A Vision Statement

OK, it's time for the vision thing. I'm prompted to write this because I was just chastised by La Maestra in my post on Why Schools Should Not Be Run Like Businesses. She said I complained a lot and that she didn't know where I was coming from. I think that's a fair criticism.

Part of the challenge of being a public school advocate and activist is to do two things simultaneously: (1) critique the status quo and (2) uphold a vision of something worth working towards. I absolutely agree with her that I have not done enough of the latter. So, here we go . . .

I live in the suburbs, so there’s not a lot of common space here. There’s no city center. There are very few sidewalks. People don’t walk much. In truth, you rarely see people at all, just the outlines of their heads as they whiz by in their cars.

The vast majority of Americans are like me, i.e., they live in rural or suburban areas. Like me, they also have little experience of common space.

We don’t see each other much, we Americans.

Oh sure. There are exceptions to this. We see Bill and Steve and the rest of the crew at the office. We sometimes bump into neighbors as we shop at the grocery store. And we see lots of people as we parade through the mall.

But each of these examples has one thing in common: people gathered together in shared space for commercial purposes. In fact, if you think about it, almost everywhere you go, someone wants us to buy something or produce something for them that will make money. Even on 5th Avenue in New York City, perhaps one of the most diverse streets on the planet, people are there not to be with each other but to gawk at the goods displayed in those famous windows. And those that are not window-shopping are on their way to or from work.

So without working and buying things, I wonder if we’d ever see anybody. Our chance interactions are almost always sponsored by someone or something: “This brief encounter with your cousin Steve brought to you by Macy’s” or “This experience of seeing people of a different race brought to you by The Mall of America.”

You could say, “Well, thank goodness that we do have these opportunities. Without them, we’d never see anybody.” And while this is hard to argue, I’m not terribly happy with this conclusion. I don’t want to have to my experience of democracy brought to me by a commercial sponsor. I don’t want to have to buy a pair of shoes to see other people. And, somehow, I want that experience of other people to be more than just staring at them as they pass by in frozen foods or looking at the backs of their heads as we stand in line to buy gum.

Of course, we see each other on television – in movies and in sit-coms and on the news. And, based on my experience of others on television, I know that most Asians are very quiet and work in laundries, that women on crime shows have large breasts and wear short skirts and tend to over-react when under pressure, that young black men are very angry and sing a lot about bitches and hos, that Muslims wear scarves over their heads and carry Kalashnikov machine guns, and that white men are smart and usually in charge.

Yes, those of us who go to churches spend time with each other in a non-commercial space. But people in most churches aren’t exactly open to a diversity of views and opinions, much less a diversity of race, ethnicity, and social class. Most of the time, when we go to church, we hear what we’ve already heard and see who we’ve already seen.

In fact, the only place where people can go and share common space inside non-commercial venues is a public school. (Channel 1 tried to change that, but – fortunately – it recently reported financial problems and looks like it’s going to be gone forever. Good riddance.) In our society today, public schools are the only place where we have a chance to see and talk to people who are not exactly like us, maybe even get to know them a bit. For those of us who have already graduated from public high schools, it’s too late. There is really no other place to go.

Look, I know. It’s not like there was a time when this did happen, back in the good old days when people of different racial, ethnic, religious, and social backgrounds got together and held hands and inter-related. Rich people have always stayed around rich people, whites have pretty much always stuck to whites, blacks to blacks, etc., etc. And, of course, this is the case today. And it was certainly not the case with public schools either, certainly not before Brown v. Board, and certainly not today. A large number of suburban and rural schools are virtually devoid of any kind of diversity, whether economic, racial, ethnic, or religious.

In acknowledging this, we should not conclude that since most public schools are devoid of diversity, we should give up on the vision that diversity entails. Rather, it’s a reminder that we have to fight for what little diversity there is, where people of different backgrounds can share common space. It’s also a reminder that we have our work cut out for us to extend the democratic commons, to find new ways for diversity to be nurtured or, at the very least, to be experienced on a more substantive basis beyond merely passing each other at the food court.

You see, there was recognition in Brown, albeit a tacit one, that getting young people together who were not like each other was a good thing. If you think about it, it was an extraordinarily visionary thing to say: students segregated on the basis of race were inherently disadvantaged EVEN IF the facilities and material conditions of their schools were the same as their all-white counterparts. To the Warren court, race mattered. It made a huge difference. The Court argued that segregation in public schools deprived black children of the equal protection of the laws. In writing the majority decision, Chief Justice Warren asked, “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.” Most powerfully, Warren wrote, “To separate (black children) from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”

Segregation affects their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. So Brown gave us an extraordinary opportunity. It laid the foundation for a free, open, non-commercial democratic commons.

Yet segregation in public schools persists to this day. In Chicago, by the academic year 2002-2003, 87 percent of public-school enrollment was black or Hispanic; less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Washington, D.C., 94 percent of children were black or Hispanic; less than 5 percent were white. In St. Louis, 82 percent of the student population were black or Hispanic; in Philadelphia and Cleveland, 79 percent; in Los Angeles, 84 percent, in Detroit, 96 percent; in Baltimore, 89 percent. In New York City, nearly three quarters of the students were black or Hispanic.

I’m reminded of an analogy that a black conservative commentator made. He said that you can walk by fresh fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, but that exposure is not going to make you healthy. By the same token, you can fill schools with a whole variety of different kinds of kids from different backgrounds, but that exposure is not going to stop you from being a racist.

I certainly do not see integration as our ultimate goal. After all, a school that appears "integrated" on the surface invariably conceals the vast disparities that exist between its students, largely drawn along racial lines. There's the automatic assumption that throwing kids from different economic and racial backgrounds together somehow leads to racial and class harmony. There is rarely any mechanism in the school to talk about race or class or difference of any kind. There is no means by which race and racial integration could be discussed or promoted, even questioned. It is simply taken as a given that kids of different races and classes, in close physical proximity to one another, are coexisting openly and peacefully. Unfortunately, whatever racist or classist ideas the kids had formed at an earlier age are too often reinforced in an institution that -- ironically -- is committed to undoing these kind of beliefs.

So what do you DO about that? I think you do what people have always done when faced with something they find intolerable: work to change it by upholding a vision of something worth fighting for.

For me, one vision worth fighting for is one where public schools foreground the democratic commons, i.e., bring children and parents of different races, classes, and beliefs together to facilitate dialogue and inquiry among them. In the simplest terms, it's better that we know about each other, that we interact with each other, if only to increase the likelihood that we can undermine (or at least weaken) the crippling stereotypes that cause us to hold each other in suspicion or contempt. If we make no such attempt, we increase the likelihood that these stereotypes and misunderstandings will continue, will worsen with time, and will eventually destroy us.

We have to do more than this. I'm encouraged by the efforts of programs like Anytown USA and the Dismantling Racism Institute for Educators, both sponsored by The National Conference for Community and Justice.

This might actually be the most important work our public schools do. This might be enough. If they do this well enough, perhaps the rest is gravy.

So when you hear supporters of public education decry high-stakes standardized tests, NCLB, prepping kids for work in the 21st century, etc., we do so because we’re concerned that the things that we most care about and think that public schools should focus on have not even been tried yet. We were just getting started with Brown. It took schools all over the south decades to conform. But now, look at the state of segregation in our schools. The project has been lost. We’ve given up, it seems.

Hey, I’m with Lincoln. In the Gettysburg Address, delivered in November 1863 when our country was mired in the worst war it has ever known, Lincoln said that America was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Putting aside the historically specific language, recognize that Lincoln -- the same man that issued The Emancipation Proclamation -- was saying that our country is dedicated to a PROPOSITION – not a fact – that all people are created equal. A proposition. What does that mean? It means that we are a work in progress. Our foundation is not a fact, it’s a proposition. We as a social entity have proposed to organize our society around a belief – a proposition – that everyone is equal. Lincoln proposed this vision of equality just as the country was literally falling apart. We’re still working on it.

In fact, we’ve been working on a similarly vast and unreasonable vision since the very beginning of this country. Just listen to the foundational document of this country, the Constitution:

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, . . ."

The Founders were not about creating a perfect union; they were about creating a more perfect union, one that was better than the one they started with. Each day, more perfect, but not perfect - not completely. Each day - progress. Each day - closer to perfect, but not perfect. A never-ending work in progress. A proposition worth working towards. It goes without saying, then, that the Founders were progressives.

At the heart of what progressives stand for is the word "progress." But is progress possible? Is history the story of progress? And how can progress be possible in light of the results of recent elections, where states defined marriage in their constitutions as between a man and a woman? How can we say that we believe in progress in light of Auschwitz, the killing fields of Cambodia, the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, pandemic poverty, AIDS, racism, global warming, and a litany of seemingly endless and seemingly insurmountable problems and atrocities?

Because progressives believe that it's the project of human beings to create a more perfect civilization – a more perfect union – and that it takes a long time to accomplish this. We believe that human beings have the ability to rise above their animal instincts. We believe that it is the destiny of human societies to be open to diverse ways of living and being in the world, that diversity is as beautiful and magical as the diversity of a coral reef, and that diversity is to be nurtured and celebrated.

We also recognize that these beliefs run counter to what our animal natures tell us, that we should be afraid of things that are not like us, that we should horde our resources in case the winter is longer and harsher than anticipated, that it makes more sense to kill someone to get his bone and to give the scraps only to those in our den, that we should attack the weak to improve our species' chances of survival, and that we should growl and show our teeth when we are most afraid.

But we also recognize that our beliefs are bigger and more powerful than these instincts, and that they call to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”