Schooling, Part II

An unusually interesting presentation was given at our middle school during a teacher inservice day last week. There are about four such days scheduled during the school year -- when students have the entire day off while educational staff come into to work on issues in the field. I say that the presentation was unusual because it was successful at engaging everyone while staying relevant. This is rare. Mostly, topics address mundane issues such as data, that have been addressed many times prior. The result being that experienced staff act disinterested and new teachers become glazed.

The presentation given by the Foundation for Educational Administration (FEA) was entitled "Brainworks." It focused upon the class status of people, and the typical attitudes and norms that inhibit, or aid their transition from one socio-economic position to the other. The focus here was decidedly on the conflicting norms and expectations faced by teachers with largely middle class values and their -- often poverty class -- student body. Now this is an interesting dynamic to start with because despite how apparent this convergence is, most public schooling attempts to avoid such an examination in a (futile) effort to appear egalitarian. It's not that the topic has escaped examination, however. It has been broadly tackled by social scientists and school consultants as diverse as Jonathan Kozol (Savage Inequalities) and Jawanzaa Kunjufu (Motivating and Preparing Black Youth) to name just two. However, their work tends to have more currency in academic halls, on lecture circuits, and during keynote addresses. Once the schoolhouse opens in September, teachers and administrators do all they can to avoid discussions of racial, ethnic or economic realities that almost always impact the results of student achievement by June.

That is why our rare bout of professional introspection last week was a refreshing change. In my role as administrator, I hear too often from disaffected students, and their parents too, how "'ya'll aint't teaching nuthin' or ya'll ain't doing nuthin'." This is mostly a reference to consistent failures among a certain segment of the student body to graduate high school on time, or to pass a standardized test. Sometime they refer to the indifference this same subgroup has for complying school rules -- be they discipline or persevering through support (basic skills) programs intended to help them. My experience has been that despite the best rhetoric on instructional diversity, academic inclusion and student-centered teaching, rank and file educators are thoroughly moded in an arcane approach to instruction that has the student conveniently anchored at their desk, pencil in hand, and cooperating with the teacher's every directive.

Few teachers, and to be fair, their administrators, insist on applying the best practices for today's learners -- especially those from diverse backgrounds, or diagnosed with certain modern afflictions. For examples, I refer to certain tendencies among (some) students in the following subgroups. There is an increasing number of children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, or even Hyper ADD. Yet, despite being afforded a classroom with a second teacher -- ostensibly to help them focus -- class instruction stays as routine as if they were all a group of teenage science cadets. [And Referrals for discipline of classified students are rarely more tolerant that for regular education students]. What of poor students? Often indigent students must maintain a double-consciousness if they are to persevere through school. They have to balance middle class expectations for performance and decorum with a casual disregard, or even intolerance for these values, at home in the 'hood, the barrio, or some inhospitable rural setting. When you combine this psychic duality, and the pressing need to compete for social recognition among their more privileged peers, indigent children trod uneven corridors.

How do African-American and Hispanic children fair? Whether educators want to admit it -- or are even conscious of it -- they too often enter the urban schoolhouse with preconceived notions about the real possibilities these children might have. Sometimes, even teachers with the best intentions attribute the much promulgated underachievement of Black and Latino students on standardized tests directly to their cultural habits, and not to the inequities of the system: archaic testing modalities, under-resourced schools, or inept leadership at many levels. I have observed that too often "loud" Black girls and street-fashionable Latino boys are immediately heaped into a corner of low expectations and administrative referrals. Young Black men, who would not harm a hamster, are immediately perceived as menacing for their attitude, or for loosing their temper with a teacher even once. Now consider the delima faced by an indigent special needs ethnic student. One who enters a school where he is in the minority, and faced with all the expectations of a 20Th-century learning paradigm and little if any family advocacy.

To be fair, teachers often have the best intentions, and most do a laudable job with multiple classes of two dozen pupils or more; each with their own personality to unpuzzle. Indeed educators have the task of dispensing a homogenized state-driven curriculum intended for consumption by a locally grown heterogeneous student population. The task is daunting if taken seriously. And it must be. All the more reason why we need to take the gloves of the discussion -- just the way we did last week.