The Answer

And the question is: what is the most important thing that could be done to help improve the economic circumstances of African-Americans (indeed, anyone and everyone)? Cynthia Tucker has the answer in her column today which discusses the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision. She notes about her own education in the slow-to-integrate Alabama of the early 1970s:

Nevertheless, I received a pretty good education. That's because my parents saw to it that second-class schools would not hold their children back. They limited our time in front of the television; they supervised our homework; they helped us fill out membership cards to the neighborhood (segregated) library. My mother, who taught high school English, exposed me to everything from the Bobbsey Twins to Beowulf.

In general she notes:

A half-century after the Brown decision, there is still a large gap between the academic accomplishments of white and black students. And that gap results partly from black students' adoption of a perverse culture that dismisses scholarship as "trying to be white." Among many black boys, apparently, getting caught reading a novel is nearly as bad as being caught taking piano lessons.

[...]

Whatever the failed promise of Brown vs. Board, there is no good reason for the persistence of the achievement gap. If black parents insist that their children take scholarship seriously, their grades and test scores will rise. If black parents join the PTA, inspire their children to read books and newspapers and enroll them in advanced placement classes, the achievement gap will disappear in a generation.

What would happen if the television were turned off in every black household for a month? (Well, the Nielsen ratings would suffer, surely, since black viewers watch, on average, 10 hours of TV a day, compared with less than seven hours a day for white viewers.) Kids might wander into a good novel, a game of chess or a copy of Sports Illustrated. They might complete a book report or research paper ahead of time -- so that Dad could proofread it for errors. They might stumble across a biography of Jackie Robinson or Ida Wells-Barnett.

These days, civil rights activists' interest in schools is usually about ensuring prominent positions for black teachers or principals. There is little glamour -- and, therefore, little interest -- in pushing black students away from basketball and toward books or in urging black parents to prepare their children for advanced placement classes.

You wonder what happened to all those dreams that inspired black parents to send their children into the hostile hallways of previously all-white schools in Little Rock or Raleigh or Greenville. What happened to the fervent desire for the best in educational opportunity that pushed those children to succeed despite the jeers of white classmates and the threats of white parents?

In documentaries and old photos, we see the determined looks on the faces of brave black children who became the pioneers of school integration. Black students today ought to honor their sacrifice with brilliant academic performance.

There can be no doubt that parental involvement is the key, whether one is rich or poor, black or white, native born or an immigrant. Are there disparities in schools in the US from district to district, state to state? Absolutely. Are blacks and hispanics disproportionately in poor preforming schools? Yes. However, no amount of governmental policy if going to fix that problem--ameliorate, yes, but fix? No.--absolutely not. The fix is active parents.

One thing is true about the United States that many who see only its flaws dismiss: if you work hard, you will succeed. You aren't going to be Bill Gates, but you can live well. And no amount of government funding is going to take the place of parents who encourage reading, insist on homework being done properly, and inculcate good behavior in their children.

Many of the students I have had in my six years at Troy University, both black and white, have come from sub-standard (and, by the way, integrated) schools. Many of the county school systems (indeed, most) in Southern Alabama are severely underfunded. Yet, the students who work hard, and have had parents, or a parent, who made sure that they worked to overcome their circumstances excel--however, this is not the case for all.

Would more funding help these schools? Without a doubt. Would better trained teachers improve them. Absolutely. Yet is that The Answer? No--only involved parents who will turn off the TV and encourage learning in their children come anywhere close to filling that bill.

It is shame that more of focus isn't put on this fact , especially amongst many so-called Civil Rights "Leaders" who almost exclusively focus on issues of funding inequities and ignore the true root problems. Indeed, as I have been reading, the issue of funding is apparently the new frontier, so to speak, in terms of educational justice. There are issues that may well need to be addressed, but I guarantee that even if funding were utterly equal across the board that the schools will not improve the way that many critics of the current circumstances think that they will.

Posted by Steven Taylor at May 16, 2024 03:56 PM | TrackBack