A few weeks ago I was in the audience and listened to the latest Joel Klein rap – he quoted Bush and warned against, ” the soft bigotry of low expectations.” He warned the assembled teachers against using “outside” influences on students as an “excuse.” The conservative think tanks and ideologues continue to claim that teacher contracts impose “work rules” that diminish pupil achievemnt and the Bush/Klein “low expectations” rap is another reason for school failures.
On the other hand an increasing number of researchers are relating educational achievement to poverty. The NYTimes magazine summarizes recent research and questions whether the impressive achievement in some charter schools is due to the commitment of the teachers or the self-selected nature of the student body. Does the pathology of poverty prior to entry into school disadvantage the poor?
The arguments back and forth across the spectrum are both fascinating and enlightening.
For those of us who ply their trade not in the intellectual ivory castles but in the classrooms the “answers” are somewhat clearer. Poverty, the culture of the streets is not shed at the classroom door!! As teachers we can’t make the streets safer or construct better housing or more stable family life … we can only teach and nurture and care …
How can the public, the larger audience understand the reality of the urban classroom? How can they understand the difficulty and complexity of our job? Would I recommend a book for the public to read?? No, I would recommend that they watch the HBO drama: The Wire.
In it’s fourth season this hardscrabble look at inner city Baltimore exposes a story line dealing with a group of middle school students, “corner boys,” young drug dealers, their teachers, school administrators and the life on the mean Baltimore streets.
Ed Burns, one of the writers, a retired Baltimore cop and teacher “catches” the flavor of the classroom. It is powerful!!
While I was sitting in a teacher lunchroom I “motivated” the meeting by mentioning the veracity of The Wire, and low and behold, everyone else at the table was “Addicted!!”
How many times have we screamed at some invisible educrat or politican: let them take over my class for a week!! The Wire allows millions, each week, to watch the realities of life in an urban school.
Kudos to HBO, Ed Burns and the wonderful actors.
Tagged: middle school
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5 Comments:
1 Chaz
· Nov 29, 2006 at 8:29 pm
I guess Joel Klein does not watch the wire.
2 institutional memory
· Nov 30, 2006 at 3:41 pm
KLEIN LOSES MIND, CITES BUSH!
Joel Klein must be getting desperate.
Now he’s taken to quoting The Discredited Decider, who accuses anyone who dares oppose the NCLB scam of suffering from the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
New York needs an educator in the Chancellor’s office, not a sloganeering ex-prosecutor who’s planning his next career as Rod Paige’s consulting partner.
3 Kombiz Lavasany
· Nov 30, 2006 at 4:51 pm
I.M.
The origin of the quote came up before on the AFT’s blog. It’s history may even be seedier since I think it came to regular use by Rush Limbaugh during the mid 90’s. Which think tank thought it up before then I don’t know but it originated in discussions of race on Limbaugh’s show.
4 institutional memory
· Nov 30, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Thanks, Kombiz. I did a little research and found, lo and behold, that “the soft bigotry of low expectations” appears to have been coined by Daniel Patrick Moynihan way back in the 1960s.
The Decider resurrected the phrase during his 2000 presidential campaign. He and Rod Paige (there’s that man again!) used it repeatedly during the first Bush administration, but it’s fallen into disuse recently.
The more things change, the more they… well, you know the rest.
5 phyllis c. murray
· Dec 1, 2006 at 12:27 am
HELLO, TEACHERS AS DREAM KEEPERS: GOOD-BYE “BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS”
By Phyllis C. Murray
“Commencement at Morehouse College is a time of tradition and celebration -
but perhaps more so this year. Amid lamentations about the dearth of black men
in higher education, Morehouse graduated its largest class ever – nearly 600
educated African American men. No other institution in the world can match this
impressive number.” Morehouse College 2006
What has created this success story? How does this academic institution continue its legacy of excellence for over one hundred years? And how is this institution able to produce such impressive alumni as: Martin Luther King, Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Lerone Bennett, Shelton “Spike” Lee, Dr. David Satcher, Maynard Jackson, Attorney Tyrone Means, Julian Bond, and James Nabrit from ever strata of society.
Perhaps the difference is that someone had a dream for each one of these men before they could dream. That someone might have been a teacher. And once the student reached Morehouse, “From the first day on campus, he was told he was destined for greatness and could achieve no less.” Errin Hehmen AP
There are teachers today, who like pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1950), have “invested in a human soul “knowing that “it could be a diamond in the rough.” Because true educators know that diamonds, like our students, come in every hue.
Michael Lomax, UNCF believes in the myriad possibilities of making miracles happen in classrooms. Also when he said: “There is this beacon out there that says if you create a challenging, demanding, yet nurturing and supportive environment, if you show these young men the possibilities and you discipline them to realize those possibilities, you can turn these statistics about black men around.” It is obvious that the “bigotry of low expectations” and “benign neglect” have no place in our classrooms or nation.
Surely, there are programs which earnestly address the Plight of the African American Male in Education: Programs which provide residents with a stone of hope toward removing the growing mountain of despair which plagues our nation. These programs provide our nation with the process for change indeed worthy of much praise and emulation. And that new trend: an infusion of exemplary programs which are already in place within Westchester High Schools which work daily, toward ameliorating an insidious problem which left unchecked negatively impacts society.
The Woodlands Individualized Senior Experience; Ossinings’ High Hopes Expectations College Track; Byram Hills’ Intel Science Program; and Mount Vernon High School’s Business Club, are proof positive that there are already solutions to the heightening dropout rate among African American Males in Westchester public schools. These programs should be replicated nationwide.
Peter Goodman, UFT . cites the following : “A Report issued by the Education Trust, (Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality, a major research institution, a vers “…research shows … that good teachers can have an enormous impact on student achievement.”
Yes, we know good teachers do have an enormous impact on student achievement. The teachers are the keepers of the dreams. And that fact is exactly what educators have known all along as they strive to teach often against the ever rising insurmountable odds. And, there are many success stories in New York City as students reach their goals and realize the dreams that they can now call their own.
Yes, “…teachers are the single most important factor in how much students learn ….” Education Trust So we say:
“Bring me all of your dreams,
you dreamers,
Bring me all your heart melodies,
that I may wrap them in a blue cloud cloth,
Away from the too rough fingers of the world. Langston Hughes “The Dream Keeper”
Phyllis C. Murray,
Chapter Leader
District 8 Region 2