Why Can’t Raheem Read? Public Education and the Minority Community on Freedom thru Speech Radio

At one time, the United States of America boasted of the very best educational system in the world. However, of late that system has declined precipitously; we now rank about 10th worldwide. And consider this statistic: A full seventy-five percent (75%) of African American and Hispanic students attend school in schools or school districts that are considered failing.

This means that within an educational system already rapidly careening toward crisis, African American and Hispanic school children are already perhaps there. But how did we get where we are now? What can we, or should we, reasonably expect from our educational system?

What can we do to fix our educational system, or at the very least, make it work for us? Join us as we consider these and many more questions and issues as we discuss "Public Education and the Minority Community."

This week RiPPa and I will be joined tonight on Freedom thru Speech Radio by Professor Venus Evans-Winter of The Freire Project, Symphony of the blog Essential Presence, and national teacher trainer and teacher union official Cynthia Reddick.

You can join the conversation by going to the show’s platform by clicking here, or you can call into the show through our call-in number at 914-803-4881.

You Cannot Change the Schools Until You Change the Community: Max Reddick’s Commonsense Argument for the Betterment of Minority Education

This weekend I ran across an interesting post over at Prometheus 6 which concerned minority education. The post centered around an article featured in The Washington Post, “Making the Grade Isn’t about Race: It’s about Parents,” written by a high school teacher in Alexandria Virginia.

The basic premise of the article is that the educational problems and failures of minority students is due, in the main, to the lack of parental involvement in their children’s education and, most specifically, the dearth of fathers and male role models in minority communities.

I have heard and read this argument ad nauseum, and let me say beforehand that I do not discount the writer’s premise altogether; there is some truth to that argument. However, that argument is wholly incomplete. The answer is more complex than that. The lack of parental involvement and the dearth of fathers and male role models are but symptoms of a greater problem that must be overcome if minority children are to take full advantage of the benefits of education—poverty and its effects.

In my opinion, based on my experience in and around education for the past fifteen years or so there are two main reasons minority children are having the problems they are having in schools. Each of these reasons is closely tied to the other: 1. More and more, schools are being called upon to perform functions that they are not equipped to handle, and 2. Governmental energies, emphasis and dollars are being mis-targeted.

At one time, many different institutions took responsibility for the rearing and education of children. Namely those institutions were the community at large, the church, and the family. However, as these institutions are either failing or falling down in their responsibilities, the functions of these institutions are being charged to the schools who are poorly equipped to handle them. Schools were barely able to meet the function of education, and now they are being asked to be agents of socialization, agents of discipline, mental health providers, childcare providers, and a myriad of other disparate functions. And among all these functions, the most basic function of education is pushed to the side.

To prove this next point, allow me please to use the Duval County Public School district here in Jacksonville, Florida, as an example. There are three high schools here which are predominantly and historically black. For the past several years these schools have led the county in every conceivable negative indicator. Duval County and the State of Florida first responded by threatening to close these schools down and bus the students to other schools who were performing up to standard. However, the because of the historical nature of these schools, the county and the state backed off.

So, the district and the state then responded by pumping absolutely obscene amounts of money into the schools. However, much to their chagrin, this did not work either. The schools continue to perform well below standard and continue to lead the county and some parts of the state in every conceivable negative indicator.

However, no one has thought to take a hard look at the communities from which the students attending these schools are arriving. In at least two of the schools, a good portion of the student population are from the housing projects and/or poverty stricken communities surrounding the schools located. In all the schools, the vast majority of the students are from families mired in poverty.

Poverty works to produce a certain unique mentality, a certain mindset. And this mentality, this mindset must be overcome if educational efforts are to be successful. A good study in this regards is Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty. But to get to the meat of my argument, the millions the county and state are pouring into these schools to no avail could be put to better use by working to alleviate the effects of poverty in the communities the students are arriving from. The millions could be used to revitalize the communities and provide opportunities for growth and development outside of school.

Also, keep in mind that old theory by psychologist Abraham Maslow which posits the notion that before an individual can perform at optimal levels, certain needs must first be meet beginning with the most basic physiological needs such food, followed closely by safety:

In other words, the negative indicators will never decrease until the mentality of the parents and students change and the community is able to insure that the most basic needs of its members are met. You can put the best resources in place, you can employ the best teachers, you can use the latest pedagogical methods, you can do whatever, but until those students come to school with their most basic needs met, having the correct mindset, able to imagine a future greater that the present, and willing and ready to learn, we are simply jousting with windmills.

And as a postscript, with the huge amounts of money to be made "reforming" dysfunctional schools, is there really an incentive to do so? If we find a working solution to "reform" our schools, a lot of people would stand to lose a lot of money. I cannot tell you how many paid consultants and experts are in the employ of the county and state for the purposes of improving education. Yet, the system does not seem to be moving forward. I would even be without a significant portion of my income; I have cashed more than a few of those consultant checks myself.

The Curse of Ham: Why the Right Fears Obama So

Around noon today the president of the United States, the first person of color to ever hold that position, will deliver a televised address to school children around the country. I can only marvel at the educational possibilities this speech presents. In a letter to principals throughout the nation, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan writes,

“This is the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation’s schoolchildren about persisting and succeeding in school. We encourage you to use the historic moment to help your students get focused and begin the school year strong.”

In a perfect world, this would be a moment which brings the nation together. This would be a moment for individuals on the left and the right to say to the world, “This is the fulfillment of the promise of equality inherent in the notion of Democracy. This is the proof that in this country, in our great nation, anyone can be anything if they simply focus and apply themselves.” This could be the proverbial teachable moment.

But instead, the possibility of this moment has been all but rendered impotent by a cynical cabal of self-aggrandizing individuals who claim to speak with the best interests of this country at heart; however, their methods reveal the nefariousness of their motives.

It is out of their own fear that they stoke the flames of fear in others. These are but two things that they fear most:

The Awesome Symbolism Inherent in the Moment

The office of the president does carry an enormous amount of power; however, the greatest virtue of that office perhaps can be found in its symbolism. The office of the president represents the highest achievement in the land.

And though the vast majority of U.S. presidents, with the exception of President Lincoln and President Obama and one or two others I cannot recall, have come from the upper classes, it is a symbol, a tacit promise, that anyone can rise to the very acme of power regardless of class, regardless of religion, and now, regardless of race and gender.

In the past, we recognized that though it might not have been articulated, race and class were real obstacles. But in the last election, those obstacles seem to have been removed. And could you imagine what ideas young African American children or young Hispanic children or young women might get in their heads if they see another minority, an educated, well-spoken person of color, stand before the nation’s school children and address them as their president?

They might be so audacious, so unctuous, as to believe that they too can achieve. And a nation of empowered, focused minority children is a threat to the current power structure.

The Curse of Ham

When President gave his historic race speech in Philadelphia during last year’s election, many thought that by revealing his grandmother’s unconscious racism, he did her a great disservice. However, I interpreted the revelation a bit differently.

I interpreted the revelation as a veiled reminder and message to those virulent racists still clinging so tenaciously but precariously to power that he was raised in their house as one of them. I saw it as a veiled reminder and message that he had seen them at their best, but in the same instance, he had witnessed them at their very worst. It was a veiled reminder and message that he had lived among them just enough time to learn the layout of the house, to learn enough family secrets to be sufficiently dangerous before being finally cast out as an adult bearing the curse of Ham.

Remember, revolution always begins from within. Wasn’t it Moses who proved to be the downfall of the House of Pharaoh after living there as a son all those years?

In closing, I have read the transcript of the speech, and I will be watching with a group of inner-city middle students this afternoon. If I can find the time, I will return this evening with my observations and their reactions.

Do you agree/disagree with my assessment? What do you think is behind the right’s fear? Or is it not fear but downright vindictiveness?

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?