| Some Serious Reflections on Education, Community and Race | |||
| Advocating for Our Children -- Community Controlled Neighborhood Schools | |||
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This
site is full of commentary that I have written recently dealing with questions
about education. My name is Edward L. Whitfield. I am 49 years old. I am
originally from Little Rock, Arkansas and I graduated from the infamous
Little Rock Central High School where President Eisenhower had to send
the 101st Airborne in 1957 to allow 9 Black children to enter the school.
I have been living in Greensboro, North Carolina for the last 30 years.
I am a community activist and a community advocate, working with low income
communities which are often ignored, misrepresented and mistreated.
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A Response to the Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
By Ed Whitfield
Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
say: People have fought and died for integration. So how can you support
neighborhood schools that would be segregated?
Supporters of Neighborhood Schools
respond: Some of the same people who were involved in the struggle
for integration support neighborhood schools because they see that this
does not mean opposing all integration. You cannot equate school bussing
for racial balance with integration. They are not the same. No one fought
and died for bussing. We need neighborhood schools because "there are some
things that our children need that they are not getting now." (These are
the words of an 86 year old former teacher of 37 years who fought for integration
and saw both segregated schools and schools after bussing and racial balance.)
We need schools in our community that we control so we can make sure our
children do get what they need. You do not need white children sitting
next to you to learn, but you do need an empowered, involved community.
Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
say: We have to have racial balance in schools because diversity is
important since we live in a diverse world.
Supporters of Neighborhood Schools
respond: Yes, we live in a diverse world, and we will continue to do
so, but the best preparation for being involved and productive in that
diverse world is to approach it with self confidence and the necessary
tools and skills to succeed. We have a better opportunity to help instill
that in the majority of our young people in neighborhood schools. Then
they will be able to function anywhere in the world with anyone they come
in contact with. What we have done instead with bussing is let the school
system continue to cripple, stigmatize, and criminalize many of our young
people so that the public school is the last diverse setting they function
in. It is more important to prepare young people to function in an integrated
society than it is to force them to integrate the schools and so damage
them that they have a hard time functioning anywhere.
Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
say: Neighborhood schools would be second class schools. They will
always get cheated out of what they need.
Supporters of Neighborhood Schools
respond: Neighborhood schools will only be second class if we let them.
The Black community has a responsibility to its children to continue to
be vigilant and fight for justice and equity. We need to demand that we
have the facilities, the resources, the equipment and the instructional
programs that our children need to get a first rate education. Where some
of our children need more resources because of their home situations or
because of the history of discrimination and inequity in the schools, we
should insist that they get it. We cannot concede the responsibility to
get our children what they need to the white parents by thinking that their
mere presence will insure that our children will get it.
Where we have had bussing and racial balance, our children have still gotten second class education even within white schools. Being in racially balanced schools has not guaranteed good educations. In asking for schools in our neighborhoods, we as a community are asking for more control over our children's education, not less. Certainly we should not concede that our children are better off if other people have more control of their education than we do. That seems to be what the proponents of bussing are saying.
Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
say: Neighborhood schools will be segregated schools since neighborhoods
are segregated.
Supporters of Neighborhood Schools
respond: While that sounds true, in a sense it is not. The type of
segregation that neighborhoods have is a type of defacto segregation that
is not the universal law of the land. In fact some neighborhoods are identifiably
Black and some are identifiably white, and some are neither. Some of the
schools with assignment plans based on neighborhoods would be majority
white, some majority Black and some would be well mixed. That is not what
the school segregation that people fought and died to end was like. Those
of us who are old enough to remember, or who have carefully grasped the
history of that period know that schools were segregated PERIOD. That was
the law. The struggle was to end those laws, and to open those doors of
opportunity to our children.
Once the doors were open, it was another question whether or not to force some children to go through those doors. We did not force anyone to take advantage of laws integrating public accommodations. We did not force anyone to take advantage of laws against discrimination in voting. We did not force anyone to take advantage of open housing laws. It was only with school integration that some people feel it is justified to force children to go to schools they don't want to go to in order to advance our civil rights.
Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
say: Going back to Neighborhood schools would be turning back the clock
on the progress we have made with race relations.
Supporters of Neighborhood Schools
respond: There are two things wrong with this statement. First, you
can't go back where you have never been. We have never had neighborhood
schools. Black children were regularly bused past white schools near their
homes to the Negro schools that the law assigned them to. If that were
not the case, there would not have been a Brown v Board case in
Topeka Kansas in 1954 where the young Miss Brown lived closer to the white
school she was denied entry to. If she could have gone to school in her
neighborhood her daddy would not have needed to sue the school board. If
there had been neighborhood schools, most of the Little Rock 9 would have
already been able to go to Little Rock Central High School and President
Eisenhower would not have had to send the 101st Airborne to let those children
into school. Neighborhood schools as we are describing them would have
satisfied much of what we were struggling for as it related to school assignment.
The need would have still existed as it does now to exercise more control
over what is going on in those schools, but that is a different, though
related fight.
The second problem with the turning back the clock argument is that for far too many of our children, the clock never went forward. The quality of the education that too many of our children received in the racially balanced schools that they attended was not adequate and represented no substantial progress for them over the type of education they received in the segregated schools of the past. In fact I would argue that many segregated school systems did a better job of educating our children than the current integrated system is doing. That is not to say that we should return to segregation, but it does say we should stop talking about progress that hasn't been made yet.
Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
say: Even with neighborhood schools, some children will be forced to
go to schools in their neighborhood when they don't want to. There will
always be someone who is dissatisfied.
Supporters of Neighborhood Schools
respond: All the schools, regardless of the neighborhood they are in
should be good schools. This will go a long way toward ending the dissatisfaction
of those who don't want to go to a particular school. For others who would
still like to go elsewhere, there need to be a range of educational choices
available to children who for various reasons don't want to go to the school
in their neighborhood. There should be special theme schools in the Arts,
and in Science and Technology or Language Arts. Even in schools having
a special theme, there should be all round instruction in basic subjects.
These schools would differ from Magnet schools in that their purpose would
not be primarily for increasing diversity and bringing white students into
Black neighborhoods, but they should be high quality programs to enhance
the education of the children and give them more choice.
Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
say: All of this misses the point. Just having neighborhood schools
won't cure everything. Look at Dudley. It still has problems. We need more
money and better facilities and better programs.
Supporters of Neighborhood Schools
respond: Yes, Dudley still has problems although it cannot really be
called a neighborhood school. Too many children in Morningside Homes and
other low-income neighborhoods are excluded from going there. In addition,
the community input and control is not what it needs to be. It is true
that we need more money, better facilities and better academic programs.
We must continue to fight for those things. We also need our schools in
our communities as institutions that help anchor the community and give
it pride and stability. With busing we gave up too many of our institutions.
Many of our communities had nothing left in them that we could take any
pride in. It is true that neighborhood schools will not cure everything
but they put us in a better position to fight for what we need. When we
get in that position it is still important that we get involved in that
fight for our children's needs and their survival.
Opponents of Neighborhood Schools
say: All of the supporters of neighborhood schools support segregation.
Supporters of Neighborhood Schools
respond: That is simply not true. Segregation was and is wrong. Many
of us were part of the fight against it and will continue to fight it.
No child should be excluded from any school or any school activity because
of his race. Wanting to see schools rebuilt in our communities, and see
children educated near their homes does not mean supporting segregation.
We think that the best way to have deeply involved communities that will
see to it that our children are respected, nurtured, and armed with the
tools and skills they need to succeed is by having community control of
neighborhood schools. The opponents of neighborhood schools would put that
responsibility in the hands of someone else.
Some Other Articles on Education
More
on the Content of Neighborhood Schools
A
Children's Story for Adults and their Children Who Want to Understand the
Impact of School Busing
An
Article f or Organizers Dealing with Negotiations and Power
An
Explaination of Some Problems With Past Approaches to Public School Diversity
Some
Reflections on the Relationship Between Schools and Community
Email me at:
[email protected]
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