Reginald Williams
Special to the AFRO
This time of year is full of back to school events, including free back-to-school haircuts from neighborhood barbers and school supplies from churches, government agencies and community organizations.
The return to school is intended to be a time for reacquaintance, where students arrive prepared to learn, and educators are ready to teach. However, in too many cases, students often return to school after summer break academically unprepared.
Several studies suggest that summer separation from scholastic instruction contributes significantly to the academic disparity K-12 students face upon their return from vacation.
Harvard research maintains that academic decay is more progressive depending on “ethnicity and socioeconomic status.” The obstacles that negatively impact White students often have a more severe impact on Black students, says the research. The study also noted that “summer reading and math losses are sensitive to income status.”
Poor and disadvantaged students experience more considerable summer reading losses than their middle-class counterparts, and all students experience similar losses in math. To explain this finding, scholars have relied on surveys of summer activities, which show that children in poverty have fewer opportunities to practice reading than middle-class children. As a result, socioeconomic gaps in reading are heightened during vacation, suggesting that differences in family background—not differences in school quality—create achievement inequalities.
A time for change
The Center for American Progress, a public policy organization dedicated “to improving the lives of all Americans through bold, progressive ideas,” maintains that systemic racism colors education. The organization has said that wide-reaching changes to America’s education indoctrination must start with a change in the curriculum.
Coach Alfred Powell agrees that the public school curriculum is “adverse” and ineffective for Black children. Experts today use a behavior risk factor survey for adverse childhood experiences (ACE) to score the potentially traumatic impact of events before age 18. The survey asks about everything from instances of divorce to housing instability to gauge the trauma a person has experienced. Powell, a Western Ohio community educator and clinical professor, instead looks at a different type of “ACE,” which he calls “adverse curriculum experiences.”
“The word ‘curriculum’ connotes a course of study. Therefore, a Eurocentric curriculum is designed to take a person on a course of study that primarily highlights the accomplishments of Europeans, often excluding the achievements of other cultures,” Powell explained. “This narrow focus is detrimental to the imagination, self-esteem, and self-worth of BIPOC students, especially young Black boys. When the curriculum fails to reflect their history, culture, and contributions, it implicitly tells them that their experiences and identities are less valuable or irrelevant.”
Powell maintains that children who have to navigate the storms of an adverse curriculum are also grappling with the invisible messaging, intentionally advanced by public education leaders. Powell contends that the current public education curriculum:
- Omits the accomplishments and contributions of Black people, especially before slavery
- Celebrates Whiteness
- Purposely manipulates cultural consciousness
- Minimizes slavery and racism
- Profiles BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) as savages and career criminals
“By connecting the curriculum to their students’ lived experiences and cultural backgrounds, educators can motivate them to pursue excellence, exceptionalism, and determination,” said Powell. “This approach helps students overcome the many distractions and challenges surrounding them and fosters a sense of belonging and self-worth. When students see themselves reflected in their education, they are more likely to engage with the material and strive for success.”
J. Dwayne Garnett, a valued-based educator, also believes the curriculum has a more nuanced problem that fails to speak to the humanity of Black boys.
“When you talk about education, there’s no curriculum set aside for them. Their minds can’t even think about a Black male being a human,” said Garnett, founder of Love Is A Parable, a nonprofit organization transforming lives through valued-based education.
El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, the minister formerly known as Malcolm X, said more than five decades ago, “Only a fool would allow his enemies to educate his children.”
As suggested by the late activist, there exist all kinds of red flags that suggest Black children have no valued place in America’s educational system.
The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights says Black students comprise 14.9 percent of public school students. However, they make up almost 40 percent of the students suspended annually.
The American Institutes for Research found that missing significant time from school had counterproductive impacts on academic outcomes and future behaviors. One study revealed that Black adolescent males represented more than one-half of the 17,000 preschool students expelled or suspended. Many educators have proven that they honor policy above practicum.
The Yale Child Study Center conducted research entitled, “Do Early Educators’ Implicit Bias Regarding Sex and Race Relate to Behavior Expectations and Recommendations of Preschool Expulsions and Suspension,” revealing that the suspension of Black boys was too often due to teacher bias. The study validates Garnett’s hypothesis regarding the dehumanization of Black boys, which is evident in how the world treats Black men.
“We do live in a society where we are not prepared– nor have we even ventured to discuss– the intersectionality of Black men,” said Garnett. “Black boys aren’t thought of because Black men are not thought of. Black men are prepared for masculinity, every other demographic is prepared for humanity.”
Baruti Kafele, credited with elevating Newark Tech High School in Newark, NJ from the worst school in the state to the best, challenges educators and curriculum. He believes Black students must be seen and welcomed within the curriculum.
“As long as we fail to properly educate Black children as to who that is in the mirror—historically, culturally, socially, economically, politically– we will continue to ask the same questions that we have been asking for decades: ‘How do we close the achievement gap of Black children?’ and ‘How do we inspire Black children to excel in the classroom?’”
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