how most of the things theyuse work. They have no idea where thethings that they use and consume come from.They have no idea who makes the decisionsthat determine the quality and character oftheir lives. They have no idea who makesthe things that they are surrounded by. Asa result, everything is hokus spokus. And

a young persons ability to decide what hewants to make of his life, or to put it in dif-ferent terms, his ability to decide where heshould fit in this mysterious scheme of adultactivity that actually defines the world he

lives in is near zero. All too often, all he

can model himself after are those adults whodo enter into his world with whatever limitedpower and involvement they have in it. Is it awonder then that our young people often fallso far short of their potential? They have noidea what they want to do because they haveso little exposure to people doing things andthe inner workings of what is done.

Young people are also far too infrequentlygiven the opportunity to be excited aboutanything. Many youth have never been

around adults who are excited about whatthey do. Certainly this is true of far toomany classrooms. Who remembers an ele-mentary math or science teacher who seemedgenuinely excited about the wonders of sci-ence and mathematics. So frequently suchthings are presented by rote memorization offacts, rather than an involvement in discov-ery. You must approach such knowledge fromthe standpoint of failure: at best, your grasp

of other peoples discoveries will be less thantheirs, and you are not armed with the toolsand not charged with the task of engaging indiscoveries of your own.

We need to establish a process to getadults who are enthusiastic about somethingto share that excitement with some youngpeople on a regular basis. In many ways, itdoes not even matter what particular thing itis. Those adults who are really into gardeningshould do some gardening with some youthful

apprentices. Those who take pictures shouldget some young people doing it with them.Those who sew, or bake or build furniture orbuild model rocket or sing or design things,or whatever, should make sure that the next

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generation knows about those things and the

pleasure and thrill that can come along withthem.

A model curriculum for a school thatwanted to make use of some of the principlesoutlined here would include classes along thefollowing themes:

* How does it work? (Science and Math) use cell phones and pagers to teach mathand physics

* Who makes it? (Careers) expose kids tomanufacturing careers

* How is it made? (Manufacturing tech-nology)

* Who decides it? (Civics) expose youngpeople to the decision making processes asthey affect them

* What happened and what difference didit make? (History, History of Science)

* How did they feel? (Sociology, Psychol-ogy, History, Literature)

* What did they do? (History)

* How do things develop?(Philosophy, His-tory, Science)

* Where did it happen? (Geography, worldhistory)

* What is fair in this situation? (Law, So-ciology, Civics, Philosophy)

* How can I express myself? (Writing, Art,Music)

* How do I know what is true? (Philoso-phy, Science, History)

Schooling does not always need to be ab-stract. How many young math students shutdown in geometry class when they dont geta serious answer to Why would anyone wantto know this? We should be able to answer

that question or get the material out of the

syllabus.

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A Liberation Perspective on theContent of Schooling in theCommunity

March 25, 1999

Perhaps the best argument to be madeagainst neighborhood schools is that neigh-borhood schools will lead to a concentrationof students with low SES (Socio-Economic-Status) in some schools. It is then said thatthis would cause a downward spiral of nega-tive peer pressure, low expectations, and poorperformance. This, it is suggested, shouldbe remedied by establishing and maintainingschool diversity goals that will prevent suchconcentrations with all the unhealthy effectthat these concentrations would have on theculture of a school. Through this argument,the its not just race position is made along-side the position stemming from the Browndecision that separate schools are inherentlyunequal.

Two things need to be looked at. First,what is the experience of these same low SES

students when they are disbursed throughoutthe school system by some process of racialand/or SES balance, and second, what wouldbe the most appropriate setting and treat-ment of these children.

I would contend that when low SES stu-dents are distributed throughout the schools,there in no substantially better outcome forthem as individuals. That is to say, if we con-centrate the data on the children, rather thanconcentrate the children, we would see thesame grim results that can be observed if thechildren are placed together. The difference,which is somehow more socially tolerable, isthat we can hide this performance and thesechildren better if they are spread around.

These are the children who, even in a mixedsetting, have the highest dropout rates, thehighest suspension rates, the highest reten-tion rates, the lowest grades, the worst atti-tudes about school, about society, about eachother and about themselves. When they arespread out, there is just a little of this neg-ativity in a lot of places and it becomes aself-curing problem because many of thesechildren drop out of school as soon as they

can and the statistics of the institutions theyleave improve. While there may be some pos-itive peer pressure from being around mid-dle and upper class children, there is also aneffect of feeling different and isolated, and

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needing to act out in order to gain any at-

tention and assert ones individuality. Muchof the latter will offset the former. We need tobe honest with ourselves about the fact thatby and large we are compounding and hidingthe problem.

The character of the educational activitythat goes on when this group of low SES chil-dren are concentrated in a school by virtue ofthe fact that they live in communities thatmight be served by the same school shouldalso be examined. Often, the curriculum does

not properly match the needs of the childrenin the context of their community. If we aretrying to force-feed children information thatdoes not matter to them, then it is no won-der that they reject it rather than engage itfully. We need to do more work in develop-ing the curriculum that integrates a concernfor education with a concern for social jus-tice. Such a curriculum would address thereality of race and economics by looking at

discrimination and poverty. Such a curricu-lum should be real to the students who studyit, because it should address the questions:

* Who am I?* Why is my community like it is?* What is possible for me?* What is possible for my community?* How can I change things for myself as an

individual?* How can I change things for my commu-

nity?

If this is not the basic characteristic of whatwe are teaching these children, we need to askourselves why should they be interested in it.If this is what we are teaching, then whatwould be the problem with the concentration

of children for whom these questions are rel-

evant? Would it not be possible in relativelysmall and intense settings to generate thetype of discussion around these things thatget into the depths of philosophic, historical,literary, scientific, aesthetic and moral ques-tions that form the core of a solid education?I think so. When our low SES students are soengaged and on this basis prepare themselvesto engage in their own and their communitysliberation and advancement, then they willbe good subjects for engaging with others as

equals. As this happens we will have somereal dialogue and understanding about race,economics and justice.

The obvious question is: Can we reason-ably expect that this is the type of educationthat our children will receive if they are inneighborhood schools organized by the schoolsystem? The sad answer is, probably not.Those of us who care need to develop a clearernotion of what our children need to be learn-

ing based on the notion that education shouldenable a child to deal with his environment.Dealing with your environment means bothlearning to survive within it, and also learn-ing how to improve it, or better yet, trans-form it and in our case, liberate it. What wehave in the current curriculum for low SESstudents whether they are concentrated orspread out is a block of subject matter thatignores their real environment and by exten-sion, it avoids them. This again is a source

of alienation that much of the discussion ofschool reform does not even attempt to ad-dress.

The more money strategies to fund earlyintervention, and other gap closing pro-

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grams are limited to dealing with individual

students without addressing the question ofthe relations of those students to their com-munities. These strategies could only work ifthe children pretend that their reality is notreal and simply try to escape. Some indi-viduals have, and others will continue to beable to do just that, but that fact should notcause us to develop an educational strategythat requires such an abnormal and rare act.After learning the capital of Vermont, talk-ing about Woodrow Wilson and practicing

calculating ratios and proportions, the chil-dren still go home to their impoverished livesin their sub-standard homes and watch theblack-market drug economy provide most ofthe employment in their neighborhood. Itis no wonder that the educational gap growswider as our young people mature. What weteach them and what they see grow wider andwider apart.

We need to establish schools with a Lib-

eration Agenda. We need to train teachersto go into existing institutions as subversivesto overthrow the irrelevant processes and de-velop relevant ones. We need to supportthose teachers as they come in conflict withthe school administrators. We need to em-brace our children and show them a hope thatgrows from their circumstances rather thansimply ignoring them. We need our commu-nity and concerned citizens to come togetherto develop the resources to make this happen.It will be a big task, but the results will bewell worth it.

Theft

November 23, 2000

The lie that steals a thousand livesgoes unpunished.

The greed that steals a thousandmore is rewarded with riches.

The thief that steals a thousandacres becomes the lord of the es-

tate.The man who steals a thousand

souls becomes the slave master.

The people stolen from their landare vilified.

The man who steals a loaf of breadis jailed.

The child who steals a fleetingglance at forbidden fruit is tor-tured and murdered.

But

The slave who steals his freedom be-comes a man again.

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More Food for Thought

1. We need to demystify parental involve-ment:

* What are the preparations to be involvedwith your child?

* What is expected of you?* What are the minimum requirements?I contend that loving your child and think-

ing he is important and wanting him/her todo well is enough to do your child worlds ofgood. If parents bring that alone to theirchilds school, the schooling process will im-prove immensely.

2. Do financial incentives for working inhighly impacted schools get us the best teach-ers for the job, or does it get us those mostin need of extra cash?

While we certainly want teachers who aregood at working with our children to be ad-equately compensated, it seems that the lovefor the children should precede the money,not the other way around.

This stuff gets a bit complicated.

3. A county commissioner once while ex-plaining the schools need for more fundstold me that many children were coming to

kindergarten who were not ready for it. Howprepared do children need to be for kinder-garten? If they are potty trained, and capa-ble of speech, then the rest should be dealtwith after they arrive.

Please contact me with your com-ments, suggestions and/or criticisms. Iam attempting to help illuminate someof the problems that face our commu-nity related to education and the pub-lic schools. We all have a respon-sibility to get involved in the manyways that we can. Email me [email protected].

Jubilee Institute Pre-Print Series #11

1

The Beloved Community Center of Greensboro, Inc.

P.O. Box 875 Greensboro, NC 27402

336) 230-0001 - voice (336) 230-2428 - fax

[email protected]

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