BACK TO SCHOOL BLUES
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Students started trickling back to school, in the South, in mid-August. By
the day after Labor Day the bulk of our nation’s students had begun their
academic year. Their parents dropped hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars
for new clothes and school supplies, making students a sought-after market.
Hopefully, now the learning begins, but one might wonder what students will
learn from those who are directing their education.
Yes, I’ve got the back-to-school blues. They hit me every September. I’ve
not had to go through the ritual of getting a syllabus together or preparing
new class lists in nearly a decade. Still, September almost always means new
beginnings and opportunities. Just like fall foliage turns colors and
reminds us of our capacity to change, so September school times remind us
that change is one of the most exciting parts of life. Yet, the more things
change, the more they stay the same. And one hopes that African American
students who are returning to school do not learn cynicism from the double
standards that exist in higher education policy.
In Atlanta, a federal appeals court ruled that state and school officials at
the University of Georgia had failed to prove the need for an admissions
policy weighted toward minority students who were on the borderline of being
admitted. The court said that considering race as an admission factor does
not guarantee diversity. Of course, they did not address the legacy program
at the University of Georgia, a program that weighs whether or not students’
parents were alumni of the school. Legacy programs are the same thing as the
“grandfather clauses” that prevented first generation freedmen from voting.
Of course, the courts are silent on that kind of bias, preferring to slam the
door in the faces of thousands of black students in Georgia.
Meanwhile, as Congress trickles back to Washington, the back-to-school blues
may shape the way Mr. Bush’s education bill is treated by Congress. Bush has
been disappointed that his No Child Left Behind Act (Did Mr. Bush credit the
children’s Defense Fund for ripping off their slogan?) has not been cleared
by both houses of Congress. To be sure, they have passed versions of the
legislation in the house and the Senate. But the two versions have
differences in the number of federal educational programs, approaches to
national testing, and state and local flexibility. In some ways, the
Bush-favored legislation provides large subsidies to just a handful of
testing programs. And, there is little proof that children need to be tested
every time they turn around so that they can get a quality education.
Meanwhile, there is proof that people respond to environment, yet the Bush
Administration has proposed little to modernize schools, especially in inner
city. Real education reform would mean changing the way education is
financed. That is a “state’s rights” issue, though, so this President has
repeatedly failed to address it.
I’ve got the back-to-school blues, brought on, this year by all the talk of
educational reform and private education. To be sure, public schools have
dropped the ball and parents have a right to seek the best education they can
for their children. But fracturing a public school system undercuts the
notion of universal education, and raises curricular questions that have
major social implications. I recently had a conversation with a 15-year-old
white girl who goes to an exclusive private school in Arizona. She hadn’t
learned much about the civil rights era, nothing at all about unions, and
even less about discrimination against women in the workplace. The girl told
me she knew it was not legal to pay men and women different amounts so “we
really don’t need a women’s movement anymore.” Imagine someone with that
limited education operating as a citizen in a multicultural world or, worse,
making decisions that affect us all.
History and social policy get short shrift in some schools, but the basic 3
R’s get the shaft in others, where there aren’t enough books to go around,
and students are pushing copies of their reading into their back packs. In
some cases, teachers are paying for the copying out of their own pockets
because they don’t want students to fall behind. And policy-makers seem
incapable of doing anything about it.
People say that they care about young people and education, but their caring
doesn’t translate into an improvement in educational quality. The brunt of
our nation’s educational shortcomings fall on black and brown youngsters, and
on those who live in inner cities and are poor. At both the K-12 level or
in higher education, our nation’s educational systems brim over with
frustration. We’ve all got work to do to turn education systems around, but
I’ve got the back to school blues.