Sue's Place

The N&R claims that neighborhood schools are merely separate but equal, a throwback to segregation. In an unsigned editorial that makes several good points, the author states that Guilford County residents are merely tired of trying to balance racial numbers in schools and “neighborhood schools” is merely a euphemism for “segregated.” Whether it’s bussing, economic outrage of paying for a house in a district you want your children to attend, desegregation not raising test scores or lowering suspension levels for minority youth, the key line in the editorial for me is this:

And there is something to say for the life lessons to be learned in a school that actually reflects the real world.

Society isn’t racially balanced, just like it’s not socio-economically balanced. Most neighborhoods are not economically integrated; you live where you can afford or where you choose. Heck, I think the N&R staff isn’t racially balanced either (but they, like many socially responsible businesses, are trying their darndest).

The issue can be summed up as “mirror” and “lamp.” Do you want the schools to be a mirror of what society really is, or a lamp — a beacon of what society can be? The problem, and one of the reasons I left public education is, that we say we want schools be a lamp, and then take our wars of the mirror into the classrooms and demand impossible results.

Prayer in school. Why not prayer in the workplace? Let’s pass a law that says any business that pays federal taxes must start each morning with an organized prayer. If you don’t want to pray, then you can stand silently while your co-workers do. When that one is decided by the Supreme Court, let’s impose that ruling in our schools.

Integration by numbers. Why not in the newsroom or in the boardroom or the factory or in the cleaning business or in web design?  When we have figured out how to balance the numbers of workers in MOST businesses, then let’s impose that on the schools with the skills and talents we gathered from making it happen in the real world.

Equal expectations. Why not in professional sports? Instead of demanding equal test scores for students no matter what environment in which they are raised, why don’t we figure out how to make every student-athlete into a professional one? When we learn how to do that, we can take the solution back into the schools and fix the test score problem.
Before anyone decides to brand me as a racist or other slur, my devil’s advocate point is this:

We cannot expect “the schools” to be a perfect place when our society is imperfect. If we can’t solve the same problems that adults face in society, how can we legislate those elusive solutions in school? I would so love to believe that schools can be a lamp and from them, our society can improve, but it hasn’t happened yet and today’s incident that displayed community anger (as well as some childishness) in the N&R education blog makes me feel pessimistic about the situation in Guilford County.

We need to fix the grownups first. And we need to stop insisting that “the schools” are some artificial environment akin to a test tube or rat maze, where we can make the impossible happen. Let the teachers teach. Let the students learn.