9486 in the collection
Considering James Baldwin on FCAT Writes Day
How much longer can teachers
remain silent about what high stakes testing is
doing to children?
by Paul A. Moore
Miami Carol City High School
President Obama is in Florida today to view
first hand the economic devastation here. In
the midst of that human suffering the Florida
Department of Education administered the "FCAT
Writes" to students in public schools across
the state. >From 16-year-old tenth graders on
down to 9-year-old third graders, children
began to and young adults continued to acquaint
themselves with politicians and powerful
business interest's version of "accountability"
and who exactly it applies to.
If the 9-year-olds do not meet the reading
standards of the FCAT they are severely
punished in Florida. The educational policy of
the state is to brand these children as failed.
That is kept in confidence but then to make
sure the lesson on accountability is seared
into a child's brain and self-image forever,
they are publicly humiliated. During the next
school year their classmates proceed to grade
four while they join a new group of kids to
repeat third grade.
If a girl or boy survives Florida's
groundbreaking experiment with childhood
accountability and the educational value of
humiliation, and the child does not drop out
before arriving in high school, then another
FCAT trial awaits. This time graduation from
school, a diploma, is at stake. Last year
nearly 27,000 young people were awarded a
worthless piece of paper in Florida for
finishing high school.
The FDOE does not report this but the vastly
disproportionate number of the children
retained in the third grade and denied a high
school diploma are children of color. They are
African-American children, Latino children,
immigrant children.
It seems appropriate on this day in Florida to
consider the thoughts of a great American
writer. On October 16, 1963, James Baldwin
delivered a speech he called "The Negro Child--
His Self Image" and it has come to be known as
"A Talk to Teachers". While the references
Baldwin makes are a bit dated, the wisdom of it
is timeless. An excerpt follows,
"It is inconceivable that a sovereign people
should continue, as we do so abjectly, to say,
“I can’t do anything about it. It’s the
government.” The government is the creation of
the people. It is responsible to the people.
And the people are responsible for it. No
American has the right to allow the present
government to say, when Negro children are
being bombed and hosed and shot and beaten all
over the Deep South, that there is nothing we
can do about it. There must have been a day in
this country’s life when the bombing of the
children in Sunday School would have created a
public uproar and endangered the life of a
Governor Wallace. It happened here and there
was no public uproar."
"I began by saying that one of the paradoxes of
education was that precisely at the point when
you begin to develop a conscience, you must
find yourself at war with your society. It is
your responsibility to change society if you
think of yourself as an educated person. And
on the basis of the evidence – the moral and
political evidence – one is compelled to say
that this is a backward society. Now if I were
a teacher in this school, or any Negro school,
and I was dealing with Negro children, who were
in my care only a few hours of every day and
would then return to their homes and to the
streets, children who have an apprehension of
their future which with every hour grows
grimmer and darker, I would try to teach them -
I would try to make them know – that those
streets, those houses, those dangers, those
agonies by which they are surrounded, are
criminal. I would try to make each child know
that these things are the result of a criminal
conspiracy to destroy him. I would teach him
that if he intends to get to be a man, he must
at once decide that his is stronger than this
conspiracy and they he must never make his
peace with it."
— Paul A. Moore
comment
2009-02-10
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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