The challenge of creating a successful formal education experience for African American children came under structural stresses of monumental proportions as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education 1954 decision that ended de facto segregation in public school education. The challenge of creating a successful formal education experience for African American children came under structural stresses of monumental proportions as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education 1954 decision that ended de facto segregation in public school education.
Now, a half-century after the hard fought civil rights victory, some educators, parents and community leaders ask whether there is a link between the dismal performance of African American students, including the widening achievement gap between African American and European American students, and the wholesale devaluation of African American educational leadership in favor of the concomitant reaffirmation of European American Supremacy, in the name of integration.
“I think this is a national problem that has gone unnoticed. It remains unnoticed until things start to ignite,” said Dr. Joyce Lewis-Lake, principal of Franklin Middle School in Minneapolis.
“In Memphis where I grew up, teachers were held in high esteem. You would not dare think of disrespecting a teacher. You knew that teachers held our future in their hands. They nurtured and guided you. Parents and students used to come to teachers for guidance and direction.
“Now, some students are continuously defiant. They are not interested in a relationship or in building a relationship. And parents seem to have a problem with our profession as well. Before we move ahead we have to address that issue,” Lewis-Lake said.
But the challenge in the classroom “is epidemic. Children are coming to school from a night that you would not imagine. You could not image what they have gone through. And then we expect children to come into these learning institutions and be taught. Their cups are full. There is no room. The community, the schools, the churches have to help empty their cups so learning can take place,” said social worker Dara Ceaser, who heads Franklin School’s Afrocentric Academy.
Truancy is a big problem, according to William Derden, a classroom teacher at Franklin. “When they are truant, they are not learning. Students are not doing homework. And they are not getting support in home or community. Parental involvement is lacking,” he said.
The students whose parents attend parent-teacher conferences are those students who are doing well, he said.
Mary Wells, who has taught at Franklin for over 20 years said some of “our students don’t value education. They don’t see it as connected to life. They say, ‘I don’t intend to do homework, or bring pencil and paper.’ They don’t want to participate. The disrespect and talk-back, most parents would be surprised to observe.”
Bertha Baker, parent liaison at Franklin said she is encouraged, nonetheless, by the increasing number of parents getting more involved.
The Rev. Paul Slack, a Franklin parent said, “parents’ cups are also full. We lost true sense of partnership between school, home, community and church. Are there people working with children in each area? Yes. But are they working together? Absolutely not.”
Fred Easter, President of The City, Inc., a youth service social service agency that includes an alternative high school, said as schools “desegregated” African American principals were reassigned to roles equivalent to attendance clerks, and the leadership authority for African American children’s education passed from African American hands to European American.
“We are in crisis with children and education and the learning gap,” said educator Francine Chakolis, president of Minnesota Alliance of African American School Educators (MABSE). “No longer do we have privilege of sitting and waiting for someone else to do the job for us. Historically, we educated ourselves. We educated our own children, who went on to become doctors and lawyers. And now we seem to be.
