I warn you, this is long.
Doug Mann and Michael Atherton use portions of my column to
flog the same old horse: Minneapolis Public Schools Bad. Very, Very
Bad.
I thank Jonathan Palmer for giving the link to the actual
column. Here it is again, in case you missed it. Read it and come to
your own conclusions
http://www.swjournal.com/display/inn_opinion/opinion04.txt
Context, of course, is everything. The article is about my
five years of leading parent tours in my school, Lake Harriet, which
is located in one of the more affluent areas of the city. Nearly all
the parents on these tours are white and most are middle-class or
wealthier. They are trying to choose a good school from a list of
many good schools. They take the education of their children quite
seriously. So this was the targeted/target audience and hey man,
these folks are My People. So I'm hardly about bash 'em. Because
damn, I have live in this neighborhood, hell hath no fury like a
scorned white professional and bashing could lead to ugly scenes for
me in my neighborhood Bibelot Shop. (Actually, I don't shop there.
It's too Girl-Girl for me. And here's an unrelated question for the
List: My husband insists the store's particular aroma comes from a
highly concentrated gaseous form of estrogen that is pumped into the
shop to increase sales of otherwise useless stuff. I say Urban
Legend. He says Scientific Marketing Tool. If you know, tell me
off-list.)
Back to schools. The downside of all this parent involvement
can lead to some Over-Involved, Highly Anxious Parents. And that's
what I was writing about/to. Sometimes, the sense of entitlement is
so over-the-top, it's funny. Last year one of these anxious Yuppie
couples told our principal they would agree to send their child to
our school (a presumed magnificent offer) but only if our school
would offer theater classes on Sunday.
"Geez, our school building isn't open on Sunday," said our principal.
"But that's the only day that will work for our schedule!."
the dad snapped.
For the record, I will take over-involved parents over
under-involved parents in a heartbeat. Every time. Even if the
over-involved ones are sometimes a real pain in the ass. Because one
of the reasons public school kids in my neighborhood test as high as
their white, middle-class peers in Edina and Minnetonka is because
their parents make education a high priority. Atherton says if you
want your kids to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer, you should
worry about sending kids to the Minneapolis schools. Well, we've got
plenty of doctors and lawyers sending their kids to our school. And
plenty of kids who graduated from Lake Harriet are now in medical
school and law school.
I say all this because you wouldn't know it from reading some
posts on this List. Or even reading the Strib.
Our school has no behavioral specialist. No community
liaison staff (that's why parents like me give school tours.) No
assistant principal. Bare-bones secretarial support. In fact,
bare-bones everything when it comes to staffing. (Lost all those
positions in budget cuts years ago, especially as we moved to
community school status and lost compensatory funds and Title One
money.) We have some of the highest test scores in the district. And
yet, according to State Sen. Myron Orfield, we also have some of the
lowest per-pupil expenditures in the district.
How to explain our results? Parent involvement. Family
stability. Community support. Because to get this kind of synergy,
you need a whole bunch of active, stable famlies as opposed to just a
few. Because, like Wizard Marks said in one of her posts, it's about
human investment. It's about reading to your kids, turning off the
TV, teaching and enforcing good behavior, backing up the teachers if
your kid is misbehaving in the classroom and with three high-spirited
boys, I have indeed gotten those kind of phone-calls. This is all
made much easier, of course, by having money. But it's not 100
percent dependent on income. I know plenty of poor families who do
this too. And plenty of rich folks who don't do it.
In the column I wrote: "Because most of the time, It's the
family, stupid. If parents stay sober, feed their kids, enforce
bed-times, give hugs, teach manners, turn off the TV, read books,
monitor homework and show up at conferences -- by God, it may be a
miracle and trust me, it will be
time-consuming, but most of these offspring will do all right."
And man, this little list, which may sound easy to the
non-parents, IS exhausting and time-consuming. Sometimes I still
feel no one really warned me how labor-intensive parenthood is. I
sort of thought it was going to be this neat little hobby, a kind of
side-venture while I pursued My Great Career. Alas, no and no great
career either. But I am privileged. I have a nice house in a nice
neighborhood. I don't live paycheck to paycheck any more. I have a
great husband. None of our kids have been diagnosed with learning
disabilities or chronic health issues.
I'm telling you, I've got it made. And I still fall short
all the time. Awhile back, I got a call from a teacher saying one of
my sons hadn't turned in his math homework in TWO MONTHS.
"Really?" I said, surprised.
"I've already sent three notes homes," she said. "Have you
cleaned out the backpack lately?"
In fact, I hadn't. So if Little Ms. White Privilege in
Linden Hills is slacking off, we can only imagine how hard it is for
parents juggling far more difficult lives and loads.
And as long as we're on the topic of White Privilege, I
might as well add that there's some other white advantages. I and my
children do not have 300 years of the dominant culture telling us,
directly and indirectly, that we're intellectually stupid. (Something
that the black and Native American population continues to face and
which I believe has the same, subtle and cancerous effect of
second-hand smoke on all of us.) My 14-year-old son is not being
chronically stopped by the police, followed by security guards and
told by the culture, directly and indirectly, that he's a criminal.
Half of the men in my neighborhood between the ages of 18 and 30 are
not being arrested or otherwise monitored by the criminal justice
system. And my neighbors are usually able to get mortgages and
business loans, based on their income and assets. Imagine that!!!
If we're going to talk about family responsibility and
involvement, all these things play a role too. If we don't
acknowledge this, we're back to the old trap of demonizing the poor.
That's why I think the traditional liberal versus
conservative approach to these issues is outdated. It's not "It's the
System's Fault" versus "It's the Family." It's both. And we've got to
work on both simultaneously.
(The weird thing, and I've noted this before, is how certain
conservatives drop all their personal responsibility stuff when it
comes to public schools. Suddenly, my God, the school system is100
percent responsible for the failures of humanity. Which works well as
a tactic to start privatizing education and asking for school
vouchers for all.)
The "It's the System" versus "It's the Family" comes up for
me all the time. A few weeks ago, I was listening to former Hennepin
County Attorney Tom Johnson talk about racial profiling. In our
current war on drugs in this state, which is waged almost entirely on
the black population, blacks are nine times as likely to be arrested
on possession charges; 22 times more likely to serve time. (Never
mind that black and white drug use is, according to various studies,
either equal or pretty close to it.) The 100 to 1 sentencing
differences between crack and powder cocaine continues--even though
or perhaps because- inner city blacks have tended to use crack while
suburban whites have tended to use powder.
Johnson says the appalling black drop-out rates and huge gap
in test scores are linked to this drug war. You wouldn't know this
from Doug Mann and Michael Athertons' various posts ---but the
horrific drop-out rates and test score gaps in Minneapolis are also
happening nationwide. It's not a localized failure of the Minneapolis
public schools. If it was, we could go to Chicago, Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Denver, Los Angeles or Houston, etc. and see
what they're doing right and follow their example.
Unfortunately, in city after city, we are seeing the same
phenomenon: whole generations of poor, black (and also Hispanic)
teenagers committing a form of intellectual suicide. Dropping out.
Deciding that achievement in school is a "white thing." The
Minneapolis schools are offering tutors, mentors, after-school
programs, summer school, alternative high schools---it's not as
though the public schools aren't trying anything--and yet we continue
to watch huge numbers line up and drink this particular Purple
Kool-Aid. Beyond the obvious social costs, I think of some of the
great minds and achievements we're losing in this city! Every year.
Every day. It makes me crazy. It makes teachers crazy. And it makes
plenty of black parents really crazy. And desperate.
Which is why many middle-class black families move to the
suburbs or send their kids to private schools. Or at least that's
what they tell me. It's not as if they believe the teachers in Eden
Prairie or Edina are so superior, so much more racially-sensitive.
It's not that the curriculum is even any different. (It usually
isn't) It's an effort to get away from a culture of entrenched
poverty and/or academic suicide. Life is too short. Childhood is even
shorter. You do whatever you can to help your kids survive. People
who can't afford to make these moves say a lot of prayers. White
parents also avoid schools with high percentages of poverty for the
same reasons.
Anyhow, I hear all these stories and I often feel overwhelmed
and desperate. So I go back to It's the Family, Stupid. Because
changing the larger culture seems too big to handle and I believe
with all my heart and soul that the family remains the key. But I was
saying this to Tom Johnson who said, "You may be right, but until we
stop this insane drug war, these appalling arrest and incarcaration
rates, do you think the community really wants to listen to your
little Family Values Lecture?"
Johnson says the drug war leads to a deep alienation towards
anything perceived as part of the power system. Which, unfortunately,
includes the schools.
I still think the involvement of families in their
children's education is absolutely crucial. To pretend otherwise is
to ignore the elephant in the living room. But there's a whole bunch
of elephants in a whole bunch of living rooms all over this town. In
my more affluent, white section of the city, one of our elephants is
the appalling silence of white people in the face of this
long-running and unjust racial profiling. Our general indifference to
affordable housing issues. And more.
I don't expect any of this to affect the school bashers. They
will continue to make Minnapolis Public Schools solely responsible
for the failures of all of us. Man, if only it were that simple.
Sorry for the length of this post. And my thanks to Jonathan
Palmer, Andy Driscoll, Wizard Marks and others for their thoughtful
posts on the schools. I learn from all of you folks on the List.
Every day.
Lynnell Mickelsen
Ward 13, Linden Hills
--
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