Written in August 2021 to my local school board as a long abandoned racist mascot showed up on our new gym floor.
Horace Mann, considered by some the father of American public education, said, “Education is the great equalizer.” Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education under the Obama administration, reiterated that quote often adding, “Education has to be the great equalizer.” The problem is that while the promise of education might be to ensure equality, the practices, policies and functions of our education system have not created equality, but have furthered inequities in not only school experiences, but increasingly in post-secondary life. Further, we’ve defined success so narrowly, that we’ve alienated and demeaned whole parts of our population because they haven’t achieved a four year education, haven’t found good paying jobs despite getting a degree, or who don’t learn in the environments our schools perpetually create, with subjects compartmentalized, in rows, with bells, and using assessment systems that are not meaningful, not manageable and not ethical. This narrowing has effects, and those effects have serious consequences that last generations. Thus far, in the American public school experiment, education has not been the great equalizer, but instead the great socializer, and not for good.
Curriculum is the sum of the school experience. It is watching teachers interact with students, how teachers interact with each other. It is watching teachers correct, or intervene in bullying, or correct the “N” word, the “R” word, or not. It is a racist mascot. It is saying, “Racism is the topic of the month.” It is sitting behind a student with a confederate flag on his t-shirt and no one says anything. It is giving detention to the girl with the too thin spaghetti strap. It is the articles they choose to read, the video clips, the conversations they choose to have, and the ones they don’t. It is the way the leadership talks to students and to teachers, the money spent on certain programs over others, the authors and stories that students can relate to and the books that students cannot see themselves in. It is the all male administration. It is the posters on the wall, the quotes. It is the feedback we seek from learners, or not. It is the way we talk about college and success. It is the learners we celebrate, and the ones who get kicked out of class. It is the alternative education program and the upkeep of buildings. It is technology we purchase. It’s the cameras everywhere. It’s the conversations about kindness and the officer with a gun. It is how much teachers get paid, how much we pay our support staff, the school lunch and the hall passes required to go to the bathroom. Everything matters.
This curriculum is our socialization, and my home district for generations my home district turned out students who can’t talk about race and racism, who have a warped view of the history of this country, who don’t understand how systems work for them and against them, who don’t know how to live in a community that looks out for everyone. We have turned out citizens who don’t participate in our local politics. We have had so many suicides and drug overdoses in our community, and we don’t choose to think about how our system has contributed to this. When students are in our schools for thirteen years, for one hundred and eighty days of the year, seven hours a day, we must look inward and take responsibility for these outcomes, for this conditioning. We must look, however painful. We are not just teaching math, reading, social studies and science, we are teaching human beings. We are socializing a community.