Great Expectations
The phrase "high expectations" means more than some policy wonks seem to think it does. It refers, of course, to our expectations for children's success, but it also refers to what students should be able to expect from the world around them. Schools, families, communities and policymakers are all on the hook.
That is one of the lessons I draw from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, which I finally read this week. Gladwell's book pokes holes in the Horatio Alger "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" myth of success in America. The culture that shapes your behavior and the conditions in which you grow up have an enormous impact on your chances for success.
We therefore all share responsibility for helping children strike a grand bargain with adults, Gladwell suggests: Work hard, treat others well, and we'll give you every opportunity to succeed. (KIPP schools, which Gladwell profiles in Chapter 9, make this bargain explicit). Unfortunately, adults all too often renege on their end of the bargain.
The wealthy are lucky enough to have "Great Expectations" in the nineteenth-century sense of the phrase. (Think Charles Dickens). Children from well-to-do families have a sense of "entitlement" that gives them a leg up, Gladwell writes. They expect something from the world, and they know how to shape things to their advantage. Poor children, by contrast, expect little, they "don't know how to get their way," and they learn to distrust authority.
Of course, wealthy children have every reason for their great expectations. For example, college is a foregone conclusion for the vast majority of these children, not only because they tend to do well in school but also because their parents can afford it.
Gladwell suggests that, decades ago, college costs were within reach of any qualified high school graduate. He tells the story of Ted Friedman, a poor kid from the Bronx who puts himself thorugh college for $450 a year in the 1930's and later becomes one of the nation's top lawyers. Friedman's story is about more than just pluck and determination:
He happened to come along at a time in America when if you were willing to work hard, you could take responsibility for yourself and put yourself through school. (p. 137)
My father's story is similar. As an immigrant coming to this country with empty pockets in the early '50's, he was still able to talk his way into the University of Rochester and, later, Columbia University. What's more, he was able to pay for college by working odd jobs.
Think that would work today? Fat chance.
As E.J. Dionne notes in a recent column, the inaccessibility of college for so many Americans "undermines the story we like to tell about our country," namely, that you can do anything you set your mind to. I worry that it also kills motivation.
What do students do when we fail to keep up our end of the deal? According to recent research, fears about the high cost of college can depress students' academic performance as early as seventh grade. When it comes to college, poor students have low expectations.
Contrast those findings with the results of "Say Yes to Education." In communities where it operates, the Say Yes initiative has dramatically narrowed high school and college graduation gaps between inner-city students and their suburban peers. How does it do this? It offers disadvantaged youth a wide array of services ranging from academic support and health care to college scholarships.
Like the KIPP schools, Say Yes seems to offer students an attractive bargain: Apply yourself, and we'll be there for you from start to finish. That is what "high expectations" really should mean.
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This is a beautiful
This is a beautiful posting.
Gladwell makes a strong case for policies that level the economic and social playing field. He also takes on the difficult and contentious issues about culture that many other people are unwilling to confront--President Obama is an of course notable exception.
Gladwell reminds us that it's OK to attribute academic achievement gaps to differences in culture--and that people can take charge of their own destinies when they change those aspects of their cultures that hold them back. This does not mean that diverse cultures are not valuable. It mens that people of various cultures will adapt to the demands of a new age--as all cultures must.
I think culture is going to be one of the big educational themes of the coming decade. The dam has burst.
Round and round on this one,
Round and round on this one, just like your picture! :]
It seems schools are all about being ok with everyone else's "culture," but never want to acknowledge that some cultures do not value institutional education, or specifically higher education, for their female children, but provide no opt-out. How many extremely fundamentalist families send their GIRLS off anywhere?
And yet, we seem to like to look at the colour of a person's skin in terms of college admission, which really has nothing to do with anything. Or the economics of the family. I know plenty of very poor doctoral and/or medical students whose children are well-educated, thankyouverymuch.
Then I wonder... why is this even seen as a problem? Can we not live and let live? Can I not be "tolerant" of other people and their ways of life without insisting on leveling a "playing field" when some of us don't want to play the game, don't want to be measured, and don't want to take the test?
Isn't that rather paternalistic of us to even look into that issue? Who are we to insist that these children are constantly compared with one another's ethnic groups? That has to hurt young children's self-esteem if they happen to be in the "loser" group. And if you hear this enough, what does that do to a child? I'm not a liberal by a long shot, but I think the "self-esteem" point is warranted here.
Or how about this "norming" of tests. There was some big testing of a new test going on in the schools of our town several years back. They wanted to have children take the test to see if different groups of children will do well based on their skin colour. How racist!
My children were not selected to do this because I'm not black or on welfare and am a college graduate. Somehow I'm thinking when you exclude people, test only the people you want to test, and tweak the thing until it's "culturally" equitable, then you're going to get the result you want.
Why bother testing? Can we please go back to the days when we did stuff in Latin, so all of us except the Pope can be considered illeducated and be done with it?
Oh, Mrs. C--You really do
Oh, Mrs. C--You really do enjoy pushing my buttons....
As for your last point--OK, as long as I get to be Pope! (I have to brush up on my Latin.)
Having once been in the penurious doctoral student candidate category, I can attest to the fact that my family's experience and the experience of families ensnared in generational poverty are worlds apart. Halting all comparisons between the achievement of children races and backgrounds is not, to my mind, a strategy to "live and let live." Most parents and children do want to "play the game," but they've been given lousy odds of winning. The fact that so many low-income kids and kids of color are not performing as well as their peers is troublesome to say the least. In the case, "to live and let live" means turning a blind eye to persistent and enforced inequity.
You make a good point when you point out effects of disaggregated data reporting on students' self esteem. Some even use those data to suggest that some groups of children are inherently incapable, despite ample evidence of just how educable all children are. Still, the alternative--allowing a large and growing portion of the population to have fewer opportunities and remain so far from their potential--strikes me as morally and economically unacceptable. The days of rule by a small, altruistic educated class are gone--assuming they ever even existed.
Ah... but my point is that no
Ah... but my point is that no one IS "enforcing" inequity. Inequity just is a fact of life, though of course outright discrimination doesn't have to be. (Irish people rock, ok? But we got treated like dirt.)
Today, all races of people can go to the library just as I can. All the races/ ethnicities/ income levels within our *school district* will share our schools.
Now, differences between one district and the next? They're huge. I know poverty can play into it, but I don't think that that's the total going on here.
It shouldn't follow that my son's testing data should be distributed without our consent. Who owns the children and their data? Because I signed stuff stating that I didn't want anything but his NAME in the directory or given to third parties.
YET. No matter what I fill out on forms, the schools put us down as "Caucasian." I've put "Displaced Edenic Peoples" and they've erased it and put "Caucasian." Shouldn't I get to say what I am? Well, another post. I even told them that we were Native American and when I explained it was just one relative in 1740, they refused to change the designation. Hmpf.
PS Hey, we agree sometimes! Just not on this idea of testing and tracking. :]
I had to pop by and say hi
I had to pop by and say hi for a minute after I read this blog post and thought of you.
http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-teacher-speaks-out-what-is-...
Where to even start with this? Public schoolteachers who hate the demographic they teach. About as bad as the "tard-blog."
:[ Sad.
Sad, indeed. What a racist
Sad, indeed. What a racist rant. The person who published it hardly passes the laugh test when he suggests that such a heap of stereotypes would somehow advance our national discussion about race.
That kind of teacher is in the minority. For a thoughtful account by an inner-city public school teacher who loves his students but remains clear-eyed about the challenges of teaching in a high-poverty school, see Dan Brown's Great Expectations School. Very poignant stuff.
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