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9486 in the collection
'They Schools’
By Will Okun
At a recent education conference, a veteran public school teacher from Detroit explained why she preferred teaching elementary school to middle or high school. "Not to say elementary schools are heaven, but there is still a sense of hope, a sense of possibility with the young ones. By middle school, it’s just a fight for control of the building’s hallways and classrooms. Control is more the priority than education," she asserted.
"Eleven-year-olds are greeted at the doors with metal detectors and officers with wands. Highlighters, glue sticks and sharpies are confiscated because they are not allowed on the premises. We tell them to wait in lines as we escort them from locked rooms to locked bathrooms. Inside, a good classroom is a controlled classroom."
"We are not teaching them about their lives or their communities because it is not in the curriculum. Instruction is driven by standardized testing. We are teaching testing, not knowledge. No one hears these kids, nor do we try. There is absolutely no respect for these students. These middle schools are like prisons where the spirits of our children are slowly crushed, and I have been an unwilling participant in the destruction of young lives. Simply being witness and not speaking out daily makes me feel the soulful guilt of a thief," concluded the veteran teacher.
We can only hope that this teacher is overstating her accusations, but I think she is accurately describing an academic experience common to many young students forced to attend the worst schools in our low-income urban communities. The teacher’s angry denouncements are echoed by the words and ideas of popular hip-hop group Dead Prez in their song, 'They Schools.' This Brooklyn based duo is probably the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed "political" rap group of this decade.
Here is how these spokesmen describe their high school years and their opinions of urban education in general:
"They Schools" [edited for language and space]
I got my diploma from a school called rickers
Full of teenage mothers and drug dealing ——–
In the hallways, the [police] was always present
Searching through possessions
Looking for dope and weapons
Get your lessons
That’s why my moms kept stressing
I tried to pay attention but they classes wasn’t interesting
They seemed to only glorify the Europeans
Claiming Africans were only three-fifths a human being
School is like a 12 step brainwash camp
They make you think if you drop out, you ain’t got a chance
To advance in life, they try to make you pull your pants up
Students fight the teachers and get took away in handcuffs
And if that wasn’t enough, then they expel y’all
Your peoples understand it but to them, you a failure
They may as well teach us extortion
You either get paid or locked up, the principal is like a warden
In a four-year sentence, mad ——– never finish
But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t be a doctor or a dentist
Cuz for real, a mind is a terrible thing to waste
And all y’all with y’all nose up …
We going to speak for ourselves
See the schools ain’t teaching us nothing
They ain’t teaching us nothing but how to be slaves and hard workers
For white people to build up they stuff
Make they businesses successful while it’s exploiting us
And they ain’t teaching us nothing related to
Solving our own problems
Ain’t teaching us how to get crack out the ghetto
They ain’t teaching us how to stop the police from murdering us
And brutalizing us, they ain’t teaching us how to get our rent paid
They ain’t teaching our families how to interact better with each other
They just teaching us how to build they [stuff] up,
That’s why we got a problem with this,
That’s why —— be dropping out … cuz it don’t relate,
Until … we control the school system
Where we reflect how we going to solve our own problems
Them we ain’t going to relate to school … that’s just how it is
And I love education
But if education ain’t elevating me, … then [expletive] education
At least they [schools].
Although I do not subscribe to the whole of Dead Prez’s tirade, I do agree that many urban schools are training workers rather than developing thinkers or community-minded activists. Most students enter our classrooms intent on earning a high school diploma (or hopefully a future college degree) for the sole purpose of improving their ability to obtain more lucrative or stable employment.
The schools allow this passive mindset to fester. Our classes fail to foster intellectual curiosity. Our lessons are unable to motivate the students. We do not demand critical thinking. We do not offer materials that are relevant to the students’ lives or communities. Even on days when I am not drilling test-taking techniques, I do not understand why I am teaching certain material. How can urban schools not address the myriad problems plaguing the surrounding communities? Why are we not providing our students with the tools and the knowledge to impact change in their families and in their communities? Why do we not attempt to make education relevant?
Instead, many overworked teachers seek students' submission through mindless busywork. We secretly bear witness to the veteran teacher’s observations and socially promote woefully uneducated children towards graduation. It is possible for a student to graduate high school with no academic abilities, critical thinking skills or social awareness. However, the roughly 50 percent of urban children who do reach graduation have demonstrated an ability to sedately sit at a desk for six to seven hours a day and dutifully perform often tedious and regimented assignments. These "molded" graduates are perfect for the menial labor force; too bad there are no jobs.
Here is the video for Dead Prez’ "They Schools," but be warned of explicit lyrics.
Here is the video for Pink Floyd’s "Another Brick in the Wall, II."
Will Okun is a Chicago school teacher who traveled with Nick Kristof in June to central Africa, on the win-a-trip contest. He blogged and vlogged as he went, and you can see his reports at www.nytimes.com/twofortheroad. He teaches English and photography in a Chicago school with many students from low-income and minority homes.
— Will Okun
New York Times blog
2008-02-19
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