We have a Donuts with Dads breakfast and the goal is to have all
dads come to the breakfast and spend time with their child(ren). Problem is this kind of event can open eyes
to the heartbreaking world some of our children live in and endure as a result
of parents who are incapable of being the kind of person who deserves to have a
child in the first place.
I will be sitting in as dad for a number of kids who do not have
dads, and never had a dad, in their lives. Before I agree to be their dad
for the day, I ask them if they will allow me the honor of serving as their
dad. I want them to know how honored and special I feel being able to act
as their dad for this time. I also want them to feel a little bit of love
from a male. Lastly, I want to be sensitive to their reality.
One young girl for whom I will be her dad told me her grandfather hates her dad
so much he will not allow the dad to attend. While this sounds quite serious, the
way the student told the story made me chuckle.
This next one made me cry. After asking one little k5 girl if she would
do me the honor of sitting at my dad's table, she told me she would like that
because her dad tells her he hates her and she is ugly. Dad, the only one ugly
is you. Your daughter is a beautiful young lady and I intend to tell her
that every day because it is true! She will become a successful adult and will
be ten times the person you are. She will survive in spite of you.
I almost think it’s better to have no dad than one who delivers these types of
messages. People who think schools are failing need to understand there
are so many pieces to the educational puzzle. A healthy family, whether it is a
single parent, share custody, gay couple, or the traditional husband-wife, is
an important partner in the educating of the student. Additionally, it
bears out the need to mobilize not only the school and the family, but the
broader community, on behalf of education. It is the only way to ensure
these kids can survive the world in which they were born.
Perhaps, in some instances at least, John Ogbu was right. In Minority Education and Caste: The
American System in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Ogbu’s contends that American society is characterized by
caste-like social relationships and these relationships fundamentally determine
the behavior of the black lower caste when it comes to how they perceive
education, work and their place in society in general.
Ogbu develops the
concept of the “job ceiling” to illustrate the unequal opportunity to participate
in the economic sphere experience by lower caste blacks. Job ceiling means that (a) members of caste-like
minorities are not permitted to compete freely as individuals for any type of
jobs to which they aspire and for which they are qualified, (b) caste-like
minorities are either excluded from the most desirable occupations or not
permitted to obtain their proportionate share of such jobs, solely because of
their caste status rather than because they lack the requisite training, and
(c) as a result of these restrictions, caste-like minorities are confined
largely to the least desirable jobs. There
are two categories of jobs; those above (white jobs) and those below (black
jobs) the job ceiling. (Pg. 29) Lower
caste blacks have historically been employed in semi-skilled labor, as domestic
servants, and farm laborers and this historical reality continues to influence occupational
immobility, even as some blacks have been able to move out of their lower caste
status. Ogbu cites a number of studies
that indicate blacks with similar years of schooling lag behind whites in job
occupations, and income. (Pgs.
150-175) The reality that blacks are not
rewarded for their efforts affects their attitude towards the benefits of
education. The result is a gap between
job status and education.
Bowles and Gintis talk
about education as the “great equalizer,” but both they and Ogbu agree that
public education does not necessarily provide all with either equal preparation
or opportunity to succeed in American economic and social society. Ogbu believes the job ceiling exerts a
profound influence on education efforts; blacks become “disillusioned about the
future and doubtful about the value of schooling. “ (Pg. 191)
Blacks who experience the job ceiling begin to question the relationship
between education and opportunity.
Whether conscious or unconscious, black pessimism about opportunity
begin to negatively influence the way they view and approach educational
performance.
In Ogbu’s construct
the chief “motivation for Americans to maximize their achievement efforts in
school is their belief that more school will one’s chances for a better job,
higher wages, higher social status, and more self-esteem.” (Pg. 195)
Because blacks are largely denied these possibilities, they become disheartened
with the system and its empty promises.
As a result, Blacks reject the skills of the dominant group, and thus
the skills necessary to compete for white jobs, and develop personal attributes
that are acceptable in their caste system, but will not translate into better
jobs. The black dialect common to the
lower caste is perhaps the most obvious example of a personal attribute that
has been further restricted social mobility.
The inability of blacks to speak in the dominant dialect leads teachers
to label black English as “pathological, lazy, disordered or sloppy.” (Pg. 163)
They are merely adapting to their caste environment.
The key for Ogbu is his
belief that job status leads one to question the worth of education. This reversal of the relationship between
work and education makes the existence of the job ceiling the most debilitating
factor in the continuation of the caste system.
According to Ogbu, “the persistence of such a frustrating experience
(job ceiling) over generations led to the evolution of the belief that
education does not help blacks to achieve the same degree of self-improvement
as whites.” (Pg. 196) They respond to this perceived reality by
repudiating education. This explains the
high truancy rates, lack of serious effort, delinquency and large numbers of
drop out.
The powerful negative
socialization caused by the job ceiling permeates and reinforces all aspects of
the caste society. Black caste parents
who have not realized the benefits of education do not encourage their children
to do well in school. Generations of
caste socialization means that families are unable to train their children to
develop the attitudes necessary to succeed in school. There
are few positive family models for black youth and the domination of black
females in caste households “emasculates black men.” (Pg. 201)
The only way to realize mobility out of the caste is to rely on the
“patronage of individual whites or white organizations.” (Pg. 198)
Even this has its drawbacks.
Reliance on whites teaches values of dependency and manipulation.
Education’s structural
emphasis on tracking, biased testing, and inadequate curriculum reinforce and
institutionalize caste stratification that has its roots in the black
historical experience and the reality of the job ceiling. Teacher behavior and inferior schools
certainly contribute to poor academic performance, but Ogbu believes school
reformers “misunderstand that the basis of black academic problems” is the
powerful forces that have created and maintained the caste system. School reform will fail in the face of caste socialization
that occurs in the family, among peer groups, and in the surrounding
community.
Ogbu is highly
critical of rehabilitation strategies or compensatory educational programs like
Head Start because these programs take “no account of the way the caste system
determines patterns of attitudes, self-conceptions, learning habits and
linguistic, cognitive or motivational skills developed by blacks.” (Pg. 99)
Society’s attitudes towards blacks must change before education and
school reforms can lead to general improvement in black school
performance. Until blacks “perceive that
their opportunities in post-school society are limited for no other reason than
because they are black,” education will not live up to its stated purpose as
the great equalizer. (Pg. 100)
Ogbu argues there are a myriad of reasons for the inability of
blacks to move up the social ladder and it seems to me he is right on in his
belief powerfully negative socialization messages that young people in poverty
(not just blacks) hear on a continual basis can be attitudinally devastating. The conditions in which parents grow up
contribute to their inability to treat their own kids with anything less than
disdain. Ogbu would argue there is no
hope for positive change and Inevitably, these messages are part of an overall acquisition
of knowledge that taken in its entirety, create a social reality that contributes
to the creation of attitudes that strengthen the caste-like world in which they
are trapped.
The big problem is five year old kids are trapped in this world and are the
target of these messages. As a school, I
truly hope we can deliver enough messages and enough education and enough
success to help these young kids overcome the powerful narrative that has been
created by adults in their lives.
These are just a microcosm of stories that lead me to be kids
don't fail kids, adults fail kids.
x
