The answer, to my mind, is nothing that a good school wouldn’t fix.
Perhaps you could convince me that we are taking two steps forward and only one step backward in our focus on educating “black boys.” (I hate the term more than the N-word.) But most of the time it feels as if we’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
So Education Week is reporting that “Experts Call for Early Focus on Black Boys’ Nonacademic Skills.” When will the academic silliness stop? When will our scholars and policymakers admit that African Americans need an education just as much as Caucasians, Asians, et al. And that the duty of a school is to provide it, regardless of race or ethnicity?
The interesting thing, in my experience, is that many of our schools are equal opportunity failure factories; they can be just as insensitive to white social and emotional needs as to black social and emotional needs. (Did the recent NAEP history scores bring on a wave of calls for “white boy” symposia?) We keep shoving the responsibility for school failure on to the kids – poor kids, black kids, disabled kids, tall kids, fat kids – instead of focusing our efforts on making schools (I mean, the adults in them) responsive. Schools that work tend to be just as good about providing a good curriculum as fixing water fountains — and just as bad at both. (And as Kathleen suggests, the age of the “individualized learning plan” may be making things worse.)
Just as you don’t stop teaching math to fix a water fountain, so you don’t stop teaching literature, history, and science because a child has an emotional problem. But that is what happens. I heard a wonderful speech the other day by one of New York State’s newest Regents, James O. Jackson, an African-American, who complained that our schools have been “turned into social service agencies.” And he’s right. Every social problem gets a curriculum. Drugs – we have anti-drug classes. Character? Hours of character-building exercises. Jobs? We’ll visit employers (forget whether the kid can’t read or write). Teen pregnancy? Let’s hand out dolls and condoms and spend hours talking about body plumbing. Did someone say Dickens? Names of the fifty states? Abraham Lincoln? Who’s got time?
I’m sorry, dear scholars, but African American children, like most children, would do much better later in life if school taught them how to read and write – and, hopefully, a little history and science, art and math along the way – instead of being served up what has become a steady and distracting and unhealthy diet of paternalism and fries.
–Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
Your piece begs two questions:
1.) Do high-poverty schools spend more class time on sex ed, job visits, anti-drug programs, and character education?
2.) Let’s say we take two groups of students: one of which is filled with students who are all experiencing emotional problems, on drugs, pregnant, and/or the child of a teen pregnancy, and the other of which is not experiencing any of these problems. Both groups receive the exact same schooling, learning about Dickens and geography and Lincoln from the same curricula and same textbooks and then are tested on these subjects at the end of the year. Which group (if any) will score higher?
Corey, great questions. The first is especially intriguing and I would hope someone could point me in the direction of its answer. As to #2, my answer is that both sets of kids need the same curriculum (on the assumption that learning a good curriculum provides some necessary tools for future success) and no matter who the kids are, you’ve got to find the way to deliver it. Too often — far too often — schools faced with the challenge you describe will dumb down the curriculum for the needy kids instead of figuring out how to teach them the good stuff.
Mr. Meyer: I read your article and your response to Corey’s comment (above) and have to say the following: Have you ever worked in a low-income school?
I taught in both low and high-income schools for several years before changing careers and becoming an attorney. In my experience, low income schools spend much MORE time on the basics (reading and math) and much LESS time on other subjects and electives. In one school in San Diego, the low-income kids were spending three periods each day (in junior high) in English (reading/writing) classes, to prepare for their exams. Talk about boring for these kids.
With regard the ‘dumbing down’ the curriculum: It is not possible to teach high level courses to students who come to school without the requisite background knowledge and prior courses. When I taught English in a low-income, minority junior high school, most of my students arrived in class with reading levels from 2nd to 8th grade; my average 8th grade student was reading on about a 4th grade level. What do you suggest their teachers do? Gradually build up from their starting level, or try to throw Jane Eyre at them and watch their eyes glaze over as they stumble through the 11th grade level vocabulary? You can’t teach calculus to kids who don’t know basic multiplication.
Dear DC Attorney,
First, I agree, the emphasis on ELA and math is wrong.
Second, my guess is that the schools you’ve taught in, rich and poor, do not have a rigorous, written, taught and tested curriculum in the five basic subjects (English, math, science, history, art and music) across grades and grade-levels.
There is no doubt that poor kids come to school with a couple strikes against them and that rich kids often arrive already on second base. But that gap can be closed and we have many schools — lots of Catholic and charter schools — that have done it.
One can make an argument that all students need the same curriculum, and that’s all well and good. But exposure to the same curriculum will yield different results for different students — some will learn more than others and some will subsequently score higher on achievement tests than others. In this case, those who are emotionally distressed, on drugs, pregnant, etc. will learn less, on average, than those who are not.
In other words, even if providing the same curriculum was a good thing it most certainly is not enough to eliminate the achievement gap or solve all the problems confronting “black boys” in schools.
Corey,
Competitive sports offer the best analogy here. If you’re running the 800-meter, the race is 800 meters for everyone. And even if you come in last, you have the clock — you’re racing against the clock too, which means, you can practice and get better. But the one thing you don’t do is move the finish line.
We need to keep our standards high, our curriculum rigorous, clear and consistent. Rather than moving the finish line to accomodate slower runners, we need to work on getting the slower runners across the finish line with better and better times.
We can — and should — cheer for effort. But we’re not doing our kids — whatever color — any favors by giving everyone blue ribbons, no matter what their times.
Peter,
I’m not quite sure why you think I’m arguing that we should give everybody a blue ribbon. If we keep using that analogy, my argument is simply this:
We have two groups of kids that are training to run the 800 meters. One group is kids whose parents were athletes, who have previously competed in track and field, who eat healthily, and who are in good shape. The other group consists of kids with no previous athletic experience, are out of shape, are recovering from sickness or injury, and who don’t don’t eat particularly healthily.
Both groups of kids are coached by the same track coach for six months. They do the exact same workouts every day and compete in the same meets. But the first group still runs faster than the second. Why? Not because the workouts were bad, but because there a number of things *other* than the workouts themselves that influence how fast the kids will run at the championship meet.
In other words, I’m *not* arguing that your prescribed workouts are bad for the kids. I’m arguing that your prescribed workouts are not enough to make the kids run faster — that the workouts cannot solve everything.
Corey,
I got it.
No, no. I’m not arguing that each group has the same workout schedule, not at all. Each kid has his/her own practice routine, his/her own needs, handicaps, etc. Sure, we need to appreciate that there are “good” and “bad” practice routines, no matter who you are, but how you get to the goal line is your decision.
All I’m saying is that, no matter who you are, how fat, slow, poor, or uninterested you are, the goal line (the curriculum) must not change. Principals, teachers, aides, parents, kids — everyone must know where the goal line is, what race they are in.
I’m not prescribing the workout routines — practice standing on your head, if that works — only the need to define — and then get to — the goal.
cheers,
peter
Mr. Meyer,
I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my comment. I agree with you that the over-emphasis on reading and math (and the short shrift given to other topics) in today’s low-income schools is misguided. I also agree that more attention should be paid to developing strong curricula for the major subjects taught in our schools. In most schools I worked in, there was no curriculum at all.
However, I cannot agree with you that: “There is no doubt that poor kids come to school with a couple strikes against them and that rich kids often arrive already on second base. But that gap can be closed and we have many schools — lots of Catholic and charter schools — that have done it.”
First, Catholic and charter schools have not closed the gap; they’ve simply slightly reduced it (even that is up for argument) among the select population of motivation students/families who elect to attend their schools.
Second, I reiterate my original point (also made by Corey, above) that a teacher can’t teach high-level subjects to students who don’t have the background knowledge or skills to jump in at that level. Students have to be taught starting from their current level (called ‘scaffolding’ in education circles).
Example: I once taught 10th grade world literature to low-income, mostly African-American students who had diagnosed learning disabilities. The school provided me with brand new 10th grade literature textbooks — which contains literature designed for a 10th grade reading level. My kids were reading about 4 years below grade level. None of the material in the textbook was appropriate for their reading level, and as a result I had to basically construct a new curriculum for them. While of course all kids can learn, not all kids can necessarily excel in an honor English course or an advanced physics course TODAY.
Sorry for my typos: It should be “motivated students/families” (PP 3) and “honors English course” (PP 5).
“…one of which is filled with students who are all experiencing emotional problems, on drugs, pregnant, and/or the child of a teen pregnancy, and the other of which is not experiencing any of these problems.” Why is it inevitably the blacks who are experiencing these things while the other group isn’t? Why are blacks throughout history in all parts of the world at the bottom? What is the base problem? And it isn’t that others don’t like them.
Dear Bruce,
I wouldn’t say that blacks “throughout history in all parts of the world” are at the bottom. It’s enough to know that plenty of African-Americans have done well enough to convince me that color is no barrier to proficiency or achievement. Unfortunately, however, our public school system has reflected the racism of the country at large (segregation and worse) and implemented a pedagogy (i.e. child-centered education) that only reinforces the racial and socio-economic stereotypes.
–pm
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