In Search of a Higher Education: My Teaching Experiences at a HBCU

Picure of Morgan State University courtesy of myinferno 2007 at flickr.com

I wanted to begin the weekend with something upbeat. I've been in such a silly mood all week. But just as I started composing, I received a call from my boy, Dollar Bill the Hot Tub Don (pronounced all at once like A Tribe Called Quest).

I haven’t seen or heard from him all summer, so I was genuinely surprised. However, I don’t want to know where he has been or what he has been doing. I don’t want to be called to testify in court later. What sordid lives some of us lead. But I digress.

Dollar Bill the Hot Tub Don (pronounced all at once like A Tribe Called Quest) sent me over the article "I had a dream" by St. Petersburg Times columnist Bill Maxwell chronicling his two year tenure teaching at Stillman University, a small historically black school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. [Click here to link to the original article.] Maxwell resigned his $70,000 a year job as a columnist and editor to accept a $33,000 a year professorship at Stillman with the stated purpose of “…nurture[ing] needy students the way that mentors had encouraged him as a young man.”

As I began the article, my judgment was already skewed. I readied myself to be angry and outraged. Dollar Bill the Hot Tub Don (pronounced all at once like A Tribe Called Quest) opened his email to me by describing Maxwell as a Ronald Reagan Democrat and used language such as “very biased” and “racist.” But by the fourth paragraph, I found myself nodding my head in agreement. His experience almost directly mirrored my own.

Years ago, I, too, decided to teach at a HBCU. I had read numerous articles basically reprimanding African American academics for passing up teaching positions at HBCU’s to accept more lucrative positions at predominantly white colleges and universities. And I agreed. Even though my colleagues, friends, and family attempted to talk me out of it, out of a sense of duty to my people and my community, I decided to sign on.

What I found at this particular HBCU simply broke my heart. The very first thing I realized after I began was that the culture of the institute was unlike any other university or college campus I had ever attended or visited. The culture better approximated a street or ‘hood culture than a culture of learning and intellectual attainment. Early on I joked to a college that the students’ conversation seemed particularly animated by “the two f’s”—fornicating and fighting.

But by biggest surprise awaited me in the classroom.

Since this was a private institution, I expected small classes, but I found myself crowded into an undersized classroom with about thirty-five students. And while grading the writing samples taken on the first day of class, I began to realize just what I had gotten myself into. Very few of the students evinced anything close to college level writing skills. Over the course of my tenure there, I found myself expending most of my energy simply teaching basic grammatical skills.

Most students were unwilling to engage in any type of intellectual labor; most of them refused to even read in preparation for class. Imagine standing in front of a literature class attempting to teach a text that no one had even read.

I offered my help outside the classroom in an effort to provide remediation far beyond what was required of me to any student willing to come. But most never did. In fact, most of my students showed up for class late, if they came at all. Some of my students I saw only on the yard or during sports events or at the step show or various Greek events.

However, my greatest moment of bewilderment came at the end of the semester when I was required to turn in grades for the semester. In my years of teaching, I had never given as many “Fs” as I gave that first semester which prompted a high level administrator to all me in for a short chat.

I tried to explain to him, how do you give a grade to a student who you haven’t seen most of the semester? How do you give a grade to a student who could hardly read or write a paragraph? I tried to explain to him all the safety net measures I had put in place to prevent students from failing, how I had offered to provide remediation to those students who needed it which was most of them.

He responded by informing me that students who fail do not come back. And that at this point in time, we could not afford to lose any more social security numbers. Social security numbers? I had a roll book full of students who did not possess the most basic skills required of college students, and he was worried about losing financial aid revenue.

By now some of you are angry at me. By now some of you are probably referring to me in pejorative terms. Probably by the third or fourth paragraph, you had determined that I am an elitist of some kind.

But his was not meant to be some long diatribe against HBCU’s; it is not my intention to paint all HBCU’s with a broad brush. There are quite a few HBCU's out there with a long tradition of excellence. But the smaller schools are struggling due to the talent drain caused by integration among other factors. And when keeping the doors open surpasses education as the ultimate goal, what are you left with?

This is but my experience at one school, one man’s experience out of many. And notice that I always used the qualifier “most.” I did have the pleasure of working with a number of very bright students and very committed and competent staff members as well.

Additionally, I still believe in, support and am committed to the mission of HBCU’s. In addition, I realize that in most cases, these schools are simply working with what they get. Too many African American students, mostly from economically depressed areas, are graduating high school after receiving inferior educations, and these schools offer the only hope they have of receiving college degrees. Furthermore, having to constantly struggle just to keep the doors open presents other serious problems as well.

But what I am hoping you, the reader, will offer me today is answers and maybe solutions. What was your experience in an HBCU? How do we remedy these problems? Where do we go from here?