Escalating Downward: The Collapse of Urban Public Schooling

[brianold]

Escalating Downward: The Collapse of Urban Public Schooling
by Floyd W. Hayes, III, Ph. D.

“The collapse of public schooling is frightening.”

In April 1983, more than two decades ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education of the U. S. Department of Education issued a report, which stated unambiguously that “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

The report, entitled A Nation at Risk, likened the devastation of public education to “an act of war.” “We have in effect,” the report warned, “been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” Many Americans seemed shocked for a time by the report’s findings. However, they were not a new discovery.


“Terminating state-sanctioned racial apartheid in America’s public schools was correct; reasoning that all black schools were inherently inferior was incorrect.”

The source of the present crisis and collapse of public education in many of America’s big cities can be traced back to the late 1950s and 1960s, following the U. S. Supreme Court’s momentous, but flawed, Brown school desegregation ruling. Terminating state-sanctioned racial apartheid in America’s public schools was correct; reasoning that all black schools were inherently inferior was incorrect. In a deliberate attempt to distort and evade the Court’s decision, many urban school systems outside of the South installed the pupil assignment policy of tracking that effectively re-segregated many schools by channeling the majority of black students into the lowest track early in their educational careers.

Interpreting the Brown ruling as an opportunity to improve their children’s education, black residents in many big cities across America fought urban public school regimes’ tracking policy. For example, community activists in Washington, D. C., labeled the policy “programmed retardation,” declaring that tracking was more harmful than the conservative practice of racist segregation in the Old South.

Reasoning that poor education ultimately would hurt black and white working class children in the nation’s capitol, community leaders called for neither racial integration nor segregation; rather, they demanded quality education. Washington, D. C. community activists defined this educational goal unambiguously: (1) the distribution and mastery of the fundamental tools of learning: reading, writing, computational skills, and thinking; (2) academic motivation; and (3) positive character-development. Each of these elements was supposed to advance as students matriculated from elementary through high school.

Like residents of so many other urban areas, Washington, D. C.’s Black community lost the political struggle for quality education. In 1967, the celebrated Hobson v. Hansen case terminated the school system’s tracking policy, but the court claimed that racial integration automatically improved the educational performance of Black students. Liberal civil rights leaders and educational managerial elites won the day and began to implement various racial integration policies – racial-balance using, magnet school programs, and other education experiments. Because integration is not an end in itself but only a means to achieve an end, the contradictions and dilemmas quickly became apparent.


“The court claimed that racial integration automatically improved the educational performance of Black students.”

Thus, educational managers and civil rights elites put forward racial integration as the singular goal of education and imposed it on public schools at all costs, as if sitting next to whites automatically would enhance Black student learning. They overlooked the issue of quality education. As a result, good classroom teaching declined, the fundamental tools of knowledge were abandoned, and positive character building was perverted.

Moreover, as white and later middle-class Black flight from cities to suburbs accelerated in the late 1960s and 1970s, America allowed its urban areas and their schools to decay and deteriorate. In the process, school regimes bused African American and Latino children to an expanding system of largely white and affluent suburban schools in order to achieve “racial balance.” This tactic helped to destroy the sense of community in urban areas, as remaining inner-city life became increasingly characterized by economic impoverishment, political disenfranchisement, and cultural despair.

The consequences of this course of events are now evident with the collapse of public education in urban areas across this nation. Ironically, school budgets have continued to rise along with a growing ossification and inefficiency of urban school bureaucracies.

Adding insult to injury, liberal members of the educational managerial elite rationalized the denial of quality education to Black students by applying various theories of cultural deprivation. Categorizing African-descended Americans as “culturally deprived” or “culturally disadvantaged” merely compounds and continues, into the contemporary era, the legacy of cultural domination and the denial of Black human dignity originally articulated by whites during the Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery in colonial America.


“Many suburban and more affluent public school systems also have been experiencing an educational crisis.”

To refer to Black Americans as “educationally handicapped” when there has been an historic and systematic conspiracy to deny them quality education is comparable to breaking a person’s leg and then criticizing that person when she or he limps! This is a strategy for keeping the oppressed in a condition of oppression.

These unfortunate educational trends and developments characterized urban and less affluent public school systems in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, many suburban and more affluent public school systems also have been experiencing an educational crisis. They confront a growing rate of complex problems: functional illiteracy, violence, drop/push outs, discipline, drug use, teenage pregnancy, gang activity, and teacher burn out.

What is to be expected of youngsters from any racial, ethnic, or class background who never were taught to read effectively, who never developed the responsibility of carrying out an assignment, who never learned to follow directions, who never acquired respect for knowledge or its purveyors, and who never became masters of their own souls with self-discipline? Under these circumstances, generations of young people are being educationally sabotaged in many public schools across America.

In the current stage of American postindustrial-managerial development, the collapse of public schooling is frightening. Continued public school experimentation with privatizing strategies or policies supposedly designed to “leave no child behind” have not proved successful in big city school systems. Yet, in the emerging society, knowledge and the management of people are supplanting money and manufacturing as the only sources of politico-economic power. Resisting the professional-managerial class’s cultural domination and intellectual imperialism requires that the people themselves come to view knowledge and its utilization as sources of power.


“Educational professional-managerial elites have betrayed a generation or more of urban African American and Latino students.”

Learning, therefore, needs to be increasingly understood as a life-long project and an indispensable investment for social development. Educational credentials more and more will be the key to a person’s role in society. However, more than mere possession of certificates will be the requirement to practice one’s knowledge. Knowledge-based performance and decision-making will be the necessary attributes of the educated person. Survival, development, and even struggle will depend on knowledge-based action.

Indications are that educational professional-managerial elites have betrayed a generation or more of urban African American and Latino students, whose educational underdevelopment is undercutting their ability to survive and develop in a postindustrial-managerial society grown cynically indifferent to social suffering. Faced with the possibility of an increasingly nihilistic future, America may have very few options: educational renewal, societal decadence, or even national decline.

Dr. Hayes is Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of Programs and Undergraduate Studies,

Department of Political Science, Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He is currently teaching a course on Education Politics in Urban America. Dr. Hayes can be reached at Fwhayes3@jhu.edu.

http://www.liberatormagazine.com/weblog/...oling.html

[nira_bynature]

The fight is no longer black and white, pun intended. This fight for access to quality education is is between the have's and the have not's --

As parents though, we have to get back to the center of this and remember that as Mothers we are our child's first teachers. If their school is not teaching them how to THINK then it is up to YOU to supplement. In the age of instant information access, where we can carry the internet around with us on our phones it is a damn shame that your eight year old can't read or express himself in a sensible manner. I'm not buying 'the system is failing us' bit - F*k the system, fix ourselves.

I have grown weary of the argument that the system is stacked against us, therefore we cannot win. There is nothing that can stop a people with a destiny! if schools and school boards won't listen - we form our own coalitions, neighbor to neighbor - parent to parent. Write a new curriculum, publish our own books - staple them together and hand them out at the grocery store, host living classrooms on the weekends, take neighborhood kids outside to local parks, museums, places of interest. There are tons of FREE places to go and things to do and see.

No one is going to want you to win, if you don't want it for yourself. Let's look at the curriculum of the FIRST classroom (home).

[achali]

i ride with that wholeheartedly.

here's MY question tho that i ask myself daily:

if "the system" is failing us, AND we are failing ourselves... but the system has at its disposal a mega marketing scheme to keep folks focusing more attention on the system (trying to "change" it from within, etc)... how can those of us with the message of "do for self" get that message out louder and clearer than we already are?

i love the ideas u threw out...

new curriculum,

publishing books -- staple them together and hand them out at the grocery store,

host living classrooms on the weekends,

take neighborhood kids outside to local parks, museums, places of interest.

are these ideas new though? we both know the answer to that. so its a question of trying to identify the obstacles that families and communities are facing... are parents and teachers too overworked to hold weekend lectures? are communities too disconnected to have a random park field trip outside of a "trusted" organization like the YMCA? is curriculum perceived as too complicated, are the public schools too controlling, for communities to feel they can effectively contribute their ideas to their child's curriculum? is there too much of a disconnect between our experts and us, preventing us from collaborating on perfecting curriculum proposals?

the ideas are the first step and a necessary one. but how do we build more momentum? are we identifying the specific obstacles and getting to work with our specific communities in addressing them? and then are we being transparent in that process (like Open Source Software) so others can learn from our accomplishments and mistakes? or are we hoarding our lessons learned in our local experiments and packaging them "for sale" to the highest bidders...

it's definitely not just "the system", but if we're not clear on how "the status quo setup" keeps us from accomplishing even the little goals through built in sabotage (i.e. why is curriculum so lucrative a field?) So for example can we expect widespread honesty and communal practices in curriculum design when it is such a big business? history seems to say no, we can't expect that... so while i dont think communities CAN'T do it, it often takes much more specific thinking than expected. If a community can get about the business of curriculum design while keeping in mind the pitfalls that await them on their journey then i think it CAN be done... but if we continue to approach these issues as if they are easily solved with some good ol community elbow grease, then we're fooling ourselves and we'll prob end up burning ourselves out as we encounter pitfall after pitfall that we were unprepared for.

[nira_bynature]

"are these ideas new though? we both know the answer to that. so its a question of trying to identify the obstacles that families and communities are facing... are parents and teachers too overworked to hold weekend lectures? are communities too disconnected to have a random park field trip outside of a "trusted" organization like the YMCA? is curriculum perceived as too complicated, are the public schools too controlling, for communities to feel they can effectively contribute their ideas to their child's curriculum? is there too much of a disconnect between our experts and us, preventing us from collaborating on perfecting curriculum proposals?"

The answer to all of these questions is YES.

Yes, new ideas are enough, everything that has ever been began first as an idea.

Yes, parents and teachers are overworked...

you get the idea.

The mass media is just that, media for the masses. If we're having this dialogue then it is our responsibility as 'A-alike' awake and aware to find the people who are developing curricula of their own (example, a friend of mine in Oklahoma who moved from New York) and link them together with people who are thirsty for something different to give their children.

I read a book this summer, The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, he talked about the different types of people that are required in order to push the '100th monkey effect' or take an idea to 'the tipping point', the point where the idea becomes an inevitable part of a new day.

The main people profiles were Mavens, Salesmen and Connectors. Some people knew all there was to know about everything - could tell you where in San Diego, on a Sunday in October, you could get the best price on a radiator cap for a 1976 Volkwagen Beetle. Others knew exactly how to connect people together, an author with a publisher - a cook with a restaurateur, an actor with a playwright, etc. Others knew how to make people fall in love with whatever idea they presented.

-- There's obviously a lot more to the book than that. The Stickiness Factor, The Three Rules of Epidemics, The Power of Context and on.

So you see, we (individually) don't have to do it all. It's not as Herculean an effort as you may think. We can start by putting the right people together, looking inside of our communities, churches and social clubs -- building dialogue around the subject.

Curriculum is lucrative, mostly because what you put in classroom textbooks these days is transformed into de facto historical law -- it is not merely a primer on the subject; and can therefore be used to further mentally medicate an infantile people.

I draw similarities to the food and big pharma systems, and the mass produced garbage that passes as food. The 'system' is in place. Wal mart, Food Lion, Shop Rite, Path Mark -- they aren't going anywhere right?

Lunchables are still cranking out of Kraft food production facilities across the country as I write this lengthy response.

But hear me out,

If one person decides tomorrow that instead of buying a Lunchable - they will make their kid's lunch. We win.
If another person bakes their own bread this weekend, we win again.

Make it accessible, make it palatable -- and people will listen.

And we have the means to make that happen! Blogs, Facebook, etc. So all we have to do really, is affect one person. If we step back and change our perspective, we change the game AND the rules. Just the way Itunes did it with music, Netflix with movies and the rest.

We have all that we need to be all that we desire to become.

[achali]

hey Nira, check this new story out on LA farms:

http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2009...rmers.html