Acting on What We Know

I was filled with horror at the televised pictures of hurricane victims, both dead and alive. At first, I was appalled at claims by some people that the catastrophe of inadequate response to need was racially based. But, I’ve come to accept with shame that a major reason so many people remained in their homes was that they didn’t have the money to get out. And, poverty brings us back to race.

In The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, Jonathan Kozol, who earlier awoke my consciousness in his searing book about schools in East St. Louis, again exposes what he calls de facto segregation in urban school systems. His descriptions of physical conditions of schools echo what I read each fall in Washington as schools reopen: schools are “buildings where ceilings leak, rats scurry, and toilets don’t flush.” Citing data about significant gaps between per-pupil spending in districts that serve predominantly white students and predominantly students of color, Kozol contends that current conditions expand the “vast divide between two separate worlds of future cognitive activity, political sagacity, social health and economic status, and the capability of children of minorities to thrive.” A Washington Post review on September 4, 2005 applauds Kozol’s book because it “firmly grounds school-reform issues in the thorny context of race and concludes that the nation has failed to deliver the promise of Brown v. Board of Education.”

Another book I’m reading right now is the NCTE publication Teachers Organizing for Change: Making Literacy Learning Everybody’s Business by Cathy Fleischer. Cathy’s book makes sense to me on so many counts, but especially when she suggests that teacher-researchers, who constitute so many NCTE members, need to become teacher-organizers so that they can communicate their understandings to their communities. This spread of information, according to Cathy, “transforms knowledge into language and formats that are appealing and understandable to others who are not in the field—centering that knowledge on the real lives of students.” And, this knowledge must lead to change where it is needed.

The pictures from New Orleans and the stories of victims have spurred many Americans to action, in personal and community acts of kindness and in calls for political changes to be sure delayed response to crisis never happens again. The visual and the narrative are powerful influences that have appeal and can lead to understanding and action based on the real lives of individuals and communities. But, in this situation we are being reactive.

How can we as teachers present images and tell stories that will evoke public action about the horrific conditions of schools in many urban neighborhoods? Are we able to link our images and stories to the underlying reality of the place of poverty and race in creating the state of urban schools? How much responsibility are we who don’t teach in urban schools willing to take before, and not after, the effects of neglect erupt into crises that we then treat with surprise? Tough questions, but ones we can not put off answering.