RECREATING SEGREGATED SCHOOLING

 By: Dr. Armãndo R. Tolliver | ADVOCATE | August 2, 2011
          Free public education is something that most of us take for granted; however, it is clear that education has not always been the right of all Americans. The spread of the public education system was met with some resistance to equality. Initially, the government did not want to educate the poor, which later became an issue of race. This issue became one concern for Civil Rights leaders that was overcome with the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was unanimous — the doctrine of “separate-but-equal” was inherently unconstitutional.

This landmark ruling began our nation’s long journey toward school desegregation. The purpose of Brown v. Board of Education decision was to enhance the attainment of equal educational opportunity for public education for all the citizens of our country. The implementation of the means to achieve equal opportunity has yet to develop into the desired equity of outcomes. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a 2nd-generation of problems created in patterns of socioeconomic stratification methods in its creation and maintenance of education systems is developing, which are recreating segregated schooling, in the eyes of some.

Although significant gains have been made for children of minority populations and those with disabilities, the benefits have not been made available on an equitable basis for all children, particularly for poor and minority children. For black children in particular, there continues to be an overrepresentation in certain categories of disability, misclassification, unnecessary isolation from non-disabled peers, and low-quality curriculum and instruction, which promote hardships in attaining equity in outcomes promised by the Supreme Court decision. If we take a deeper look at the disparity in our educational system, it is easy to notice that nonminority children, in nice suburbs, have clean and safe schools with a curriculum that stimulates their interests and creativity. Meanwhile, predominantly black and Hispanic children have regularly been consigned to attend run-down inner city schools whose administrators and staff have traditionally spent most of the scant money they do receive on rote memorization.

For example, Jonathan Kozol noted a classroom in Harlem High had 40 students and only 30 desks.  Other poorly funded schools were so crowded they had to shorten the school day to accommodate a double shift of students. In many poor areas of NYC, libraries were small or nonexistent, and art and music programs had almost disappeared. Urban schools, with 90% of their student body composed of minority students, are found to be lacking the fundamental basics, things such as good textbooks, clean classrooms, technology, and extracurricular activities; schools in these poor communities have been settling for a different set of academic and career goals. What is happening right now? 

Additionally, all school districts are vulnerable to “teaching to the program”, but such actions hurt already short-changed inner city students much more than the suburbanite. Because the former school has money to spare outside of the testing programs, compliance with federal and state testing program requirements, no matter how unrealistic the benchmark definitions of student success, is easier to absorb. The same school struggling to keep working toilets is not as fortunate. Segregation, lack of funding, lack of resources, poverty, violence, curriculum differences, psychological damage, and high dropout rates are major issues in the public school system that can somewhat be deduced from the legacy of racial differences. Patterns of socioeconomic stratification is creating and maintaining disparate education systems, which are recreating segregated schooling.

The psychological impact of racial differences since the Brown Decision leads to a “will to fail” – psychological pathology prevalent among minority children educated in segregated schools. Children’s loss of a willingness to try and their failure to believe they have the same abilities as do nonminority children in more privileged communities has sickened many students. Kozol states, “It is harder to convince young people they can learn when they are cordoned off by a society that isn’t sure they really can.” The heart of the problem here is not education alone, but the very society upon which our education system has developed. Sadly, equality is just as relevant, and necessary, discussion today as it was years ago with Brown v. Board of Education. Am I saying that this is done intentionally to keep minority groups under the hand of the majority, NO! However, this does cause you to ponder over the idea of this occurring and we not take notice. It also causes you to analyze the data revolving around minorities in education. And, unfortunately these new manipulations serve to make “equality” an abstraction—a rational impossibility, which only further perpetuates the “will to fail” psychology.

So what do you think, do schools play a role in supporting or reproducing these inequalities? Do schools promote the success of some members of society while hampering the success of others? We do know that schools in poor areas where academic achievement is low tend to be poorly staffed, underfunded, undersupplied, and wrought with physical and emotional dangers. These conditions represent one form of social inequity. Desegregation has not succeeded in bringing minority students in contact with the majority. Both neighborhood segregation and school segregation result in isolation from a cultural norm whose values and icons are often different.

Suggested Citation
Tolliver, Armãndo. (2011). Recreating Segregated Schooling. [Education Project Online]. Retrieved online at http://www.educationprojectonline.com/2011/08/recreating-segregated-schooling.html