I was so
pleased to find the themes of civil rights and equity continued from 2013’s
Mays Lecture with Mr. Bryan Stevenson. While Mr. Stevenson was a powerful
storyteller, I felt that Dr. Oakes brought impact to her talk through the
incredible data she shared from her research. I think the listeners couldn’t
help but have a visceral response to seeing the data displayed visually, and it
made the pattern of inequity in schools impossible to ignore. I was alarmed at
the notion that continuing inequity is part of a “cultural compromise” in
American society. Dr. Oakes points out how “Americans find ways to rationalize”
the achievement gap, of which the major concern is that it’s a racial and
economic gap.
It
definitely rang a bell when Dr. Oakes pointed out the issue that “Schools serve
capitalism as well as democracy.” I instantly thought back to The Book of Learning and Forgetting by
Frank Smith, and how he describes the evolution of schooling into an
industrialized process, saying “The teacher was no longer the collaborator or
even the guide. The teacher became the official in charge of work and the collector
of the scores, chained like the students to standardized instructional
procedures” (Smith, 1998, p.56). I think Dr. Oakes would agree that the issue
is how society sees schools that are not performing/students who are not
learning as bugs in a system that need to be fixed, rather than seeing the
system itself as the problem. In other words, “Systems as a whole were not
examined for fundamental flaws (like the official theory of learning) that
might explain why problems arose. Rather, problems were regarded as extraneous
glitches, as bugs in the system, which could be eradicated by generic
procedures” (Smith, 1998, p.68). Dr. Oakes adds an even darker note to this
situation of a flawed schooling system by pointing out that the privileged and
powered may actually want to keep
schools unequal to benefit their own kids, that “There’s not enough excellent
education to go around” motivating those with political power to safeguard it
for their own children.
Therefore,
we need to recognize that “Educational inequality is intertwined with other
forms of inequality” and in fact that “the popular reforms focused on improving
‘low performing’ urban schools actually perpetuate inequality” (Oakes, Mays Lecture, 2014). This notion that
inequality is actually institutionalized is the same thing Stevenson was
pointing out when he shared about our disturbingly disproportionate
representation of African Americans among those incarcerated, and that there is
a 1/3 chance of prison or jail time for a black child born in the year 2000
(Stevenson, Mays Lecture, 2013). As
Frank Smith says, “Schooling, and circumstances outside school, may result in
what might be called ‘abused learners’”(Smith, 1998, p.37). Perhaps these
abused learners are the traumatized marginalized members of society who end up
incarcerated, which are probably those same kids stuck in the cycle of failing
schools.
These are
all disheartening figures and facts when we think about the future of our
schools and society as a whole, pointed out by these numerous intelligent
people. So what’s to be done? Interestingly, the solutions suggested are echoed
amongst all of these incredible people, and seem to center around a theme that
has been emphasized from the very start in this graduate program: Community. As
Dr. Oakes says, “We require a social movement above market forces or expert
engineering; citizens and community members must make demands for change” (Mays Lecture, 2014). In Smith’s words,
“Changing the minds of [people with authority or influence in education] will
itself need a massive educational effort. And if their minds can’t be changed,
which will often be the case, then community and political action will be
required” (Smith, 1998, p.83). This is echoed in Stevenson’s “intentional
discomfort” and call for proximity in the communities that need visibility the
most, and again in Margaret Wheatley’s essay Willing to Be Disturbed. She says, “We’re comfortable with our
lives, and if we listened to anyone who raised questions, we’d have to get engaged in changing
things. If we don’t listen, things can stay as they are and we won’t have to
expend any energy. But most of us do see things in our life or in the world
that we would like to
be different. If that’s true, we have to listen more, not
less. And we have to be willing to move into the very uncomfortable place of
uncertainty” (Wheatley, 2002, p.3).
It seems they all call for us to
take notice, take part, and speak up, to deny the existing narrative in favor
of one that benefits our entire society top to bottom. Smith puts it, “The
solution is not for teachers and students to do better in the circumstances
that are imposed on them but for the circumstances in which teaching and
learning are supposed to take place to be changed” (Smith, 1998, p.69). It
might seem like an insurmountable challenge, but Dr. Oakes advices we take
heart in the data that shows that most Americans are uncomfortable with the
existing inequities. Stevenson and Wheatley would push these Americans to not
turn away from this discomfort, but to harness its power to bring progress. Any
movement for change takes work, and discomfort, and pain, and even sacrifice.
I’m thinking now of the Latino women Dr. Oakes mentioned whose marriages
suffered when they took on the activist roles in their communities. I’m also
thinking of Bryan Stevenson’s description of the Civil Rights Movement as a
time of terror, and Frank Smith’s warning that “Teachers who try to change will
often run counter to the established practices of their school and entrenched
beliefs of their colleagues—and of parents and others outside school… Once
again, teachers will need to have and to provide support. Introducing change is
best done collaboratively” (Smith, 1998, p.92). So what can we small teachers
do to impact our own communities, as asked during the Q&A portion of the
Mays Lecture? “Get tenure and speak your mind!” says Dr. Jeannie Oakes.
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