Last night, I was riveted by Dan Rather’s lastest HDNet show episode “A National Disgrace.” It’s an expose on the Detroit public schools. I only caught the last hour on TV last night but will watch the rest of it today on iTunes. As an educator, this show made me cry. The one student that they chronicle (that you will see in the clip) is representative of generation after generation of students whose future has been stolen. Whose hope has been thrown away. Whose dreams have been smothered. I know this sounds harsh, but it is time that we are honest about the schools who serve our urban poor. This is a population with no voice and no power. This is a population that continues to grow and who we continue to ignore.
Deana (in the above clip) was lucky. The camera men and production staff were heartbroken for her–she wanted to learn; she wanted to succeed. They secured tutors for her and helped her with her college applications and explained her financial options (Rather remarks that it is nothing more than a guidance counselor would do) and she got into a four-year college–the first in her family. This is quite a feat for someone who went to a district where teachers routinely don’t show up and kids can sit in classes without teachers for weeks and weeks and where only ~25% of students graduate high school.
As I was watching this, I realized this report isn’t just about Detroit Public Schools. This report is about every urban district and every school that we allow to steal our children’s future. These are our children. As a society, we cannot allow this to continue. We can’t operate from the mindset that “my kids aren’t in those schools, so it doesn’t effect me.” Because it does effect us. It affects our countries ability to compete globally. As our minority populations grow and our white population decreases, our educated class dwindles. We can’t ignore the education that our poor and minority students aren’t getting. No longer can we sit by and see these populations as something that can be thrown away. No longer can we say–“pass them and let the world fail them.” It is criminal what happens in our urban schools. I know this first hand. I taught in urban schools and I supervise student teachers in my own urban district. I can tell you that what Rather exposes here is reality. We can’t turn a blind eye. We are letting generation after generation be damned to a life they don’t deserve.
I have seen teachers who show movies every day of the school year so they can sleep. I have seen teachers do nothing but assign worksheets so they could not teach. I have seen teachers give up on students because it was too much trouble to care. We can’t sit by and let this happen. My kids are in private school and I have said before how lucky we are that it’s a choice and that we sacrifice a great deal to spend that money. There are more families than not who don’t have that choice. I shouldn’t have to make that choice for my kids. If I didn’t live in the city, then I would have different choices. But I choose to work in urban schools to make a difference. Every child deserves a quality education. Every child deserves to reach their potential and to know what their potential is. Every child deserves adults who nurture them and want to teach them. It makes me cringe. It makes me sad.
So often it is our urban schools who get all the attention, but our rural schools face the same problems. While I argue that a huge piece of this unequal education system we have is tied to race, the other huge piece of it is tied to socioeconomic status. The poor also have no voice and by poor, I mean people who live in under-developed countrysides who might have great personal resources but as a community they have no status or leverage.
Education in our country is political and about power and it shouldn’t be (just like Healthcare shouldn’t be–that’s another post). These are kids lives that are being played with and that isn’t fair. Education needs to put children first and so many of our policies and choices have nothing to do with children and everything to do with the adults. We can’t wait. Everyday that goes by that we don’t face head on and fix this problem in the best interest of kids, another generation is doomed to fail and another piece of our economy disappears forever. The time to act is now.
Embracing Imperfection 