What's Education (Learning & Teaching) Got To Do With It?

October 11, 2008

With all the excitement being generated by the 2008 presidential candidates, it’s very important for each of us to look closely at what it means to be a real citizen in America. As I reflect on the news and talk shows on television and radio, replay "YouTube" clips of speeches, comments and the antics of people possessed by an insatiable urge to be with the winning ticket; I wonder, what does education – the learning capacities of people have to do with all this. Are people just stupid and crazy naturally or has something else happened?

More than a decade ago the following paragraphs served as the opening to a co-authored article by Donelan, Neal & Jones (1994):

… [I]n 1954 laws and policies that once kept generations in chains and allowed self-interest to be enshrined above moral principles finally opened a path toward justice and equality for African Americans. Our children should also know that the legal decision that sparked a quiet revolution in public elementary and secondary educational equity celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The case that brought this profound change is, of course, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954).

In Brown, the Supreme Court unanimously recognized that de jure segregation of school children by race, even if the facilities and other tangibles were equal, deprives them of equal educational opportunity. Brown's continuing moral suasion still inspires rich discussions of its significance (see, for example, Klarman, 1994; Tushnet, 1991, 1994). However, while Brown helped remove legally sanctioned barriers to educational equality, subsequent policies allowing academic tracking and ability grouping drew new boundaries to stifle African Americans as they sought to realize their full potential in school and life. In addition, the reality of race and education today has taken a profound and ironic twist: when remedies are proposed to overcome unfair allocations and address inequitable outcomes in education and society in general, racism receives only fragments of attention. To address and change inequitable grouping patterns, educators, administrators, and policy makers must first acknowledge that persistent racism is rooted in society's settled attitudes toward African Americans as a whole.

I remind myself that the present educational paradigm was conceived to mold U.S citizens into a work force suitable for creating an industrial revolution. All major efforts to reform, redirect, retool, and reconstruct learning and teaching processes in schools are actually acknowledgements of the inadequacy that runs rampart at the level of student and teacher interactions. The inadequacy is not confined to a particular region of the country. We often point at the presence of inadequacies in urban settings but they are present in suburban and rural areas as well.

Once again I’ll point us in the direction of our 2008 election, its atmosphere, its spirit. Consider this video clip about recent exchanges at a political rallies and about one in particular.

Hate on the campaign trail

Oct. 10: The mood at John McCain's campaign rallies has grown more hateful with fears and misconceptions about Barack Obama becoming pervasive. Rachel Maddow talks to Time magazine contributor and Radar Washington editor Ana Marie Cox, who has been traveling with the McCain campaign, about the mood among the crowds. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin weighs in on what history tells us about politics gone bad on the campaign trail.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27125261#27125261

Is this woman a fair representation of the learning she took away from her schooling? What was the quality of the system she was immersed in daily? Given her attempt at honest expression – What does education (learning and teaching in her schools) have to do with it? Are we all being subjected to de jure mis-education? Should the U.S. Supreme Court hear the case American Citizens (Class Action Style) v. The Fifty (50) State Education Systems of America?

I look forward to any and all responses as we share ideas about these matters among our minds.

Peace & Light,
Dr. D

Reference(s)
Donelan, R. W., Neal, G. A., & Jones, D. L. (1994). The promise of Brown and the reality of academic grouping: The tracks of my tears. The Journal of Negro Education, 63(3), 376-387.