“Rich and Black” students flunk for the same reason poor blacks and many poor white students flunk. Professor Ogbu had an excuse for not answering the question when he said that he was a researcher, not an educator. But even if a successful black adult doesn’t have an answer for why some black students do not succeed in school, professional educators should at least try to find out why?

I have been a teacher for 35 years, and have always been aware and disturbed about the problem of some black and Latino students resisting or rebelling against schoolwork. But it took me some time and a lot of experience to figure out why. Actually, for educators, these unexplored questions can be a bit dangerous, as Professor Ogbu discovered.

In this age of racial sensitivity and political correctness, educators tend to avoid the subject, and are even quick to criticize those who do try to understand.

I started dealing with this problem some years ago when I discovered that the East Palo Alto students were reading at the 16th percentile and the Palo Alto students were reading at the 86th percentile. The best students were separated from the worst students by the 101 freeway. The EPA students were mostly poor and black, and the PA students were mostly rich and white. The only possible explanations for this learning gap include the racist conclusion that the EPA students were defective humans who didn’t want to learn, which is implied in the cloudy Ogbu conclusion.

But the other unconsidered explanation is that there is something wrong with the educational system. But neither Ogbu nor his critics were able, willing, or courageous enough to look beyond the superficial evidence of flunking, and look at the school environment for an answer to the question.

Remember Columbine? It was a big news item for several weeks on TV, radio, and print news. The whole world was sitting at the edge of their chairs waiting for someone to explain why these boys wanted to kill their classmates and teachers, and blow up the school. We were treated to an endless army of “child experts” who all pointed their fingers at the “defective” children, too much TV, computer games, movies, and they usually implied “defective” parents. But none of these “experts” ever considered looking at the place where these angry boys were forced to spend 6 hours per day for 11 years.

One of their victims, before she was shot, asked her killer, “Why are you doing this?” His reply was, “To get even!” And then he killed her. This exchange was reported widely in the news. But none of the “experts” ever wondered, “What did this boy have to get even for?” We did, however, eventually learn that the “Trench coat Mafia” were boys who were outcasts, demeaned by school authorities and harassed by the “jocks”. In an environment of totally powerless children, these boys found some satisfaction and some power, as a gang. And the bully techniques that gave them the power to frighten others were learned by imitating their tormentors, and by acquiring bigger weapons than those that were used against them.

A hurtful word, or indifference to one’s cry for help, has less power to harm, than a bullet or a bomb. They won their battle, but they and the school lost the war. The world sees these boys as sub-human monsters, proven by their cruel purpose. But anger never originates in a vacuum. Anger always has a cause. Yet no one looked for a cause. No one looked for a connection between their anger and their 12,000 hours of their obviously painful classroom experiences.

Publicly, schools are promoted as places where adults are dedicated to the noble profession of educating children, which is actually true for those adults who actually spend their days in classrooms trying to help children. But schools also have a secret, hidden, unspoken, unwritten, 100-year-old tradition, as places to control children, by keeping them off the streets and out of sight.

This secret custodial purpose of schools, based upon fear, threats, distrust, and the disrespect of children, is more important than education. In a place where caring adults are supposed to be helping enthusiastic children, we are expected to treat them like prisoners who won’t cooperate without threats, and will escape if we don’t control them.

When conflicts occur between education and the rigid procedures to control children, education always comes out last. Schools are not paid for quantity or quality of education, but for their ability to force children to attend. “Average Daily Attendance” pays the bills, not education.

Most children manage to handle this negative side of education because they want to please their parents. But others, mostly boys with emerging manhood, and a need to avoid any appearance as submissive or cowardly, may want to defend their honor from an “oppressive” system that leaves them frustrated, unsatisfied, and angry.

The most rebellious boys will often even consider their parents as allies of the “enemy” because they want their children to be in school to get an education. But regardless of the level of cooperation or non-cooperation a student chooses, all schoolchildren, by 3rd grade have at least a little resentment and at least a little anger over their lack of satisfaction in school. And as the years pass, and the frustration grows, some accumulate a history of failures and a lot of anger. The less successful a student is, the more they feel betrayed, and the greater is their anger.

The least successful, or the most humiliated students, who can’t find respect and recognition in school, can easily find these good things on the street, in gangs. Public education’s least educated and most angry students populate the juvenile halls. Gangs are often a good solution for the angry boys, and incarceration is often a good solution for the school system to dispose of their neglected rejects.

The reason that some Black and Latino students see cooperating with the oppressive school system as a betrayal of their “honor” is that they also experience anger outside of school from the oppressive society that frustrates them with discrimination prejudice and injustice. They bring their non-school anger with them into the school where it is compounded by the school-generated anger.

It is this magnified anger, along with the real or imagined attack on their “manhood” and the humiliating effect of their very real powerlessness in school that causes them to resist or reject any possible power they may get from whatever knowledge or skills that might be available. In this bad situation, angry students can easily lose sight of the fact that any education is better than no education.

They are fighting a lonely battle for survival in an environment trying to crush them. They know that their “enemies” are adults, but after years of being distrusted, they can’t distinguish between adults who are trying to help and those who are trying to hurt. No matter how good the school is or how sincere the teachers, after eight years of humiliating and painful defeat, even in the “paradise” of the school described by Professor Ogbu they can’t stop defending themselves.

The only real solution to this destruction of human potential is in satisfying the unsatisfied, and the elimination of “failures”, which will both reduce anger. When schools focus more on education and less on forceful control, student satisfaction becomes more possible, and school-anger is reduced. When students find personal satisfaction and dignity in school, we will empower them to better handle the anger they are exposed to outside of school.

Those educators who manage schools and their university theorists rarely have any interest in looking at the defects of public education, but are dedicated to defending the harmful old school traditions that may seem to work for the school system, but are traditions that betray students, especially those who need a little extra help to succeed.

If anyone wants to know how to eliminate failure and guarantee success for all children in any school, I will be glad to inform anyone how easy it is.

I am particularly concerned about the large numbers of Black and Latino students that schools prepare for a life of poverty and hopelessness. It is a crime against children that must be stopped. It is easy to stop. It is inexpensive to stop. But the only way it will be stopped is with an alliance between parents, students, and teachers, the three most sincere, but most powerless people in schools.

Jim Weber
thorgilsy@yahoo.com

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I enjoyed reading this thoughtful article. Great work.

Interesting, well researched and informative, but I'm not sure I totally agree