“Violence is Black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education.”
- Julian Bond
Education policies mirror a society’s ethos.
Education is more than the impartation of knowledge; it is the acquisition of skills, values, and habits. What is taught, how it is taught, and who is being taught reflects what the society values most. According to education policy scholars, there are four purposes of schooling: intellectual, political, social, and economic (Sadovnik, et al. 2018). Intellectually, policy is designed to teach basic cognitive skills and transmit specific knowledge. Politically, the goal is to instill patriotism and facilitate assimilation to the society’s political order. The social purpose of schooling is to transform pupils into functioning members of society – to instill social values and responsibilities. Similarly, the economic purpose is train and allocate pupils into the division of labor. In its totality, public education, in particular, serves to uphold and reproduce societal norms and functions.
In 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote an essay in which he presented what he believed to be the criterion for proper education. At the time, 4 million African Americans were of school age yet only 2 million were enrolled. He argued the exclusion of African Americans in the nation’s education system harmed all of America as it meant the U.S. lacked a public education system that would “create the intelligent basis of a real democracy” (Du Bois 328). According to Du Bois, proper education is provided when there is/are:
Sympathetic touch between teacher and student.
The teacher has knowledge on each student and their surroundings, background, and the history of their [socio-economic] class and [racial/ethnic] group.
Contact between students and students, and students and teacher(s) on the basis of perfect social equality, which increases sympathy and knowledge.
Facilities for education in equipment and housing.
Promotion of extra-curricular activities as it tends to induct the child into life.
Du Bois’ criterion doesn’t mention what children learn (math, reading, science, arts, etc.) or how to assess how much they learn, and with good reason. Like many other scholars, he understood that any properly trained teacher would have the ability to disseminate information to their students. His concern rather, was the environment in which students learn: Is it nurturing, rooted in equity? In the classroom, equity begins with a simple yet difficult to perform task. When both teachers and students take the time to confront, confess, and abandon any implicit biases and explicit prejudices they might have – daily – the grounds for equity have been plowed.
Over eighty years ago, Du Bois asked the nation to consider four things whenever education and schooling was the talking point:
(1) Is the schooling equitable? (2) Is it nurturing? (3) Is it purposeful? (4) What opportunities does it offer?
Each time Black communities have paused to consider the answers, they realized their children were lacking a proper education and got to work. They launched programs, introduced curriculum, and held boards of education accountable. It is this rich history of community centered and influenced education that we must continue to stand upon.
The Darkness: Unequal Education
In classrooms, Black students are made to feel as though they are deficit learners; as though their cultural knowledge has nothing of value; as though their presence is a problem. In 2016, 19% of children enrolled in preschool were Black, but 47% of preschool children who had one out-of-school suspension were Black (Morris 57). Studies have found that Black students who put their best effort into learning and connecting with their teacher might not be rewarded in the same way their white classmates would be rewarded (Morris 38). Frankly, Black students are often not fairly recognized because they are Black (Horsford 87). Discussion of the achievement gap often highlights the effects of poverty, but the role of racism is sometimes overlooked. Here in New York City, more than 70% of Black and Latino children attend schools in which most of the students enrolled live in poverty (Cobb).
To discuss or investigate inequity in education without the framework of critical race theory is irresponsible, for as educator and poet Eve L. Ewing notes: “Like an electrical current running through water, race has a way of filling space even as it remains invisible” (Ghosts in the Schoolyard 10).
Black students in America have yet to experience unanimous social equality in the classroom. Accounts of awkward Black History Month lessons, strained student-teacher relationships, and emotional isolation from the rest of the school’s population indicates how little sympathy Black students receive in their learning environments and how much they are misunderstood. For far too many of us, our educators’ classroom management styles and pedagogy pathologizes Blackness. This is not to say culturally relevant and sensitive curricula does not exist in schools across the nation, but there is no uniformity. Though Brown vs. Board of Education desegregated the nation’s schools, it did not place education policy, standards, and outcomes under the federal government’s control. The decision to leave the 1899 decision intact was, arguably, an offering to states wherein racism was more explicit. If Black students are to receive what Du Bois defines as proper education, the U.S. government must acknowledge its active role in maintaining systemic racial oppression. Just last year, Milliken vs. Bradley (1974) was used to uphold the blatant unconstitutionally unequal treatment of students in Detroit, Michigan (Savit).