Painting Ourselves Into A Corner

I am surprised as any that I do other things besides obsess about Donald Trump and the future of a mortally wounded American polity.  But, I do.  I am in school this semester, continuing my brick-by-brick attainment of teaching credentials.  I don't have any doubt that I'll finish; my only concern is that I will obtain my degree posthumously.  There are faster pathways that would make it possible for me to teach math within a couple of years, but I've decided to continue at this pace largely because I love my job and the psychic and practical benefits it provides, and because occasionally I'll take a class that will invite me to do some real scholarship and I don't want to be in any program thats paradigm resembles fast food delivery.  At least those are my current rationalizations.

This semester I'm enrolled in an undergraduate class, School Health, and I spent the first month writhing with impatience because I am "learning" with 19 and 20 year olds.  We have group assignments, y'all, and even with peers that's challenging.  Last week I confessed to the professor that every week I swear it's going to be The Very Last One, I'll Do This On My Own, Thankyouverymuch!  And every week I climb down off my high horse and get to work.  As much as I loath the phrase it is what it is, it's apt in this situation.  I cannot make my classmates any older, wiser, more worldly, or smarter than they are right now.  They don't exist to entertain and interest me.  I've resolved (and pretty much stuck to it) to make as much as I can out of the class and move on.  But I have to admit I miss the days of way-over-my-head math and of Java programming.

A while back I took a great workshop which closed with some questions asked anonymously.  One asked of the facilitator was (and I paraphrase):  Should you as a white woman be teaching students of color history?  My reaction to that is the culmination of my pretty peculiar childhood and education, my parents' values, the nature of intelligence, and my conviction that we do ourselves irreparable psychic harm when we elect to restrict our curiosity.  (I've written about this before in another post -- the phenomena of someone "looking like me" as a requisite for effective teaching and learning.  How much you want to bet I'll write a mega-paper about it in some class before I'm done?)  The question so disturbed me that day I felt I was going to write the instructor immediately.  Didn't, of course.  But I could not let this go unremarked and so last night this is what I told her:

First let me introduce myself.  I was the white-haired African-American woman at the workshop [From Genocide to Generational Continuity: Frames for Understanding and Transforming Education] who you thanked for "getting" what you were explaining as the historical precedents for where we are today in education; we spoke briefly.

Ever since that great workshop I've been intending to write you, and every day more mundane, yet pressing demands have -- or at least I've let them be more pressing -- superseded that.

But, since I won't be able to join you and others at the Salon on the 25th I wanted to get this said.  One of your closing remarks (and 2 1/2 weeks on I can only paraphrase) was about your legitimacy in teaching/facilitating discussions about these matters in the first place.  I wanted to speak directly to that.

Whenever knowledge is balkanized, racialized I think it is a bad thing.  I understand, and have been subject to the white supremacist gaze/POV for my entire 62 years.  I understand, at least superficially, cultural imperialism and I've observed how it plays out in these United States of America, much less in contemporary Africa.  And yet I disagree vehemently with what has become a canonical trope in our discourse, i.e., that certain subjects must be taught by people "who look like me”(the me being disadvantaged students of color).

In logic, we learn that an inverse is the negation of the conditional statement.  So if for a statement such as, "African-American students are best taught by African-American teachers" the inverse is:  Non AA students are best taught by non AA teachers".  By the extension of the logic, the inference is that non AA students should NOT be taught by AA teachers.  And we could extrapolate from there in terms of what are appropriate subject matters for appropriate instructors -- AA history, French literature, the European Enlightenment, the geo-politics of ancient Mali.  Despite the ravages of cultural imperialism on our collective psyches, the solution is not assignment by tribe/caste/race.  At the very least it means that if I were interested in modern Danish history, I would be discouraged from studying it and writing about it as a scholar because I'm not caucasian.  So why would I enforce a norm that prohibits caucasians from studying and writing about African-American history and sociology?

Would I love more students of color to have role models that look like them?  Hell yeah, which is why I'm pursuing a masters in elementary education.  But, do I think that that alone is sufficient to address the miseducation of public school students of color?  Not by a long long shot.  The situation is so dire, and the need for thinking, committed people is so great that I would rather we commit to the work and struggle together (and mature together) through our differences than banish potential allies because of notions of the primacy of racial phenotypes.

I understand that part of your odyssey is grappling with white privilege.  But having you and other whites step away from this work as an act of atonement accomplishes very little.  Very few of those who pose the question as to your right to teach where you teach and as you teach are doing the work themselves. When they are able and ready to step up to replace you, then and only then should you consider standing down.  But until that day comes (and it never will) do your work.

Wise Voices in CT About Education

I was teaching in NYC schools when No Child Left Behind avalanched into American education.  For those of us who treasure creativity, novelty, self-teaching by exploration and an eclectic education the principles behind NCLB were alarming.  Many teaching artists were both alarmed and wary of what it would mean for our work.  The law and the school system's policies that followed from it fundamentally changed how and what we taught.  And our revolutionary and transgressive roles in school were diminished.

It didn't take long before many of us turned our backs on the work.  We would have left anyway.  You can only work so long as an itinerant artist-educator.  At some point you long for focussed commitment -- either to your art or the teaching.  But even if I'd stayed longer, my analysis and critique of educational policy would have been disregarded.  I had no juice.  But the people I'm linking to do have juice.  One is the legendary Dr. James Comer, whose work I'd known of since the 1980's and the other is the Superintendent of East Lyme, CT Schools, Dr. James Lombardo, interviewed yesterday on WNPR-FM's Where We Live.  Lombardo wrote to Governor Malloy, Education Commissioner Pryor and others in state government enumerating just how wrong the "reform" initiatives the state is pursuing are and the false premises that led to them.

I hope these voices are part of a tide being turned.  It may be too late for much of public education, but perhaps that's the point.  I sometimes wonder if urban public education has become like early 20th settlement work.  Upper class women, prior to their coming out balls that signified their ascension into society would work with The Poor.  They performed charity work that by no means upended the systemic order of things.  The status remained quo.

Anyway, the links:

 New Haven Independent interview the Dr. Comer, and

WNPR.org story on Dr. Lombardo's letter to Malloy et al.

Rumor Has It

... that it's Black History Month.  I forgot.  An easy thing to do when you're as untethered to any institution as I am right now (discounting the institution of marriage which knows no Black or White, or any Wrong or Right.)  You know I'm kiddin' about marriage, right?

Anyway, I finally copped on to the fact that it was time for our annual and peculiarly American malady, Racial Reaction Formation, when I started to read fascinating longform pieces that dealt with the history of 20th century American race relations in its many manifestations.  It's much on my mind as I prepare myself to enter what has become Ground Zero in American inequality, the nation's public schools.

Here's a link to Part I of Tanner Colby's multipart piece in Slate, The Massive Liberal Failure on Race, and yes, the title sounds like the clickbait it's supposed to be.  But, you know what?  I largely agree with what he's written.

I'm Still Not Hearting Diane Ravitch, Part III

I am going to keep this short because I've already used up my quotient of profanity for one day.  Came across this about Diane Well-I'll-Be-Goddamned Ravitch.  Like I said when I referenced her before here, here and here, I don't trust apostates.

What's the count now?  Three post-education reform books to tell the world what any person with sense already knew?  When schools like Choate, Dalton, Foote, Hopkins, St. Ann's, Sidwell Friends, Brooklyn Friends (you get my drift) start insisting on standardized tests and the curricula that love them, then I'll be convinced that No Child Left Behind is not the spawn of Satan.  In other words, in matters of education, I'll have whatever the elite is having.  Thankyouverymuch.

Just Me, the Books and the Spiders

Blogging has been sporadic as fall and school descend.  Another September, another mind-boggling math course.  This time, Foundations of Mathematics, which seemed innocuous enough until the professor said that "it is the bridge between lower mathematics, e.g., Calculus (I kid you not) and higher mathematics".  I think I blacked out for a minute.  So, you ask why I'm doing this when my life could be so much more comfortable?

This is why:  a Mother Jones piece, “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong,” by Kristina Rizga.  As a supplement you can listen to her terrific interview on Bob Edwards Weekend.

That's it for now.  I am temporarily living alone for the first time in 31 years.  Husband No. 1 is with his family, Beloved Niece and her mother moved out and I share the house with dying spiders and wasps.  It's great and I sometimes wonder if I'll croak like a frog when I do use my voice because other than a phone call or a meeting I don't talk much.  (At school I'm so old I'm virtually radioactive so no one engages me.)  This interlude reminds me that I'm an introvert with good social skills; this precious time allows me to be more of myself.  I hope to make the most of it.  Ciao, I'm off to Harlem for a meeting.

I'm Still Not Hearting Diane Ravitch, Part II

Although I was sober yesterday I wrote a convoluted paragraph about the way to teach children that mention private schools and public parks.  What I mean to say is that (as a generality) all children benefit from the same ways of teaching.  I don't believe that there's a way you teach kids who'd attend Choate that is profoundly different than the way you'd teach kids who'd attend any big city's public schools.  What had infuriated me with the Old Ravitch and others is that too often education is talked and written about as if there are some evolutionary differences between white and black kids.  Or, more to the point in Our America:  there are intractable differences between White and Asian (i.e., honorary white -- and if you don't believe me read some California history) and Black and Hispanic and Native American children.  The dirty little secret is that so many folks on all sides of the issue fear that it is innate and genetic.  (We are all evolutionary biologists now.)  Maybe, just maybe Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein were right after all.

I said it then and I'll say it now; I call bullshit on that.  My bona fides:  I'm black, which means that the percentage of African "blood" exceeds the percentage of European "blood" in me and my siblings.  And it means that by choice (and so as not to be classified as barkin' mad) I self-identify as such.  I'm middle class -- always have been, and sigh, unless the real estate market in NYC really goes crazy, always will be.  I grew up taking standardized tests such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and never met a standardized test I didn't like.  And I'm not unique.  So, can we stop with all lot of the racialized "black and brown" this and "black and brown" that and start looking at how class affects education?  Then let's talk.


These dispatches are about convincing myself to take Diane Ravitch seriously, since the positions she promulgated, defended and believed in were so obviously flawed.  I -- bet I'm not alone in this -- have trouble taking apostates seriously.  (And yes, Glen Loury and David Brock I'm talking about You!!)


To be continued.

I'm Still Not Hearting Diane Ravitch, Part I

Last night I attended a School Change Summit organized around Diane Ravitch's “The Death and Life Of The Great American School System”.  Disclaimer:  I have not read her book.  Yet.  So, my remarks are based on the panel's responses to her book, to her own responses during the forum and to my incomplete knowledge of her thinking and impact on American education.  The summit itself was a terrific idea.  Paul Bass, publisher of the New Haven Independent partnered with the Community Foundation and others to convene a panel of New Haven parents, educators, scholars and students to read the book and join Ravitch onstage.  Meanwhile (in the winds section) radio, print and net journalists (I don't know why I feel the need to make the distinctions), one of New Haven's state reps and the Mayor live blogged.  People could and did send in their comments while the Summit was live-streamed, and, the auditorium held a great and lively audience.

I like to "touch and smell the produce" so I actually attended.  Before I go off (I'm afraid I will) let me share my frame of reference because you know that people-of-a-certain age always look back.

I started teaching writing in New York City public schools in the mid-1990's.  That was during the years when Rudy Giuliani had school chancellors jumping the turnstiles faster than a broke pickpocket.  The work was great; I, and other writers and artists like me were on a mission, and there was a great deal of respect (tempered by many educators' skepticism and their own fear of writing) for teaching poetry, fiction and drama to city kids.  By the late 1990's the climate was changing as "standards" and "accountability" took up more of the educational airwaves.  All of us in the education biz fell down the rabbit hole of metrics and quantifying the work we did as if it were possible to slice thinner and thinner slivers of raw learning and still call it tuna.

Don't get me wrong.  I am all for standards and any child or adult who has survived one of my courses will tell you that if I get a whiff that you aren't challenging yourself to do better I will make your ears bleed.  But even back then I felt that whole school systems were heading off in the wrong direction where in the effort to quantify they would deracinate the joy of learning and erode what little autonomy public school teachers have.  I remember thinking at the time that if "they" wouldn't teach this way at Dalton or Brooklyn Friends or St. Ann's (to mention a few of the estimable private schools in New York) why would "they" think that teaching merely to pass standardized tests even for poor kids, kids with massive educational deficits, emotionally damaged kids is the right way to teach?  (Kind of reminds me of the welfare reform conundrum:  if you're a middle-class or upper middle-class mom we are all for you being a stay-at-home mother; but, if you're poor and we must supplement your living, raising children [which you are no damn good at anyway, or we wouldn't be having this education debate now, would we?] is second to cleaning the public parks.)

And back when I was on the Advisory Board of City-As-School High School I was part of a group of teachers, students and administrators who had a meeting at Tweed Hall with Joel Klein.  The meeting opened with us all introducing ourselves.  When the Chancellor, who by that time had been on the job close to a year said to all of us, "This is the first time I've met with students ...." I was stunned.  It was all I could do not to look around the table as if to say, did you hear what I heard?  Didn't this man think that his learning curve might have been accelerated by hearing how adolescents saw their own education?

Ohhh.  Kay, I said, don't make too much of one boneheaded executive oversight.  Change takes time.  I'll give Bloomberg 7 years.  Then we'll see how things work out.

 If I dwell on New York's reform experiment I will never, and I mean never, get to my thoughts about New Haven's.  So, let me say this.  If you asked any New York City public school supervisor, administrator or educator if they had to send their children to a New York City public school randomly assigned using some obscure algorithm would they be comfortable with that assignment, I bet their answer would be [expletive inserted] NO!  You can reform education all you want but I'll wager that there will never be an actualized urban public school system that adequately (and beyond) serves its children.  Public school education must be examined through the prisms of late-stage Western capitalism, the effects of race and class on urban demography, and the particular impact of the finance and real estate sectors on municipal development (to name just 3 factors).

I've gotten this far without actually talking about Ravitch.  (I haven't mentioned Sarah Palin either and that's something to be applauded.)  Last night's summit is the hanger on which I'm exploring my ideas about and relationship with public education.  That's why I'll call this posting Part I.  Part II (soon to a cinema near you!) will follow tomorrow.

A Modest Proposal for Improving American Public Education

Let's return to the days of of de facto or de jure sexual segregation in employment.  Let's close the doors to careers in medicine, law, science and engineering, business, elective office, finance and academia.  Preserve those fields for men and men only.  And where do you think all those ambitious, brilliant, passionate, innovative, driven, visionary women will go to make their mark?  The Post Office.  Nope.  Into public education.  Problem solved.

One of the hallmarks of my upbringing was that I was raised in a university town during a time when it was all too common for wives to put their husbands through school.  Many of those wives, after having obtained their bachelor's entered teaching, and we kids in the 1960's and 1970's were the beneficiaries of these smart, often brilliant, women supporting their families.  By the time I entered college that compact was eroding as more women opted for pursuit of advanced degrees in higher-status and more lucrative professions. 

I liken this change to the documented unintended consequences of racial desegregation for African-Americans -- given choices ambitious and affluent blacks left their communities leaving the poor and unemployable behind.  (And yes, I know I'm collapsing a complex phenomena, but allow me this concision.  My argument is also culturally-specific to the United States.  In Ireland, for instance, the expansion of opportunity probably meant that fewer gifted men and women trained for the religious vocations.)  In cities that led to what's described as a permanent underclass -- the very object of much of the anguish and frustration that accompanies school reform.

The success of post-WW II feminism (and increasing literacy) catalyzed analogous results.  Many (not all) gifted college-educated women, given opportunities to pursue other professions ignored elementary and secondary education.  In my grandmother's time teaching and teachers were respected and revered.  (The quartet of high-status occupations pre-segregation?  Doctor, lawyer, teacher, preacher.)  In our current time other professionals condescend to "those who teach" and too often, teachers, the training programs that produce them, and the school systems that hire teachers don't do themselves any favors.  Too many students attend and sustain Schools of Education where the admissions and competency standards are too low.  Too many unions have resisted squarely addressing some of the most troubling byproducts of guild protection such as job tenure for the incompetent.  And too few school systems have not created advancement pathways that reward teachers who want to stay in the classroom yet need more challenges.

So many ways to address this topic.  Maybe I'll do a post called"13 Ways to Look At American Public Education".  But for today I'm serious, what will it take to restore a universal sense of mission in American education?  And who should be leading the charge?