What is Really Missing?

When white liberals like Jonathan Kozol walk into urban inner-city schools they can look into the eyes of the children in that sea of dark faces and see that something serious is wrong there. From the anger, from the despondency, from the frustration and from the hopelessness, they can see immediately that there are things missing and they feel called upon to advocate for those students to give them a better educational experience, as best they can.

Part of the problem with what they see, however, flows from something that I have heard for years. It has amused me, in some instances, but I am sure it holds much truth and relevance here. It is said that "when your only tool is a hammer, everything you see starts to look like a nail." This old adage has very serious implications when you go to a see a surgeon about a medical problem. Surgeons cut people open to fix stuff, and a good one can often find something to do inside you that a massage therapist would treat with a back rub, and a psychiatrist might handle by prescribing pills.

White liberals look inside failing schools and see the poor physical condition of facilities, missing or damaged educational materials and equipment and an absence of white children along with the resources, influence and advocacy of their white, middle-class parents. These missing elements are things that white liberals and those blacks who are closest to them understand. The problem is identified as being money and the more vaguely defined uplifting effect of what is euphemistically called school diversity. If there was only more of each, we are to believe that the education of black children would be better and we are told that there are "studies" that have been done that claim to "prove" this "fact".

I would like to suggest that there are indeed some things missing, but that the list above is nowhere near complete. Our efforts to solve a problem are thrown off if essential features are ignored and inessential ones are elevated in importance. In addition to white children, their parents and money, what is also missing, and, I would claim, much more significant in damaging the educational experience of inner-city kids, are meaningful relevant school curricula, culturally and academically competent nurturing innovative supportive teachers who can facilitate a learning process and a close relationships between the school and education process on the one hand and the children's parents and community on the other. Children need to be connected to their own pasts and to their futures. Children tell us everyday that they are bored. That translates into: "I don't see how this stuff you are telling me I have to learn will ever be particularly useful -- and it is certainly not fun."

If we can solve the problem of introducing children to an exciting life of the mind that is linked to things that they are interested in; if we are able to provide an intellectually rich nurturing and wholesome environment that connects children to the people they love and the people who need them and who will grow to rely on them to become the next generation of thinkers and doers, then I think much the rest of education will take care of itself. Children will do the hard work of learning whenever it makes sense to them.

(While I am convinced that education is not and has never been primarily a function of the amount of resources available, there should be a base level below which we do not fall. Part of reason people claim the need for white children and their parents is the view that schools will only have adequate resources if there are white children in attendance. Why? I fail to see any logic in this. Adequate and appropriate resources ought to be the law and that law needs to be enforced. Are we claiming that we live in a society where there can be no such laws or that they can never be enforced? I don't accept that at all. If the claim is that whites are incapable of funding a system for the benefit of all, then why would we trust them to come into our schools and do the right thing for our children? )

Education in the black community during and early on after slavery had a liberatory character. Education was seen as a key to freedom in the fullest sense. Not only was it instrumental to figuring out how to bring about an end to direct bondage, but it was also seen as a means of elevating the quality of life. Children were regularly told that their education was something that could never be taken away from them, and that through education they could connect themselves to all the claims to a good life that anyone else in the world made.

There was a reason that slave-owners had made literacy for their slaves a taboo. They knew that educated people could not be held long in bondage and brutally exploited that once a mind was freed, then the body was soon to follow -- or at the very least you couldn't get a lot of work out of it. The ironic fact is that much of the decline in the relevance and liberatory character of education came along with the addition of more funding rather than the denial of funds.

The first schools that started to shift the focus of education from freedom from oppression to instead fitting into the status quo, were the schools that had a growing amount of philanthropic assistance. As long as schools were in living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms, and as long as children were attracted to them by enthusiastic adult members of the community offering education as a way to uplift the race, they were about liberation. When the money started pouring in it was with conditions. "Industrial education" became the new watchwords and what Bob Moses of The Algebra Project and civil rights movement fame refers to as "share-cropper" education was born. This was an education that was about producing satisfied farm laborers for agri-business, cooks, laundry women, boot blacks and factory workers for the growing industries. A two-tiered education system came into being. Elite white education was about expanding the human potential while black education was about limiting it. The key difference between education for liberation and education for subservience is the issue of who "owns" the educational process and consequently whose needs and interests are to be served.

The transformation of education from what it is to what it should be is not simply or even principally about money and resources. It is about relationships and agency. We are wasting too much of our time and energy on doing what is peripheral and unnecessary rather than figuring out what is really needed and finding ways to provide that. I will be writing more soon on what the real tasks are for improving schools.

Comments

[spiderwisdom]

Part 3:


It's easy to blame teachers and curriculum, certainly much easier than looking at the values we as a society and as individuals pass on to our children, but the fact remains that there are more creative teachers in the inner city than there are interested parents - and more classrooms in need of a paint job, an air conditioner, some window blinds, some unbroken desks, etc. than there are classrooms in need of good teachers and good curriculum. We have great teachers striving everyday to create and implement relevant and challenging curricula - let's not undercut them.

[Kansas Evans]

All three points are well taken.

[spiderwisdom]

Part 2:

Popular culture currently factors largely into this as well, sending the same message to our youth that education is not the ticket out of anywhere. If we don't celebrate the value of being educated, both as a culture to one another as adults and as a parents to our children, where are children supposed to learn that what they do in school has value?

Another discussion that needs to take place is a touchy one, dealing as it does with race. But since you put race on the table with your statements about "white liberals" it seems fair to bing it up here. It seems that there needs to be a discussion within the black community about their attitudes towards white folks and how these attitudes are transmitted through their children. When you spend a good bit of time in the school system you begin to see what the students bring with them into school versus what the school is bringing to the children, and an alarming number of black school children come into schools every day with a prejudice against the white teachers that may be working inside those schools. This is a serious and very real problem. When a 12 year old boy rejects a teacher and a curriculum based only on the fact that their teacher is a white male something is very wrong.

If a black teacher walked into a classroom of 35 children and was greeted by a round of, "Oh, we got that black a** n****r again," it would (and rightfully so) cause quite a stir. But when I (a white male, and yes, probably liberal by your definition) walk into a classroom and have 35 black children say quite loudly, "Oh, we got that white a** cracker again," followed promptly by a mass closing of books I'm the only one who sees this as a problem. I have been laughed at in trying to bring matters like this to the surface.

[Kansas Evans]

I'm sorry you've been treated that way. The other situation you posit has probably occured as well.

But our feelings about white people are a natural response to the situation. If my parents hadn't prepared me for the eventuallity of running into a racist teacher, I would probably still be dealing with issues of self-esteem. And yes, I've had a racist teacher or two.

If it helps, don't take it personal. Those students are just looking to disengage. You could be black, you'd probably still get the same response. Help us spread the word that black students are capable students. Then maybe, there won't be racist teachers to prepare for.

[spiderwisdom]

Part 1:

"what is also missing, and, I would claim, much more significant in damaging the educational experience of inner-city kids, are meaningful relevant school curricula, culturally and academically competent nurturing innovative supportive teachers who can facilitate a learning process and a close relationships between the school and education process on the one hand and the children's parents and community on the other"

Here we go, another "blame the teachers" and "blame the curricula" argument for what is wrong with inner city schools. Frankly, that reads to me like it comes from someone who hasn't really spent any time in an inner city school. As someone who has, as a secondary teacher (grades 7-12), I can tell you that you are quite off there in your estimation of the situation. What I have seen at school after school, time and time again, in the inner city (Brooklyn to be exact) is a countless variety of good, determined, and skilled teachers trying their best to creatively involve students in curriculum that is, gasp, both meaningful and relevant. I've seen those same teachers try to involve and incorporate the parents into the daily school life of their students. It's a huge slap in the face to those of us who have tried to do this to make statements such as yours.

Fact is, "poor physical condition of facilities" and "missing or damaged educational materials and equipment" play a huge role in uncutting the motivation of the students. To downplay such factors in this manner displays an enormous lack of awareness of the true conditions of our inner city schools.

Really there's a larger discussion that needs to take place in the American discourse about the value of education. It's not due to a lack of creativity on the part of teachers that parents are not involved in the process. Overwhelmingly parents are disengaging themselves from the process, and downgrading the value of an education to their children.

[Ed Whitfield]

I regularly spend time in classrooms working with children who have been identified to me as among the "worst" that are there. They keep telling me that they are bored, and when I look at what they are asked to do I can see why. We have to come up with material that is interesting to them, not to us. When I have the time to take musical instruments with me to schools, I have never failed to be able to get the students attention and go all the way from a "what's that" session to using music to talk about the physics and mathematics of music and sound production. I assure you the hundred or so flutes I have made and given to children have been used to inspire them to work hard at something that they want to do and can learn from. If you know creative teachers who have interesting curricula that cannot hold their students attention, then you have something pathological going on that may need additional intervention, but I do not see that regularly with my regular ongoing participation in inner city schools.

[NYDamien]

Mr. Whitfield, I agree with just about everything you've said but I'd like to add one little post script. The learning process is the same for everyone, albeit easier or more difficult due to out of school factors you've stated. The good news is that the problem can be fixed in a snap. I won't take your time by reciting my personal history, except to say that I went from chronic failing/borderline passing to honor roll, forgive me for this, in a snap. That was forty years ago and my conviction has only grown since. Here are several items that would begin the turn-around:
1. Teacher's union, as we know it....out!
2. Same amount of money, given to local administrators to dole out competitively.
3. "Competitively" doesn't necessarily mean highest test scores, but rather higher inspirational abilities and results.
4. Learning IS fun. Stand outside a Palo Alto Calculus class that just finished a rapid fire drill with an inspired teacher. Change the address to Harlem, same results.
5. Rote, rote, rote! Yeah, I know. More rote! I went to a tiny country school in the 50's whose students ran the gamut from blank eyed "mountain people" to Stanford heading doctor's kids. With all the rote drilling those teachers did, there was no time, or energy, left for discipline problems. Spelling bee's, state's capitals, countries, presidents, multiplication tables.The­y were fun, competitive, and prepared the brain for logical learning and analysis.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. And please don't tell me about the "laws." Klingons didn't make the laws. We did, and we can change them.

[mommamia526]

Children in poor district schools, especially mostly black schools have given up hope in 7th grade. They told me, when I was teaching in such schools, that they were in the wrong school and that it was all over for them. I showed them how to use public facilities, such as libraries, computers in libraries, the personnel in libraries, and even how they could get into university libraries to learn anything they wanted to, and that there were alternative ways to get to their goals in life if they had them. There are children with learning disabilities, and I told them true stories of people I knew, who had done very badly in school until almost to the end, and then suddenly became stars in graduate school. The key to learning is to keep on doing it, and to never give up. It is not a short term sprint where the winner gets all. It is a lifelong endeavour. If you think of it you can come up with names of people who were not doing too well in school, even dropped out, and yet became someone, and then, on the other hand, there are geniuses of whom one never hears one thing later on. Albert Einstein did not do well in school, and he may not have gone to the best schools either, when a kid. The student needs to find a specific area of interest and then learn all he/she can about it, and that always happens outside of school. An interest in racecars and racing can go into becoming interested in engineering and business, for example. Better teachers would help, of course. In my secondary school, abroad, all the teachers had PhD's and interesting stories and stuff to tell us. One, a history teacher, had written a series of girls' books which were exciting to read, and covered the history she was teaching us. They were all interested in each student as a person as well. Good American teachers have that same quality.

[Nommo]

Here's the real bizarre thing. All the money we manage to spend on missiles, satellites, rockets and the industry of war and we can't find money to build great facilities of education and staff 'em with great teachers? This is indicative of generational stupidity and venality, at least.
Who wants to step up and take responsibility for that?

[Kansas Evans]

co-sign! Two times!

[mommamia526]

You? Maybe? No, really, we have to get interested and come up with good ideas and then push those ideas. College students can easily also get a teacher certification. It is mostly some additional psychology and methods classes. After that you can pitch in and teach too. Teacher certification examinations are not all that difficult. Anyone can still do that and get qualified.

[Nommo]

Been there. Too many thieves in the den.

[spiderwisdom]

It's very true, the disparity between war funding and education funding is truly alarming. Another financial problem though is how our schools are funded in the first place (property taxes, etc). This is where we need to take aim and try to make changes. The disparity between the conditions in suburban public schools and inner city schools should be regarded as criminal. How can we change that structure?

[Kansas Evans]

I just finished THE SKIN WE'RE IN by Janie Victoria Ward, Ed.D. Months ago, I finished Lies MY HISTORY TEACHER TOLD ME by James Loewen. I think the point thay all, including Whitfield, make is that there was a time when Black education was rife with Black history that encouraged racial pride and responsibility. Today, our education stresses pride in America, which for the most part means pride in American goverment which usually amounts to pride in white people. The sad part about today's history, for whites and minorities alike, is that history is bland, boring, and not completely true. It disempowers everyday citizens because it teaches that the wonderful govt can solve all our problems without our involvement from slavery and women's rights to Civil Rights and women's rights (again). So nobody sees a need to educate themselves politically, trusting that our govt will do the right thing. For black students, this misstory isn't just disempowering, it's also embarrassing. We didn't even fight our enslavement? Yes!! We did! But not according to my history book, and not even my history teacher/football coach. Imagine if that was what you had to learn about yourself.

There was a time when the teachers in black schools came from black communities. Not so today. However, because my mother had taught at the high school I went to and the teachers knew her personally, I was usually treated like the white students. I was usually the "token" black of my class.

The reason black children today equate academic success with "acting white" is that in order to achieve in school, you have to leave my black culture at home, or at least in the halls. Defiance isn't "acting black" it's rebelling against a system that has little regard for you.

My parents stressed racial pride and responsibility at home, and were quick to tell me if I had learned something about blacks that wasn't true. Though my parents did it, that is a very tough task to do. Something mainstream parents don't have to do.

[NABNYC]

The education "crisis" in this country is strictly a money and class issue. The children from families earning $60,000 or more per year finish high school, and often go to college.

Children from families earning $30,000 or less per year struggle in their delapidated homes, schools, and neighborhoods, have poor diets, no exercise (no P.E. in school), live with violence, drugs and fear, do not progress in school, drop out of high school, and do not go to college.

There is no mystery. If anyone cares to improve the lives of children in this country, make sure their parents have a job, a decent home, and a reasonable income.

[mommamia526]

Too many children work in this country. My own grandchildren worked all through high school, and one of them had a full time job and one part time job. She is now in College and still working two jobs. I do not know if she really has to work for the money. Do not think so. But it is sort of a given to do that here, and since parents work and there is no public transportation they need cars as well and all that goes with that. Then the kids want to spend money in the mall, to get the latest expensive fashion items, and bags, and jewelry. This society finds that important. In my opinion it is better to *do* school and school only, and learn as much as you can. It is only a few years, and then you have the privilege of working all your life. As for no PE in school, yes, that is amazing. We even had PE during the war years in Europe (WWII). The brain needs the time for learning, and the student needs to think and to read and do supplemental studying. That is not possible with the moneymaking groove we are all in. Any teacher can tell you about students with their heads on their desks. They can not keep awake as they have been working until 11 the previous night, and they do so every day, including weekends. And all this has not much to do with resources, more money for the schools, etc. It is true, however, that many schools are broken down and stink to high heaven; they are unpleasant and unsanitary places for kids. They are also much too large.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think computer-based learning should become even MORE mainstream, and the promise it holds for effective, outcome-based home schooling is tremendous. School is an institution, and like all institutions, is susceptible to the rigors of becoming outmoded, dated, irrelevant, and bluntly spoken, next to useless and a complete waste of time. Jello Biafra said it: 'School damage, brain damage'...­you can teach your kids at home and for the most part put them far ahead of their publicly schooled peers. Public schools put more effort into the socialization and integration of their students than they do into their education, and with good reason. Why? Because if the kids got too wise to what was really going on too rapidly, the dropout rate would spike off the charts.

[Joeseo]

I am reminded of the education of Clarence Thomas. His was from a system that educated the mind. Lucky for him, he reasoned just how things work in a system designed for the training of consumers. He was able to use the mind to navigate our laws and social policies to succeed.

His appointment to the Supreme Court was engineered by Coporate America which recognized his ability to give it what it needed to continue its mastery of educating American young.

Our Education System is fraught with people like him that will foster the Corporate Business model. Producing a multi-level class system is what this all about. Trained Consumers and an untrained sub-class working hard and producing for lower costs and improved profits is the goal of Business-based American Education.

[JustAnotherJoe]

I don't know much about Clarence Thomas's education, but I relunctantly agree with Joeseo's last graf. I'm not sure even the white elite education that Mr. Whitfield describes is about liberation and expanding human potential anymore as much as it is about training consumers, training people for work in monolithic corporations and maintaining the status quo. The Ed System is full of administrators who foster the corporate business model. I worked in it, I know. Gerald Bracey, a frequent Huffpo contributor often writes about the mindset. As one example, very few admins fight the idea of merit pay based upon test scores. While teachers see the futility of such a system, and have fought off such schemes, admins are routinely evaluated on their school's test scores. Many superintendents actually receive bonuses based upon their district's test scores. Can you imagine an oncologist being paid bonuses according to how many cancer patients she cures? What kind of incentive would there be to take on the tougher cases?

[mrcontinental]

Always talk of facilities. Kids in Indonesia and Thailand have poor faclilities and I guarantee you that they will kick the crap out of our kids on aptitude tests.

Our culture does not require our children to learn therefore they do not learn. We tell them they have ADT yet they can spend countless hours glued to their video games and computers and we think nothing of it. They have plenty of attention when it's what they want to do. And don't dump it all on the teachers either. They start the fire and we are supposed to keep it going at home yet we truly do not care either.

Knowledge is it's own reward. Everything that we learn in school is designed to assist us later in life from our interaction with others to the history of our country so the how will this help me later in life is moot.

The truth is that most of us as parents simply talk about education and expect it to just happen once we put them on the school bus. Get involved and make it interesting to your kids. Perhaps if you show the same level of excitment for education when helping your kids with their homework( you do help them right?) that you do for the NFL, MLB and Nascar they will see not only it's importance but that it CAN be enjoyable as well.

[illogic]

These are excellent points. We don't need to go half way around the world to debunk the notion that money and facilities, in and of themselves, are necessary to educate children. As Mr. Whitfield has noted in previous posts, there were a number of predominantly black schools operating before Brown v. BOE that did a fine job educating students despite siginificantly fewer resources in comparison to other schools in the same district. Parents are the key in my opinion. Beyond helping with homework parents should:

read for pleasure (with your kids)
read to your children
encourage your kids to read on their own
restrict TV and video games as much as feasible (only on the weekends in my house)
establish routines (wake up times, dinner, bed times etc) and adhere to them throughout the school year
make sure your kids are getting to bed EARLY
make sure they go to school EVERY day and ON TIME
take every opportunity to meet and dialogue with their teachers
take them to as many school graduations as possible
Finally, make a big deal over their academic accomplishments

My wife teaches in a poorer school district. These types of things are higher on her wish list than new books. And to top it off they're all free.

[jhNY]

Schooling is at once society's greatest period of socialization and values inculcation and a holding pen for the young overseen by the terminally officious. Schooling deprives children of their time and their parents of work the chidren might perform on behalf of family. Is it too much to ask that that time and loss of family labor be compensated by meaningful education?

And what exactly would that be? A "useful" education would be, to most people I imagine, one that prepares a student for employment in adult life, but if you were designing a curriculum today,what work would you be preparing children to perform? Information technology, the darling of yesterday is presently a dead-end street for Americans so long as East Asians and other citizens of emerging nations contend for the same work at 20% the pay. So what precisely would the work we might prepare students to eventually perform be?
Or perhaps the aim of publicly funded education should be the production of intellectually well-rounded citizens of tomorrow, without specific job skills, but with a general overview of American and world culture. A product of such a system would, if properly attentive in class, be unlikely to accept the hierarchy of mediocrity and fearful conformism which are the underpinnings of corporate culture, but would instead be an ironic and half-hearted participant in his own life of work.

[mommadona]

In MY very vanilla school, MY "CIVICS" and "AMERICAN HISTORY" teacher was the head football coach.

Guess how much I learned. Nada.

This was back in the 60s. Hasn't changed a bit.

Now....THA­T'S a problem.

[mrcontinental]

That is the norm across the country but guess what. That civics book that they gave me to carry around and secure in my locker if I got tired was actually readable outside of the classroom as well and I did just that because my parents had me do so.

Plus the football coach with the BS degree, the one who assigned you to read several chapters to be discussed in class the next day was actually using a method that is employed at colleges and universities the world over. But in most cases only 30 per cent read anything and since no one really bothered to participate or ask any questions we moved to the next topic. Sound familiar?

And I'm certain there were no complaints while no homework was being assigned and the test were 10 questions long. It's easy to point fingers after the fact.

[mommamia526]

Ah, and now I would like to get some more information about that book in the locker. I have noticed that my grandchildren never appear to have any schoolbooks at home. They keep them...in their cars... and they glance over the assignments while they have some time after parking. They still do that in College, by the way. Now, I could have never done that in The Netherlands. First, no car. Second so much homework and reading to do, and mandatory, that I needed hours and hours every evening, and I needed to get up early in the morning as well, say around 4. Oral bookreports before the class, and in foreign languages in the foreign language, plus questions from the teacher as well as the class. Many students, by the way, especially the better ones, are bored in th U.S. because they have no challenge.

[mommamia526]

Please, elaborate on that. I have my very own opinion on it, but I would like to see a real American's view for once. And what do you think about all that football hoopla, and kids sitting the game out, game after game, because the teacher is the coach and the parent of the best footballplayers are his friends, and their kids are the only ones to get to play? Same with cheerleading, by the way. This is not without danger, especially not if you are a flyer - is tht what they call them - and it is not easy either. But here too, only a few get this privilege. My kids and grandchildren played, however, my son could not do football AND private music lessons, according to the coach. All the time, including weekends, had to be available for football. And many games he just sat on the sidelines. I think all that time and money could be used beter to build a good gym where all kids get to exercise.

[Henry]

We all know that "you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink" and also we know that learning is a painful process. There is great motivation for macho sports-man, there does not seem to be great motivation for proper grammer, respect for science, and mastery for math. Why? Too painful, incompetent teachers, incompetent students?

Take history as one example. Way too technical and detailed at middle school level, it bores kids to tears. Most of us grow up and pursue technicals of history as hobby and reflect upon the boredom of school, wishing the history approach had attempted to put the round peg into the round hole.

[BadChristian]

White liberals look inside failing schools and see the poor physical condition of facilities, missing or damaged educational materials and equipment and an absence of white children along with the resources, influence and advocacy of their white, middle-class parents.
---------

Well then, thank goodness you have NCLB.

No need to blame liberals for that one.