Picture the kid who set off an explosive underneath his teacher's chair in grade school. Before he graduated to that, he set off havoc by making "bring your pet to school day" posters and convinced other kids to give him their bike lock combinations so he could switch all the locks.
The troublemaker's name? Steve Jobs.
Fortunately, for those of us who love our iPhones, iPads and iPods, Jobs attended schools that accommodated his childish behavior and rebellion rather than criminalizing it. But what if Steve Jobs had been Jamil Jobs?
If Jobs were attending a typical urban public school today, chances are high that he would have been suspended, expelled, or at the very least, put on a track aimed at failure rather than success. In Oakland, California -- where I live -- the schools primarily serve poor youth of color. When students act like Jobs did, they typically face disciplinary action and often are charged as delinquents. Data from 2009-10 released this year from the Department of Education confirm this. They highlight the stark differences in the way black and Latino students are disciplined in school as compared to their white counterparts. The data is from 72,000 schools in 7,000 districts, serving about 85 percent of the nation's students. It shows that black students comprise 35 percent of those suspended once, 46 percent of those suspended more than once and 39 percent of all expulsions, although they only make up 18 percent of enrolled students.
Even students who do not misbehave are rarely recognized as gifted or talented. While black and Hispanic students made up 44 percent of the students in the survey, they were only 26 percent of the students in gifted and talented programs.
Here is what happened to little Steve, according to the biography by Walter Isaacson. He was put into the advanced class in fourth grade. His teacher, Teddy, figured out how to engage him in the learning process. Admittedly, she "bribed" him with lollipops and occasionally even cash, but after a few months, he no longer needed these incentives. According to Jobs, "I just wanted to learn and to please her."
Most people can relate to the idea that we all come to crossroads in our lives. We make decisions that take us in one direction or another, but when we are children, decisions are made for us. In the case of Jobs, he was given a sense that he was special. His father challenged the school to engage him to his full potential. His teacher, Teddy, discovered what it took to motivate him.
This approach should become the norm in our schools and in every child-serving system. Not just for the exceptional Steve Jobs of the world, but for all children. Even if their faces do not fit our biases about where potential lies. For too many students, today's schools resemble prisons more than they do learning laboratories.
The vast majority of brown and black children who fill juvenile detention are driven to the juvenile justice system from other youth-serving systems which neglect to provide appropriate support or services. Once in detention, we spend more than $200 per night locking them in a place that, research shows, has a negative impact on their life outcomes. Not only is this morally unacceptable, it is fiscally unsustainable. Instead, we should be working to ensure youth are learning, employable and connected to their families and communities. We should be putting resources into their schools and communities so that they are places of opportunity rather than places where some young people of color succeed "in spite of" their surroundings.
The 2010 census shows that 12 states and D.C. now have white populations below 50 percent among children under age five. At current growth rates, seven more states will flip to "majority minority" among small children in the next decade. As a society, we cannot afford child-serving systems that do not support every child to reach their full potential.
Every child should have the opportunities that Jobs had to become the person that he became. He says, "I learned more from [Teddy] than any other teacher, and if it hadn't been for her I'm sure I would have gone to jail."
Darell Hammond: Why Every Student Needs a Playground to Succeed
Matthew Lynch, Ed.D.: Obama's Executive Order to Benefit African Americans for Generations to Come
Dan Cardinali: Public Education: A More Holistic Approach
A good place to start is to flip the model of compensation... Teachers should receive the Administrators salaries and Administrators the Teachers salaries.
As the people on the front line engaging our children deserve the lion share of the monies and support not paper pushers dictating policy that does not support the development of our children.
Where have all the music, art and science classes gone?
Where will our next group of musicians come from who can read music?
I say this because if you can read music math and all else you study in school will be easier to embrace with the confidence necessary to be successful...
I could go on and on as the issues in our educational system overlap with so many of our current societal woes yet to be prioritized and addressed by individual and government alike.
My question is how can we pull all the good folks who want the best for children into the fold to make this a priority for them to address?
And her point about providing better support systems instead of punitive action is all about understanding the social systems that effect the outcome. This is a factor that all fields are recognizing as an important component. In healthcare, a doctor can prescribe a medication, but if the patient has no transportation to get to the pharmacy, it will impact the outcome.
Yes, young people need to be held responsible for their behavior. But are some held more accountable than others and why? This article isn't about promoting less accountability, just less cupability based on color.
Schools, both public and private, are primarily based on an outdated theory of psychology and manufacturing. Because they are not designed to meet children's basic needs, and generally don't all sorts of bad things happen, and existing problems get worse. Great teachers achieve great things despite that factory structure of schooling, but they are always paddling upstream.
The key change needed is to end factory-style schooling.
Another great study to look at is "Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement,” from The Council of State Governments Justice Center and Public Policy Research Institute. You also make a good point about the fact that parents need to learn how to deal with various systems in order to get better outcomes for their own children. I would make the case that the systems also (not exclusively) have a responsibility to improve the way they "do business".
See, I doubt Jobs was disrupting classes, screaming at his teachers, threatening teachers, vandalizing school property, beating up his fellow students or taking stuff that wasn't his. Huge difference.
It started seemingly like you were defending his rambunctiousness then you jump to racial differences in treatment. It's a sad fact that today's world compared to Jobs' early life world in very different, there are less educated inspired teachers around and zero tolerance for rambunctiousness these days.
I have to say a lot depends on the the mentors these children have or have not. If left to their own defenses against the injustices in the world and squashing of their childhood creative experiences, then yes, they may end up in jail for rebelling against it or becoming a perpetrator themselves no matter what "color". Mentors, whether they are a parent, teacher, friend ~ or super hero, children need guidance and without it they will flounder in this tough world we live in today.
Hopefully someday racial prejudice will die, but in the meantime we must teach and guide our children to be color blind and fight for them when we can.
Great article all in all!
"His father challenged the school to engage him to his full potential. His teacher, Teddy, discovered what it took to motivate him." I did a little research for you. Steve was born to unmarried university students and given up for adoption at birth. His adoptive parents were Paul and Clara. Read from Wikipedia: "Paul was a machinist for a company that made lasers, and taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands.[1] The father showed Steve how to work on electronics in the family garage, demonstrating to his son how to take apart and rebuild electronics such as radios and televisions. As a result, Steve became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering.[38] Clara was an accountant[36] who taught him to read before he went to school".
Steve Jobs was a brilliant man who had a whole lot of support from his parents, was relatively well to do and attended a middle class school. I am not so sure he would have had the success he did, if he had not had those opportunities. I am also convinced that if a "black or brown" child was raised by equally supportive, and well to do parents, they too would have succeeded.
Jobs's parents probably did not blame the school for not stopping him from doing what he did. One of the last experiences I had from last school year was a parent trying to blame a colleague because her kid got in trouble for taking candy off her desk. The parent's reaction was "well, why do you have candy on your desk? It is a temptation he (her son) should not have to deal with!"
MOST parents of color are not like this. But if we're talking the rare exceptions to the rule, then we need to look at both sides.
In Steves day an explosive under a chair was a firecracker, today its a bomb. Times were different, pranks were different. These days they have to hurt, maim and kill, it has turned from funny to violence. Who knows what the next generation will bring?