Schools consider Afrocentric curriculum
Evanston-Skokie district's proposal targets achievement gap between blacks and whites
By Lolly Bowean, Tribune staff reporter. Freelance writer Brian Cox contributed to this report
Chicago Tribune
February 15, 2006
Hoping to better capture the attention of African-Americans and close the achievement gap between black and white students, a group of parents and educators is pushing for adoption of an African-centered curriculum in Evanston/Skokie School District 65.
The curriculum would keep state-required core subjects such as reading, language arts and math but include the history and culture of Africans and African-Americans in daily school lessons.
But while parents and educators across the district of 6,755 pupils agree that the achievement gap has to be closed, some voiced concern at a school board committee meeting this week that the proposal could further segregate the schools in a district that prides itself on diversity.
Supporters urged board members to launch a pilot program in kindergarten through 2nd grades at two elementary schools where almost half of the pupils are African-American. The program could start in the fall, though the school board has yet to vote on it.
If approved, the initiative would be rare for a suburban school district, according to experts, who say that Afrocentric courses are more common in urban schools with majority black populations.
What troubles school board member Jonathan Baum, who led Monday's committee meeting, is "how do we explain this to our children?"
Martin Luther King Jr. brought blacks and whites together, and the Afrocentric curriculum could mean that students would be separated based on race, because whites and Latinos may opt out of the classes, Baum said.
The idea behind Afrocentric curriculum is that the lessons focus on black students and, in addition to teaching them basic skills, build their self-esteem and confidence, said Cheryl Ajirotutu, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who is co-author of the book "African-Centered Schooling in Theory and Practice."
There is no standardized national or state curriculum; each district or school crafts its own teaching plan. The curriculum proposed for Evanston schools hasn't been developed yet.
In District 65, where about 44 percent of pupils are African-American, educators have tried techniques to bridge the achievement gap, but scores still reflect a divide.
Former school board member Terri Shepard, who now heads the curriculum panel for the African-American Student Achievement Committee, has monitored test scores for 20 years.
While 94 percent of white pupils in District 65 met or exceeded standards for 3rd-grade reading, only 47 percent of black pupils did, according to the latest Illinois State Achievement Tests. In 3rd-grade math, 96 percent of white pupils met or exceeded standards, and 69 percent of black pupils met standards.
"We all say we support diversity," she said. "For that reason, we want all the kids sitting together. But the statistics show having all the kids in the same room has not benefited students of color. Why not give these kids a chance to thrive?"
Schools with culture-based curriculums have become popular in major cities where blacks are in the majority of the public school population, such as Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, Ajirotuto said.
Now, "other school districts are wondering how do you turn the tide of school failure."
In Evanston, supporters, including the NAACP, have researched the topic for a few months, and although they have a general idea how the curriculum would look, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. They include who would be in charge of the program, how much it would cost and what effect would it have on the racial make-up of general-education classes in the district.
When Shepard visited Woodlawn Community School, a Chicago public school, she was impressed that state test scores have climbed since 2001.
"I always believed the reason white children achieved is because everything was for and about them," she said. "There was nothing that showed a child of color at the center. With an African-centered curriculum, the kids see themselves everywhere."
But there's no proof that the concept actually works, said Harvard University's Ron Ferguson, who teaches and writes about educational issues.
"It's not something to be afraid of or terribly enthusiastic about," he said. "They are groping for a way to get black kids engaged academically. If you get some charismatic teachers on board, you may get results. But those same charismatic teachers might try another technique and it would work too."
The subject is touchy in Evanston because schools there have been integrated since the early 1950s--before Brown vs. Board of Education desegregated the nation's public schools--and district officials have been careful to try to make sure all schools are diverse.
And though the pilot program would be implemented at Oakton Elementary School, which is 49 percent black, and Kingsley, which is 41 percent black, it could be divisive if only African-Americans volunteer for the program, according to some at Monday's meeting.
Baum, of the school board, questioned whether it was a good idea to start another experimental program at Oakton, which has an immersion program for Spanish-speaking pupils.
"I'm not saying [the curriculum] would not be a good choice for Oakton School, but there has to be a design that is a choice for everyone," said Candace Hill, co-president of the school PTA.
Chante Latimore, who supports the proposal, said that when she asks her 5-year-old daughter what she learned in class that day, she gets the same answer: "Nothin'."
Except during Black History Month in February, when Cheyenne Buford's eyes open wide as she tells her mother about Martin Luther King and Maya Angelou. "Then she remembers everything she learns," Latimore said.
She believes an African-centered curriculum would have that effect all year long.
Posted: Wed 15 Feb 2006 20:21 Post subject: Segregation's return?
Has anyone done any program analysis to determine how successful these African-centered programs are at raising the academic achievement levels of black students? What about the content of the curriculum?
From what I understand, black military personnel whose children attend schools on military bases do as well as white children attending the same schools, or at least the gap between the two very narrow. I doubt if these black children are educated differently from the white children.
Also, during the height of segregation in Washington DC, Benjamin Banneker High School, the high school for “Negro” children, was one of the best high schools in the city, despite it being established for black children who were forbidden to attend schools reserved for whites. How was the school able to pull this off without an African-centered curriculum?
Having children studying only about their race will do little or nothing to help their self esteem and help them learn - I seriously doubt it
If the little girl got all excited when they studied Maya Angelou and MLK, then fine, but that is only history. How do you motivate her then for math or science?
Poor scores among minority children frequently reflect lack of classroom readiness which goes back to the home. Education starts in the home - before children even arrive in the classroom. Teachers are not miracle workers.
It used to annoy me when I taught and I was told to "Make EVERYTHING "fun" " - not in the spirit of race but just in general. I was a good teacher and in general students liked me and my style of teaching. But when I got comments like that from admins or from students etc., it annoyed the hell out of me. I am sorry but not everything in the classroom can be fun. I can understand that you should try to motivate students to learn. But there is always a percentage of things that are just not exciting material to get through. Some of the responsibility for learning falls on the student. The teacher can't make EVERYTHING highly motivating for the student. Why does everything fall on the teacher - to make it motivating? Why is nothing personal responsibility? If these minority children int eh article are underperforming, might it be their fault? Which of course, since they are children, goes back to their parents? A novel concept! But politically incorrect! Ahh, so it must be the system!
Some things it is up to the student to do the work - motivating or not - because there simply is not enough time to memorize them in the classroom. Example: Multiplication tables. In order for me to MAKE you remember them, it would take so many classroom hours, I would never finish the curriculum. It is up to the student to do the work to commit them to memory on his/her own time - and it is NOT fun. Straight memorization never is. Sure I can make it fun to LEARN it in the classroom. We can make songs out of it, clap, make rhythms of it. But making it stick is straight memorization that must be done BY THE STUDENT on his/her own time. I remember when I did mine - in the 3rd grade. My mom made up flash cards - - DUH - parental invovement with the child - to get you to memorize it. Another novel concept! The teacher can't do it all. The curriculum can't do it all! The teacher associating it with Marcus Garvey or George Washington or Cesar Chavez or whatever other ethnic person of whatever race the child happens to be will not get the student to learn it. Please!
There is a difference between - "The teacher should be an interesting engaging, good-on her/his-feet-type-person," and "The teacher/curriculum selected bears ALL the responsibility for the learning that happens"
B
Last edited by Liana on Tue 21 Feb 2006 19:05; edited 5 times in total
Too bad I lost my paper. I wrote one of my dissertation in law school about the Afrocentric curriculum.
A good resource to read is Okey Chigbo
Reading, writing & racism
Black ideology is the black child's most debilitating burden
by Okey Chigbo
Discussion
IN MARCH THIS YEAR, THE TORONTO BOARD OF EDUCATION BEGAN A systemwide survey of its students, its eighth since 1970. It is probably the only school board in Canada to consistently gather statistics in that most politically charged of areas, racial and ethnic performance. In all likelihood, this latest survey won't tell us anything new or significantly different about the academic performance of the races: It will show, once again, that blacks are more likely to drop out, and otherwise do much worse academically, than whites and Asians.
Here's what we already know about Toronto's high school blacks: A 1993 follow-up survey of 1987 Grade 9 students found that 42 per cent of blacks dropped out before they graduated (compared with 31 per cent of whites and 18 per cent of Asians); black students make up only nine per cent of the high school population, yet 34 per cent of the lowest academic levels. Data from the board of education in the neighboring City of York show blacks to be less likely to take advanced-level English and, in particular, math.
Why do blacks perform so poorly when compared with Asians and whites? Why do they drop out in such large numbers? A vast collection of studies, surveys and research papers offer diverse explanations, but in the last few years, one particular view — promoted by a vocal segment of the black intelligentsia and its white liberal allies — has pushed out the others: The school system has "failed" black students by not "meeting their needs." These academics and activists blame blacks' academic troubles on a pervasive and systemic racism in the schools; to eliminate these "barriers to achievement," we hear, we must change the school curriculum and reform or even restructure the school system. This view pervades major studies aimed at influencing public policy — the 1995 Ontario Royal Commission on Learning's report, and a hallmark 1995 study by OISE professor George Dei.
But is the school system really at fault here? Or are blacks failing for other reasons? I will argue that while racism does indeed exist, and while much can be done to improve the schools and the curriculum, above all, reasons for black educational underachievement can be found in the black community, the black family and the troubling subculture of black youth. School reforms will yield few benefits. Altering self-defeating behaviors will yield far more.
The black community of this essay will be the community in the Greater Toronto Area, where the largest concentration of blacks in Canada resides — over 128,000, or almost 60 per cent of the official number. But I will also look at the experiences of blacks elsewhere, make comparisons and draw analogies.
I should identify myself before I continue: I am black, originally from Nigeria in West Africa, and I have lived in Canada for 20 years. I am a magazine journalist, and I have written in the past about problems black youths have adjusting to life in Canada. While doing preliminary research for this essay, specialists in education, directly and indirectly, suggested that academics like them, who understand "the complexities," are best suited to discuss these matters. I have to disagree. The debate on the education of our children touches us all. It is far too important to be left to academics, some of whom, I found out, seem driven more by ideology than the need for good education.
IT IS NECESSARY AT THE OUTSET TO QUICKLY DISPATCH A MISCHIEVOUS idea that rears up every so often in North America: the notion that blacks are genetically inferior. There is no doubt that a good number of people — white and black — consciously or unconsciously believe that black academic performance has genetic roots. Just listen to the talk shows, where Philippe Rushton announced it on AM radio stations across the country. After all, blacks also perform poorly in the United States, Britain and other countries. And we are still recovering from the poisonous fallout of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve. Many black Africans and black Caribbeans, especially those from ethnic groups and countries noted for academic achievement, consider the idea that blacks are inherently inferior to be so utterly preposterous as to not deserve comment. But, of course, the disproof of such ideas requires more than their opinions, so let us proceed.
The leading proponents of the theory of black genetic inferiority tend to be social scientists rather than geneticists: Berkeley's Arthur Jenson, Rushton's mentor, is a professor of educational psychology, Rushton is a professor of psychology as was the late Richard Herrnstein, and Charles Murray is a political scientist. This may or may not mean anything, but let's inform the debate with geneticists. Theodosius Dobzhansky, the eminent geneticist, felt we knew too little to say whether heredity was more significant than the environment in determining intelligence. Geneticists Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and Walter F. Bodmer concurred in the October 1970 issue of Scientific American, writing that "currently available data are inadequate to resolve this question." Many consider this article to be the definitive popular statement on the issue. Cavalli-Sforza — one of the world's foremost geneticists, and one of the few people with the multidisciplinary knowledge to pronounce authoritatively on the subject — tells us in his 1995 book, The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution, that the alleged biological superiority of successful races or nations, "which no one can prove, stems from a confusion of culture or civilization with genetic makeup."
For some, this may not be enough, so let us look at some lesser-known studies in the matter: In the United States, blacks carry some 20 to 30 per cent of white genes (generally rendering useless the concept of race, but that is another matter). African and European blood group genes differ enough for a researcher to measure the "Europeanness" or "Africanness" of a person. If the genetic theory guides us, it follows that the more European genes, the higher the IQ. University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett reports that tests of young blacks found no such correlation. In fact, one study of high IQ blacks proved the reverse.
Other studies show that intervention improves black academic performance. For example, Nisbett reports on the efforts of mathematician Urie Triesman, who, frustrated by the constant bad grades of the blacks in his university classes, set up a rigorous coaching program for them. He also encouraged them to study with whites and Asians, and to tackle harder math problems than the course required. According to Nisbett, "the results were dramatic." The blacks in the program began outperforming whites who were not in it.
Many studies on ethnic performance reject the inherent inferiority thesis. Professor Laurence Steinberg of Temple University led a team of researchers who recently completed a massive, 10-year-long longitudinal study of educational performance in the U.S. involving over 20,000 high school students. "Some commentators have suggested that one reason for the greater success of Asian students, compared with white, black or Latino students, is their superior native intelligence," he writes. "Our studies suggest that this is unlikely. (Interestingly, other studies directly examining the genetic explanation have failed to support the view that Asian academic success is due to genetic advantages in intelligence.) A more reasonable reading of the evidence is that Asian students perform better in school because they work harder, try harder, and are more invested in achievement — the very same factors that contribute to success among all ethnic groups."
But some people may still argue that in no country do blacks as a group ever seem to perform as well as whites or Asians; mustn't a universal phenomenon like this have some biological roots? No, says a study conducted last year by the British Policy Studies Institute, which shows the phenomenon to be anything but universal. In what must be the most powerful and direct challenge to easy racial generalizations, the institute found that separating Britain's blacks into black Africans and black Caribbeans dramatically changes the academic performance hierarchy: Now black Africans outperform everyone, including Asians and whites. According to the latest figures, black Africans, Chinese and Asian Indians are "overrepresented" at the universities, and 27 per cent of black African students hold qualifications higher than A-level, compared to 26 per cent of Chinese and 13 per cent of whites.
Although the genetic explanation has little merit, it nevertheless looms large if only for one thing: School reform is again in fashion and loudly trumpeted in some quarters as the solution to black underachievement. Ironically, this promotion itself could prove harmful to black children.
In their book Schooling in Capitalist America, educational sociologists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis tell us that genetic explanations for underachievement, and public acceptance of these explanations, show "a curious ebb and flow" over time. In their own words, the "social importance of genetic differences never appears more obvious than in the aftermath of a series of unsuccessful liberal reforms. . . . The demise of each liberal reform movement has been greeted by a genetic backlash: If improving the school environment does not achieve its elevated objectives, there must be something wrong with the kids."
TORONTO'S BLACK COMMUNITY, AS HAS BEEN POINTED OUT countless times, is no more a community than Toronto's white community of relocated British, Slavs, Italians, Greeks and Québécois. There are black Canadians who can trace their Canadian ancestry back several generations; blacks from the Caribbean, the largest group; blacks from the West African subregion, particularly Ghana; and most recently, a large group of blacks from Ethiopia and Somalia. Of these, blacks from the Caribbean set the black agenda in most political and social issues. Naturally, this agenda reflects their history and experiences, views and assumptions about the world. And as would be expected, their views and assumptions often vary from those of other black groups.
For many of the black intelligentsia, especially those from the Caribbean, all roads lead to racism, which is both a starting point and an end point for endless discussions about black problems. Racism wields tremendous religious power in that, like a belief in the malignant, pervasive and invisible workings of Satan, it so clearly and simply explains why so much evil and misfortune contaminate black existence.
Given blacks' horrible historical experiences in North America, the negative media portrayals, the ignorant attitudes of many people in the wider society and, yes, the racism, blacks understandably feel a great deal of pressure over race. I know I feel the pressure. Many among the black intelligentsia respond to this pressure with a circle-the-wagons, repel-all-intruders mentality: Traitors must be ostracized, and opinions contrary to the party line suppressed. For this group, the racism explanation acts as an external shield against the slings and arrows of what they consider an outrageous racist society. The racism explanation is also an inner shield, as one of the activists I spoke to for this story unwittingly reveals: "I know that blacks are not genetically inferior," he said, "so the only explanation for their poor academic performance is that the society must be racist." This is the primal fear that palpitates underneath everything: If it is not racism, then what? Many blacks fear that if racism is not the explanation, then nothing stands between them and that free-fall into the abyss.
To combat this fear, blacks suppress dissent and resort to hyperbole. I was once foolhardy enough to suggest at a party of black professionals and businesspeople that Canada might no longer be a racist country, even though there are enough racists here to make many of us uncomfortable. The verbal drubbing the party-goers gave me made me wonder if I had not mistakenly stepped into a gathering of Islamic fundamentalists and declared that there are other gods than Allah. I had clearly violated a sacred tenet.
Many among Toronto's black intelligentsia believe that Canada is definitely a very racist country. To take just one example, in his most recent non-fiction book, novelist Cecil Foster reaches until he almost topples over, bending the facts as far as they will go. In A Place Called Heaven: The Meaning of Being Black in Canada, he describes racism in Canada as "virulent." And what is his personal experience of this virulent racism? As an opener, he tells us a policeman stopped him on the Don Valley Parkway and gave him a $141.25 ticket for doing 120 in a 90 km/h zone. Foster describes the police officer's tone as brusque and angry and tells us the policeman asked him if the car belonged to him. To Foster, this is all evidence of racism.
People who read the book will note that Foster does not deny speeding. And he was driving at night, so it is quite possible the policeman did not know he is black. Readers of the book can be forgiven for speculating about other possible reasons for the policeman's tone — a previous speeder offended him, he had a bad day, anything. Foster then goes to a party attended by other prominent blacks, tells people there what happened, and "just about everyone shook his or her head knowingly and sympathetically." Equally revealing is Foster's account of his plea bargain with a Crown prosecutor who agrees to lower the speed on his ticket by only two kilometres, worth a couple of demerit points. As a dissatisfied Foster leaves, he wonders why all the people who went in before him came out smiling. "Perhaps it mattered that they were all white," he writes. Reasonable people may shake their heads and ask for stronger proof, but for some blacks, the mere belief that it is a racial incident is more than enough.
Foster's book has quite a few other point-scoring exaggerations. For instance, he writes that Canada has had "a continuous black and African presence spanning 500 years — a period that cannot be claimed by many of the groups that are now so quick to treat blacks as outsiders . . ." Five hundred years? Perhaps Foster had in mind They Came Before Columbus, the book written by Afrocentric scholar Ivan Van Sertima, who claims that Africans were in the Americas well before the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María. As far as Foster is concerned, we Africans came before Cabot who merely arrived in Newfoundland in 1497 (black historian James W. St. G. Walker, puts the first arrival, a black slave, at 1628).
But a more serious exaggeration, and one relevant to this education story, is the claim that "the sons and daughters of black doctors, lawyers and politicians are just as likely to drop out of school . . . as are the offspring of domestic servants." I don't know what to make of a claim like this. Every survey I have seen says the exact opposite (I phoned Foster to ask where he got the information, but he declined to provide a source). The children of some black middle-class professionals do drop out of school; but then, so do the children of some Chinese professionals. The Toronto Board of Education's 1991 Every Student Survey, part III, unequivocally states that, "among black students, those whose parents are professionals still have the greatest chance of success and the lowest chance of being at risk [for dropping out]." Other surveys done in the U.S. and in Britain confirm that the children of black professionals perform better and are less likely to drop out than the children of the black poor. If Foster is right, it would be powerful proof that the Toronto school system is doing something horribly wrong to black kids. Which, I guess, is exactly what we are expected to believe.
Such thinking percolates through the black community, helping to maintain the debilitating myth of a terribly racist Canada, a country that frustrates blacks at every turn. What is worse, our high school kids hear it, internalize it and, as a result, often become indifferent to educational achievement. As the black American economist Thomas Sowell has written: "How are you going to tell a young black man to work hard, or study hard in order to get ahead, when both the media and many so-called ‘leaders' are constantly telling him that everything is rigged against him? Why knock yourself out on the job, or miss the Saturday night party in order to study, if Whitey is just waiting in ambush to pull the rug out from under you anyway?"
Similarly, Steinberg's study and others have found a correlation between school success and what they call "attributional style." A "healthy attributional style," attributes failure or success to personal efforts, and an "unhealthy" style blames factors outside of the student's control. Steinberg found that Asians generally believed that their personal efforts determined how they would perform, while blacks generally held external factors — like luck or the favoritism of teachers — responsible.
And in his insightful book, Prisoners of Our Past: A Critical Look at Self-Defeating Attitudes Within the Black Community, black Seattle psychologist James Davison Jr. tells us that "blacks are taught that they are the victims of economic and social injustices and that educated and prosperous blacks have ‘sold out.'. . . Unfortunately many blacks accept these excuses and incorporate them into their identities. By the time many black children reach adolescence, they are well supplied with rationalizations for their lack of effort and lack of success."
A NUMBER OF BLACK CANADIAN ACADEMICS HAVE WRITTEN EXTENSIVELY about blacks in education, and their ideas are often repeated by some activists, and parents. The most prominent ones would have to be OISE's George Dei, and Carl James and Patrick Solomon of York University. These academics take what is known as an "antiracist approach" to the problems in education.
In an essay in the Canadian Journal of Education, PhD student Earl Mansfield and professor John Kehoe of the University of British Columbia describe antiracism as a holdover of the cold war, tracing its development to the "Marxist informed" theories in the United States and Britain in the early 1970s. Predictably, these theories "contend that racism arises from and is a condition for capitalism." If some blacks see racists under every bed, Marxists see capitalists crawling out from under every rock, and in antiracist theory, racism theorists and Marxists form a natural alliance. And here are the useful ideas engendered by the union: Capitalism needs cheap labor for capital accumulation, which it gets by importing non-white immigrants. This creates antagonism between the immigrants and white workers who see the immigrants as undermining their ability to bargain for higher wages. In this way, capitalism redirects white working class anger away from capitalists to non-white workers — hence racism.
Capitalism, the theory tells us, therefore has a vested interest in both inequality and racism. Now here comes the "Aha!" part: Since the educational system is a component of the capitalist system, it inevitably reproduces this racist inequality. Antiracist education, then, necessarily becomes politicized: It "teaches the structural, economic and social roots of inequality," and "focuses critical attention on unequal social and power relations that capitalism maintains. . . ."
Now, if you think antiracist education is just another one of those silly, fringe theories that ivory tower academics churn out to make their lives more interesting, think again. In 1992, the Ontario legislature passed Bill 21 which gives the minister of education the authority to require school boards to implement antiracist and ethnocultural equity policies. And document no. 206 on antiracist education, put out by the Toronto Board of Education, tells us that this approach involves a "comprehensive, whole school approach which addresses both structural changes and attitudinal-behavioral changes. . . ."
Antiracist education has taken various forms over the years, but the Toronto board's document no. 206 identifies some key assumptions and underlying concepts. Here are a few that caught my eye:
• Racism is structural and institutional, not just an expression of individual bigotry.
• Racism is defined by its effects (rather than by its intent), which result in ethnic minority groups being disadvantaged in many areas of their lives.
• Schools are accountable for addressing the academic inequity of opportunities and outcomes for racial minority students.
• An antiracist curriculum examines issues of power and equality, and deep-seated problems related to superordination and unequal power distribution.
Reading this brought to mind the remarks of one American social commentator: For the first time in history, racism operates like Adam Smith's invisible hand — no longer something done by individuals or groups to others, but something hidden and working away in "the system," even when nobody wants it. But that aside, these concepts hide fundamentally troubling possibilities and assumptions. If racism is defined by its effects rather than by its intent, it is then hypothetically possible to have an absurd situation where everyone in a system might abhor racism, act against it, and yet the system would still be considered racist if some minority group within it continued to perform poorly.
By holding schools accountable for the grades of racial minority students, minority groups cannot be responsible for their poor performance, leaving little room for individual and group responsibility for success or failure. Antiracist theory seeks to improve the performance of racial groups not through their own efforts, but through the goodwill of the operators of the system, who have the power to change the system to permit poorly performing minorities to do well. This mind-set can reinforce feelings of inferiority among the minorities. And the irony is that these theories are supposed to empower poorly performing racial minorities.
The demand for equal outcomes — that everyone do well, that there be no failures — has become so ingrained in North American thinking that many expect all ethnic groups to perform equally well, ascribing any statistical discrepancy in performance among groups to some form of discrimination. In Preferential Policies, Thomas Sowell's survey of affirmative action policies around the world, he tells us that, in fact, what is really natural and universal is inequality of outcomes among ethnic groups. The modern notion that ending discrimination would result in equal representation, Sowell says, is "arbitrary and unfounded," because groups do differ in many variables such as interest in a particular field, skill and ability. But all this matters little to antiracists.
The same ideological forces that limit Foster's book pervade Dei's study, Drop Out or Push Out? The Dynamics of Black Students' Disengagement from School. Early in this anecdote-dependent report, which looked at 145 black students and questioned a number of non-white students and teachers, Dei quotes a student on the symptoms that lead to dropping out: "Mostly it's just the person who's, like, being stretched out, stretching himself out, and saying that they don't feel like they belong. They don't feel like they belong in school. . . ."
And here is Dei's interpretation, which follows immediately after: "The notion of ‘stretching him or herself out' implies a certain incongruence of the reality of the student with that of the school. It would seem to put into question then, the centrality of white middle-class norms, values and curriculum as the basis of a multi-ethnic school system. Marginalizing the culture and realities of minority students in effect marginalizes the students themselves."
Now, is it me, or has a leap of unimaginable proportions occurred here? First of all, what does "stretching out" mean? The text neither explained nor defined it. If it means being pulled in different directions by competing activities or interests, how does that "put into question . . . the centrality of white middle-class norms, values and curriculum as the basis of a multi-ethnic school system?" Pardon me if I use street examples to make a point, but I have dealt with troubled black high school kids in researching past stories, and some of them are "stretched out" because they party all night, because they sell drugs on the streets at night, because they spend more time socializing at school than doing schoolwork. Don't think that this is too way-out, because Dei himself, a few pages earlier, tells us that "when students talk about what dropouts do, it is often associated with negative activities like dealing drugs, hanging out, collecting welfare, etc." He also reports that some blacks are "labelled as nerds and penalized by other black students because they do not fit into the black youth stereotype of hanging out in the halls and of having poor study habits."
This antischool behavior does not question middle-class norms. It would be rejected by most decent people, black or white, middle-class or otherwise, as Dei well knows; like me, he is from a former British colony in English-speaking West Africa, where everyone from the peasantry to the rich has embraced these educational norms. As they have in the Caribbean. The entire culture of coming to school on time, competitive tests and exams, working hard to pass them, speaking "proper" language, conducting oneself with propriety on the schoolgrounds and in the classroom, and so on, is today neither Canadian, white nor particularly middle-class. It is universal.
To bolster antiracism theory, many antiracist theoreticians adopt the concept of resistance — the notion that when black students "act up," they are engaging in a political act of resistance to "school structures." Dropping out, adopting styles of dress that conflict with cultural norms, and even violence in the schools can be a form of this resistance. The unstated implication here is that these kids are behaving admirably by challenging an oppressive system. Patrick Solomon of York University, Canada's chief exponent of "resistance," details such forms of resistance to white authority in his book, Black Resistance in High School.
Solomon describes how a group of black high school basketball players he calls the Jocks "resist white authority structures" in one of Toronto's lower track schools. In the cafeteria they "engage in queue-cutting . . . [and] tripping up students who go by with lunch trays . . . and chase scenes around the cafeteria." At an intramural girls' basketball game, the Jocks "show disdain for the girls' game by leaving their seats and walking across the gym floor while a game is in progress. In the spectator stands they engage in such counterschool activities as walking about instead of sitting, using foul language and fondling girls. On one occasion, two Jocks were observed playing around with switchblade knives, fake stabbing at each other."
Those of us without his deep insight into "resistance" might be inclined to view these simply as ill-disciplined students whose bad behavior could stem from causes ranging from the cultural to the familial. We might also suspect that these students will do poorly in any circumstance whatsoever — Africa, the Caribbean, a Canada completely free of discrimination, anywhere.
Solomon also describes black students who disapprove of this behavior, but the best critique of his theories, ironically, comes from Solomon's mentor, the world-renowned Berkeley anthropologist John Ogbu, who not-so-subtly chides Solomon in the book's preface. Ogbu has extensively analyzed the problems of blacks in U.S. schools, and his work is cited virtually everywhere. The relevant passage in the preface to Black Resistance in High School is worth quoting at length:
"I dare say that there are ‘resistance' theorists who seem to romanticize the ‘antischool' behaviors of some racial minority youths. Many of these young people do not really know why they behave the way they do. Nor do they understand the full consequences of their behaviors. I suggest that the way to help these young people to avoid reproducing their parents' menial status is to show them that following school rules of behavior for achievement (for example, regular attendance, doing school and home work, paying attention in class, etc.) does not require them to give up their own minority cultural frame of reference. We do not help these young people by telling them that we admire and encourage their ‘resistance' to the system. Rather, we should show them how to succeed by practicing accommodation without assimilation. This is what most successful minorities do. . . ."
But the resistance theorists and antiracist theorists would rather focus on changing the school system to accommodate disruptive kids. They say the educational system must stop "sidelining" black students; to engage black students, the curriculum must reflect black history and heritage in a meaningful way; teachers must be made "sensitive" to the needs of black students; "black focus schools" should be set up.
These proposals have a lot of merit. It would be wonderful to eliminate the stereotyping of black students by some teachers. It would enrich all children to learn about the heritage of everyone in the school system. And improving the way schools are run would surely have benefits. But will any of these proposals significantly alter the equation that has blacks dropping out far more than whites or Asians? I think not.
IN THE U.S., THE TEACHING OF AFRICAN AND AFROCENTRIC HISTORY in schools with black populations has been going on for literally decades. American blacks have even set up separate school systems. Do we observe significant improvement in the performance of African-Americans? No, we don't.
Similar changes have been occurring in Toronto schools since the 1970s in response to demands by the growing black community and its white supporters. Besides the antiracist education legislation I mentioned earlier, a plethora of multicultural policies target the schools with equally dismal results.
Faced with this failure, many black activists and academics just deny that the school boards are doing anything meaningful; others simply shift the goalposts and demand even more comprehensive reforms. Dei calls for a utopia in which teachers, administrators and students all act as equals, and students have an equal say in major decisions like hiring and restructuring; others want the schools to hire many more black teachers, both to act as role models and to show more understanding for black students' problems. The only problem with this, admits Patrick Solomon in Educating African Canadians, is that the research doesn't show that students of color respond better to teachers of their own racial group.
The proponents of reform seem unwilling to accept that the Toronto school system may really not be all that biased, and that North American public schools may generally be meritocratic. According to Steinberg's longitudinal study, most students who invest in education do well, and this is true for all races. Blacks who work hard are rewarded with success. The Toronto Board of Education surveys show precisely the same thing. The survey evidence simply does not support the notion of an all-pervasive systemic racism in the schools designed to maintain the dominance of one race over the others. For if such a system exists, how does it allow the Chinese, the Koreans and the Asian Indians to come here and outperform the allegedly dominant race?
Steinberg's study, which examined student "engagement" in great detail, found that Asians by far outperform whites, who outperform blacks and Latinos. And as might be expected, Asians spend far more hours on their homework than whites, who spend far more hours than blacks and Latinos. Asians cut classes less often, report higher levels of attention during class, and rank school as a higher priority than the other groups do. Blacks and Latinos did far less homework, cut classes more often and considered school a low priority. The Toronto board surveys, though not as detailed, also found the same connection between homework and performance: Asians did the most, while blacks and native people did the least; blacks who put in many hours of homework generally did well. Not surprisingly, both studies failed to find any connection between performance in school and either self-reports of discrimination (Steinberg), or fair and equitable school climate (Toronto board).
These surveys and the failure of school reform efforts indicate that poor black performance does not stem from the school environment. It does stem, in part, from the state of some black families. As the Toronto board's 1991 survey shows, only 34 per cent of black students live with both parents, compared with 69 per cent of whites and 64 per cent of Asians. The survey notes that those with both parents at home tend to perform better than those living with single or no parents, a relationship that holds across all racial groups. Other recent studies link family breakdown and single parenthood to a host of juvenile problems, including poor school performance. In the April 1993 Atlantic Monthly article "Dan Quayle Was Right," Barbara Dafoe Whitehead summarized some of the research, showing children in single-parent families to be more likely to drop out of high school, get pregnant as teenagers, abuse drugs and be in trouble with the law. Antiracists either ignore or dismiss the state of black families as a "pathological explanation."
Yet Dei's study and a similar one released the same year by another black academic, Patricia Daenzer of McMaster University, also found that the majority of dropouts in their samples lived in single-parent families. In a story I wrote a few years back, I similarly found that the overwhelming majority of troubled young black men I spoke to also came from single-parent homes. And to worsen matters, virtually all of these 17- to 20-year-olds had children of their own scattered here and there. Likewise, many of the Caribbean immigrants who came to Canada in the late 60s and early 70s came as female domestics, many leaving their children and families behind, causing family disruptions. When they eventually sent for their children, the adolescent boys had become unmanageable. Is there a link between these family circumstances and the poor performance of black children in high school?
Family sociologist David Popenoe writes in Life Without Father that "marriage and the nuclear family — mother, father, and children — are the most universal social institutions in existence. In no society has nonmarital childbirth been the cultural norm." In the inner cities of the United States, where the greatest social disruptions in North America have occurred, non-marital childbirth has almost become the norm, with more than half of black children born out of wedlock. Evolutionary scientists also tell us that high parental and paternal investment characterize our species: Fathering, they say, must have conferred great evolutionary advantages; having both parents is important in ways we do not completely understand.
In the United States, many researchers believe that the absence of a positive role model in the homes of some students brings to school the frustration, bitterness and violence of their neighborhoods and homes. The conservative social commentator George Gilder, long before recent studies confirmed his thesis, told us in Sexual Suicide that single-parent families fail to socialize males, and a society can have dire problems when such families are concentrated racially and geographically: "even a small proportion of unsocialized males can make life miserable for thousands of conventional citizens in a modern urban environment. The apparent swashbuckling hedonism of the male counterculture, moreover, exerts a strong appeal to almost every man. Thus unsocialized men can have a disruptive influence — as well as direct violent impact — far beyond their numbers."
Virtually every study shows that parental involvement can improve performance. Yet within the black community, parental involvement in education is delinquent: Daenzer found that two-thirds of dropouts' parents never visited the school, nor returned letters sent home from school. This neglect occurs despite a climate in which most black people, including the antiracists, urge parental involvement, and some associations, such as the Organization of Parents of Black Children, exist to help deal with this.
Next to families is the peer group, which is possibly even more important to school success. Steinberg found that "peers shape student achievement patterns in profound ways . . . in many respects, friends are more powerful influences than family members are." As we would suspect, students who devalue academic achievement tend to hang together. And Steinberg reveals that if a student with, say, B grades, starts hanging out with students with Cs, the B student's grades will decline over time. The antiracists have rarely directly examined peer culture, although Solomon's study shows that black students do hang out together.
John Ogbu, who has done some of the most insightful work on peer pressure, finds: "Some black youths obviously become more or less imprisoned in peer orientation and activity that are hostile to academic striving. These youths not only equate school with ‘acting white,' but make no attempt to ‘act white.' They refuse to learn, to conform to school rules of behavior and standard practices; these are defined as being within the white American cultural frame of reference."
Some, such as Cecil Foster, have rejected the peer group thesis outright, suggesting, presumably, that it does not apply to blacks in Canada. I think it does, and I hope to someday see detailed Canadian studies examine black peer group student behavior. Such studies may be impossible today: White researchers fear accusations of racism and black researchers are trapped in antiracist delusions.
MORE AND MORE PEOPLE AMONG TORONTO'S BLACKS ARE, to put it mildly, fed up with some of these harmful attitudes and are willing to speak publicly about it. One of them is Chris Usih, head of the department of mathematics and computer science at a Scarborough secondary school with a high black population. Usih, who also works with black youth and often addresses community gatherings, believes that there is racism in Canada. But he says that it is not the reason for black underachievement:
"Among the black youth I have worked with, a few things are clear: First, they do not recognize the value of education; second, there is no support system. No one seems to be out there communicating to them the value of education. So school is to them a social activity, a place you go to be with your buddies. Many don't show up for school, or show up when they feel like it. I once called a parent and said to her, ‘So-and-so hasn't been in school for a while, are you aware of it?' The parent replied, ‘Well, my daughter doesn't want to come to school; what do you want me to do? Push her out of bed?' And I was tempted to say, ‘Yes, if you have to, you must.' And these are the parents who come to the school to say, my son is failing because the system is racist. We have some serious problems. For the longest time we have used the excuse of race or racism as the reason why our kids don't achieve. Frankly, that's pure garbage. I think it's high time our community started looking at the real issues."
Management consultant Stanley Ansong agrees with Usih. Ansong, an MBA from University of Windsor, works for an international business consulting firm. His two daughters have been through the Toronto public secondary schools; one is now a premed student, the other, in her final high school year in a gifted program, has never scored below 95 per cent. As a parent, Ansong doesn't think that racism explains school failure. He also senses a large if still silent group among educated blacks who are simply tired of all the cant and rationalizations. This group, he predicts, will soon form its own organizations to win the hearts and minds of the black community and free it from the enslaving belief in an all-pervasive racism.
"Parenting is very important when we talk about why our children do poorly," he says. "You've got to lay down a successful path early. Even in a racist society, there are choices. Until you recognize this, you cannot set objectives and plan towards a goal. There will always be obstacles in life, and racism is only one of them. All parents, especially black parents, should start early to work out strategies to overcome the obstacles and difficulties that their children will encounter in life. There will always be a thousand reasons to fail. Even if there is only one avenue to success, what we need to do is find it and take it."
A GENERATION AGO, ANOTHER BLACK EXPRESSED A SIMILAR SENTIMENT: "We must not let the fact that we are the victims of injustice lull us into abrogating responsibility for our own lives. We must not use our oppression as an excuse for mediocrity and laziness. . . . The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation."
Someday soon, I am certain, a new movement will be born, inspired by these words of Martin Luther King Jr., to confront the black intelligentsia and stop the damage they do to our youths. I am a self-interested party in all this, for I have two children of my own, age 1 and 5, and I want more for their generation than blacks have had in mine. This article is being written in the hope that it will advance that day.
Posted: Thu 09 Mar 2006 08:04 Post subject: "For Once, Blame the Student" by Patrick Walsh
Here is an article that really sums up my thoughts.
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Opinion
For once, blame the student
By Patrick Welsh Wed Mar 8, 7:08 AM ET
Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack of funding, poor teachers or other ills. Here's a thought: Maybe it's the failed work ethic of todays kids. That's what I'm seeing in my school. Until reformers see this reality, little will change.
Last month, as I averaged the second-quarter grades for my senior English classes at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same familiar pattern leapt out at me.
Kids who had emigrated from foreign countries - such as Shewit Giovanni from Ethiopia, Farah Ali from Guyana and Edgar Awumey from Ghana - often aced every test, while many of their U.S.-born classmates from upper-class homes with highly educated parents had a string of C's and D's.
As one would expect, the middle-class American kids usually had higher SAT verbal scores than did their immigrant classmates, many of whom had only been speaking English for a few years.
What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.
Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change.
A study released in December by University of Pennsylvania researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman suggests that the reason so many U.S. students are "falling short of their intellectual potential" is not "inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes" and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers - but "their failure to exercise self-discipline."
The sad fact is that in the USA, hard work on the part of students is no longer seen as a key factor in academic success. The groundbreaking work of Harold Stevenson and a multinational team at the University of Michigan comparing attitudes of Asian and American students sounded the alarm more than a decade ago.
Asian vs. U.S. students
When asked to identify the most important factors in their performance in math, the percentage of Japanese and Taiwanese students who answered "studying hard" was twice that of American students.
American students named native intelligence, and some said the home environment. But a clear majority of U.S. students put the responsibility on their teachers. A good teacher, they said, was the determining factor in how well they did in math.
"Kids have convinced parents that it is the teacher or the system that is the problem, not their own lack of effort," says Dave Roscher, a chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams in this Washington suburb. "In my day, parents didn't listen when kids complained about teachers. We are supposed to miraculously make kids learn even though they are not working."
As my colleague Ed Cannon puts it: "Today, the teacher is supposed to be responsible for motivating the kid. If they don't learn it is supposed to be our problem, not theirs."
And, of course, busy parents guilt-ridden over the little time they spend with their kids are big subscribers to this theory.
Maybe every generation of kids has wanted to take it easy, but until the past few decades students were not allowed to get away with it. "Nowadays, it's the kids who have the power. When they don't do the work and get lower grades, they scream and yell. Parents side with the kids who pressure teachers to lower standards," says Joel Kaplan, another chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams.
Every year, I have had parents come in to argue about the grades I have given in my AP English classes. To me, my grades are far too generous; to middle-class parents, they are often an affront to their sense of entitlement. If their kids do a modicum of work, many parents expect them to get at least a B. When I have given C's or D's to bright middle-class kids who have done poor or mediocre work, some parents have accused me of destroying their children's futures.
It is not only parents, however, who are siding with students in their attempts to get out of hard work.
Blame schools, too
"Schools play into it," says psychiatrist Lawrence Brain, who counsels affluent teenagers throughout the Washington metropolitan area. "I've been amazed to see how easy it is for kids in public schools to manipulate guidance counselors to get them out of classes they don't like. They have been sent a message that they don't have to struggle to achieve if things are not perfect."
Neither the high-stakes state exams, such as Virginia's Standards of Learning, nor the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act have succeeded in changing that message; both have turned into minimum-competency requirements aimed at the lowest in our school.
Colleges keep complaining that students are coming to them unprepared. Instead of raising admissions standards, however, they keep accepting mediocre students lest cuts have to be made in faculty and administration.
As a teacher, I don't object to the heightened standards required of educators in the No Child Left Behind law. Who among us would say we couldn't do a little better? Nonetheless, teachers have no control over student motivation and ambition, which have to come from the home - and from within each student.
Perhaps the best lesson I can pass along to my upper- and middle-class students is to merely point them in the direction of their foreign-born classmates, who can remind us all that education in America is still more a privilege than a right.
Patrick Welsh is an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
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