Two days after the D.C. Millions More March gathering, The Denver Post published a report about how Cherry Creek School District was grappling with the racial implications of the academic disparity between blacks and Latinos and white students. Juxtaposing the two events – one chronicling a long-simmering failure in our schools; the other, a march of undefined relevance – I appreciated a common thread:
Racial matters will continue to hound America, until we honestly and fearlessly grapple with them. We must also be mindful that black children – poor, dispirited and lost – can only be saved one at a time.
As parents of former Cherry Creek students, we were always impressed by the teachers’ attention and desire to help. We often went to school authorities as our children’s advocates. Even so, occasionally, things happened to our children or other black students that could only be ascribed to race.
Since many kids yearn for and treasure their teachers’ encouragement, it’s shameful that race has played a significant role in how some teachers treat black children. As Jonathan Kozol says: “If there are amazing graces on this earth, I believe that they are these good children sent to us by God and not yet soiled by the knowledge that their nation does not love them.”
In the pressure and crush of the classroom, it’s easy for a teacher to forget her or his role as the architect of a generation’s mental edifices; the sculptor of our youth’s future. Often a cutting remark leaves deep scars; and a word of praise can change a child’s future. It’s so much easier to create than to destroy. The responsibility teachers bear for the future of America should be part of their training. And we should pay them commensurate with their worth to society.
If race is important at Cherry Creek, with a relatively small minority student body, things must be much worse in schools with many more dark kids. Commendably, Cherry Creek teachers (92.5 percent white) meet twice a month to discuss their attitude towards black and Hispanic children. It’s great that Cherry Creek is taking the failure of its minority kids seriously. But even the best teachers and institutional efforts will fail if their endeavors are not accompanied by black children actually wanting to learn; and their parents actively engaging their kids at home.
The failure of black students at Cherry Creek mirrors black youth’s drowning in a culture where education is undervalued. It affects more males than females. The result is we’re setting these innocents up for the half-lived lives of many black men. A disappearing breed from American colleges, too many are AWOL fathers and husbands. After they graduate with eighth-grade math and reading skills, we warehouse them in our jails. And black women aren’t far ahead either; they have a twenty-fold higher rate of HIV infection than white women.
Jonathan Kozol has written a great deal about educational apartheid; segregating poor black children from good suburban schools; leading to Third World education. Yet, Cherry Creek offers the best schools for children of all races. Discounting teacher racial attitudes, surely the problem must be more than access.
Parents are the essential ingredient that’s always lacking in the recipe we call “good education.” Asian kids are no brainier than black or white kids. Parental dedication is the one factor that explains their academic excellence. A cultural and racial dedication to the child and the child’s performance in life and school is the key to that child’s excellence.
A few other solutions might include: acknowledgment of black honor students who should be encouraged to pursue more rigorous academic endeavors, and to attend international baccalaureate programs; pairing good high school and college students with elementary children; soliciting the help of black intellectuals; recruiting local black and white alumni, as well as the black church.
Black leader Louis Farrakhan believes America lives in a mist of racism. One hopes that the sunlight of self-examination and community’s criticism of all of us will lead to the fog’s melting. Dedication, patience, involvement by the black middle class and unprejudiced teachers, will save the black child.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.
