A CALL TO ACTION: A New Civil Rights Movement Focused on Public Education!

Education is a civil rights issue of our time just as education and segregation were in the 1950s. Back then, the challenge was breaking down the barriers that prevented black children from attending public schools.  Thanks to the civil rights leaders of 50s and 60s, all children are permitted to attend public schools, but not much else has changed. Academic performance of many poor and minority children, blacks especially, still charts well below classmates.

Poverty still pervades the black communities and those of other minorities, and they are populated with multiple generations of men and women who have always failed in school. Far too many of their sons and daughters fill the seats of the schoolhouse-to-jailhouse express to overflowing; adding “criminal justice reform” to the list of civil rights issues.

Shutting down the schoolhouse-to-jailhouse pipeline is a point on everyone’s priority list, but all the talk and pledges in the world will not alter our current reality until we begin to alter the forces that drive that reality. Even then we cannot change, overnight, that which has taken generations to evolve.

The problems are systemic, and we must address the inherent imperfections of systems, not treat the symptoms of those imperfections.

The issue of criminal justice provides a useful example. For people who have not worked in the criminal justice system, the reactive nature of the system is often misunderstood. Our courts do not go out and seek people to load up their dockets nor do corrections facilities recruit inmates. Each institution must deal with the people delivered to its door.

Our police departments respond to complaints, patrol to deter crime, and act when witnessing evidence of illegal activity. Abuses of their power are not part of law enforcement training protocols, they are aberrant behavior; whether resulting from prejudice, poor training, or breaches of policy.

Although founded on the principles of democracy and on the rights and responsibilities protected and expected under the U.S. Constitution, the criminal justice system, like all systems of human design, are imperfect. When these systems are inundated, both the imperfections of the systems and the prejudices of some of its people are exposed. It is such aberrations that destroy trust between law enforcement and the communities they exist to serve and protect.

The criminal justice system is inundated because the schoolhouse-to-jailhouse pipeline is overflowing. We will not be effective in improving the efficacy of the criminal justice system until we address the social problems that overload its circuits. We must understand why the pipeline exists and the simple and convenient answers of poverty and discrimination are not very helpful. 

If we have learned anything over the last 60-plus years, it is that  we cannot legislate an end to the prejudices and enmity in the hearts of man. We cannot wish away the social realities that devastate the lives of so many people.

While necessary, protesting the injustices in society will not alter the social realities of our communities.

The only way to protect blacks and other minorities from discrimination and the imperfections of the justice system is to reduce the flow of people entering that system.

The only way to keep young black and other minority men and women from entering the system is to help them become impervious to discrimination by giving them a menu of meaningful choices.

The only way to provide them with meaningful choices is to make meaningful changes in the education process that was intended to provide them with those choices.

The only way to ensure a quality education for every child is to alter an education process that, historically, has not served the interests of society’s most vulnerable children; whatever the genesis of that vulnerability.

Like poverty and discrimination, the schoolhouse-to-jailhouse pipeline is a consequence of something that is not working the way our society needs it to work. That something is the “education process” at work in our schools, both our public schools and private. Whether they will admit it or not, virtually every educator understands that what they are being asked to do does not work for many children. Our education process has been obsolete for generations.

From the perspective of this observer, when the growing population of students demanded a reconfiguration of the process, in the early years of public education, the mounting cost and the need for operational efficiency obscured the essential purpose of education. We must redefine that purpose, which was to ensure that the unique needs of individual students are met.

Far too many of the young men and women leaving high school, today, with or without diplomas, are bereft of meaningful choices of what to do with their lives to find joy and to provide for themselves and families. When they leave school, this population of students opts for the only choice available to them: return to the communities from which they came, unprepared to participate in what the rest of us think of as the American dream.

Clearly, the education process is not meeting the needs of these young people. Unfortunately for society and educators alike, we blame our schools and teachers for the flaws of the process rather than the process, itself.

The consequence for society is that the education reforms, innovations, and initiatives of the last half century or more were like seeds planted in barren soil. Even the best ideas in the world will not take root in an environment unable to provide the nutrients necessary for germination, let alone blossoming.

A special report published, just this morning, in EdWeek UPDATE illustrates my point. The report notes that there is “no measurable gap between charters, traditional public schools on national tests.”

The charter school movement has not fixed what is broken in our schools because they still rely on the same education process as other schools. Just changing names, buildings, and teachers doesn’t change that which does not work.

In the interim, notwithstanding the litany of education reforms, American society has seen significant erosion of its faith in our public schools and teachers, never quite comprehending that teachers are as much victims of flawed education process as the students and communities they were employed to serve.

Americans are left with an education process that is the functional equivalent of a maelstrom in which children, communities, teachers, school, administrators, policy makers, and elected officials have become entrapped. It is an education process that cannot be fixed from the inside out.

As difficult as it may be, everyone involved in or who has a stake in the American education system must fight their way to the shore, climb out of the maelstrom, and examine the process from a new perspective. They must be challenged to take a paradigm leap and seek solutions outside the boundaries of conventional wisdom.

For that purpose, I have developed an education model that has been created to serve no purpose other than meet the unique needs of each one of our children. The Hawkins Model© is designed to allow teachers to focus on relationships and to ensure that every student has as much time and attention as they need to learn as much as they are able, at their own best pace. Only in such a learning environment can teachers help children develop their intellectual, physical, and emotional potential and begin discovering their special talents, interests, and aspirations.

The one thing educators dare not do, after fighting their way to the shore, is to dive back into the maelstrom where they will be engulfed in hopelessness; powerless to alter the destiny of our society and our participatory democracy.

Donald Trump Right for Once, But Just as Wrong As Ever?: An open letter to Hillary Clinton

As dangerous as his candidacy may be and as absurd as is most of what he says, there is a recent statement about which Donald Trump is simultaneously wrong and right. It is absurd to call Hillary Clinton a bigot given all that she has done on behalf of the American people during a lifetime of public service, however we might feel about policy.

Donald Trump is absolutely correct, however, when he suggests that the policies proposed by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party offer nothing new for the black community, for race relations, or to the American poor, in general. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump offers only ambiguous promises while claiming that he has the answers for everything.

Due to the current situation in the U.S. with respect to both race relations and public education, there is a tremendous opportunity for Hillary Clinton and her party to capture the support of a huge proportion of the American people with a truly new solution to the problems of blacks, the poor, and other minorities. Given that Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, has alienated teachers throughout Indiana and promotes charter schools and vouchers while virtually abandoning our most challenged public schools, now is an opportunity to draw clear distinctions. These schools serve our most vulnerable children, their teachers and communities.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the problems in our poorest urban and rural communities, which are disproportionately African-American, are not a consequence of poverty and discrimination. In our racist society, there will always be white Americans who judge African-Americans and others on the basis of the color of their skin. And, in spite of the accomplishments of so many African-American men and women, across so many venues, poverty and discrimination persist because millions of other black Americans lack the knowledge and skills necessary to compete for their rightful place among mainstream Americans.

Whether educated African-Americans in business and professional venues, or blacks in professional athletics or entertainment, they clearly demonstrate that African-Americans can be successful in any venue in which they are in possession of the requisite skills and knowledge. The operative question, then, is: Why do so many poor blacks lack the essential skills and knowledge necessary to compete in mainstream American society? The answer, of course, is public education. And it is here that Hillary Clinton could endorse a plan to reinvent the educational process and alter, forever, public education in America.

Black children and other poor or minority children lack those essential tools of success not because they are incapable of learning and not because they are plagued with bad teachers and schools. They lack the essential tools because the educational process at work in American public schools is neither tasked, structured, nor resourced to meet the unique needs of disadvantaged children. While this flawed educational process has done a gross disservice to all disadvantaged children; African-Americans are impacted disproportionately. As a result, our poor urban and rural black communities are populated by multiple generations of men, women, and children who have nowhere else to go.

That the performance gap between black students and their white classmates exists is an indisputable fact. What is also indisputable is that poor black students arrive for their first day of school burdened by enormous disadvantages. That the majority of these children fail, just like their parents failed, provides compelling evidence that our educational process does an unacceptable job of helping disadvantaged students overcome their disadvantages. That we accept this failure as if we are powerless to alter it is unfathomable.

Education reformers, like Mike Pence, attack teachers and schools for this intolerable failure and are working hard to replace our most challenged schools and their teachers with private charter schools that have not proven to have significantly better success in helping disadvantaged students than the public schools they are intended to replace. This is in spite of the millions of tax dollars paid to these charter schools through voucher programs. What these schools do best is filter out the least motivated parents and still some of these charter schools fall short of expectations.

Neither the education reformers nor public school teachers and administrators are taking the time to understand why so many of these children fail. Instead, they charge forth on the basis of their outdated assumptions while millions of our most vulnerable children find themselves on the “schoolhouse to jailhouse track.”

People, in any venue, who are required to work with obsolete tools, systems, and processes cannot improve the quality of their work just by working harder and teachers are no exception. My biggest criticism of public school teachers, the majority of whom are unsung American heroes, is that they do not convert what they witness in their classrooms into meaningful advocacy. What we desperately need from teachers is that they stand united and shout out at the top of their voices that what they are being asked to do does not work for disadvantaged students.

We have been teaching children the same way for so long that we have become immersed in the educational process and inured to the harm it does to the disadvantaged. We know these children need parental support but we make minimal effort to overcome the mistrust of parents. We know these kids need close, nurturing relationships with their teachers but every year we pass students on to new teachers whom they do not know and may have never met. Only a few are able to begin anew and build the kind of special relationships the rest of us recall when we think back on our favorite teachers.

We know these kids are unprepared, academically, yet we make no effort to identify the breadth and scope of their disadvantages so that we can create an academic plan tailored to their unique needs. We know these kids need more time to master their lessons but as much as teachers strive to give them that extra time, the educational process demands that we push them ahead with their classmates, ready or not. Rather than a system in which every child learns as much as they are able at their best speed, public education is structured as a competition in which some kids excel and others fail. Why would we ever be willing to accept the failure of a child.

We know these children need to experience success before they can master the process of success and yet we record their Ds and Fs in our grade books even though we know those grades begin to have a labeling effect. We accept these Ds and Fs even though they demonstrate, with great clarity, that these kids are unprepared to move on. We also know kids can take only so much failure before they give up on themselves, stop trying, and begin acting out. Why are we surprised when these young people leave school unprepared to participate in the American dream?

These tragic outcomes that we produce, so routinely, and that sentence young people to a life of poverty and second-class citizenship, are not inevitable facts of life for the poor and the non-white rather they are the inevitable consequences of a flawed educational process. It is a process that can be changed as easily as changing our choice of textbooks.

The changes required to correct these deficiencies in the educational process are simple and straightforward but they cannot be envisioned until we think beyond the boundaries of conventional wisdom; until we think exponentially (outside the box). Neither can we implement these simple changes incrementally. Old habits are too difficult to break and it is too easy to slip back into the ways of the past. For these simple changes to be implemented, successfully, there must be an irrevocable break from past educational practices.

The reader is urged to check out the following, in any order or combination, to learn how the above reality can be changed, irrevocably:

• My white paper entitled, Breaking Down the Cycles of Failure and Poverty: Making Public Education Work for All Students Irrespective of Relative Affluence or the Color of Their Skin;

• My implementation plan entitled: Implementation Outline for Educational Model in Which there is Only Success and No Failure;

• My book, entitle, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America; or

• My blog: Education, Hope, and the American Dream.