Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

y Boards of Education in all parts of the United States . These statistics
document the absolute inability of public school systems and programs
as presently constituted to meet the urgent needs of a large majority
of Black children and youth, and for that matter the needs of the
poor generally, Black or white .
The over-all verbal level for eleventh grade students in Chicago is
20 percentile points below the national norm . The reading level for
vast numbers of Black students in high schools such as Crane High
School in Chicago is 40 points below the average, and only slightly
better than the zero level-or complete illiteracy-at the eleventh and
twelfth grades . Strangely and tragically, attempts to pinpoint responsibility
for the failures of public schools expose one of the most sophisticated
systems of buck-passing in existence . The end result is to place
the blame on the student or, more insidiously, to recreate the myth of
Black inferiority. Such practices are not only unfair, but also destructive
as well . Simply as a matter of self-preservation, this country can
no longer afford to permit the managers of education to miseducate or
not to educate at all and to escape the consequences of their failures .
Hopefully, it is not too late for education to put its own house in order.
But for this to happen, education must be willing to take a new view
toward itself, the students, the community, the curriculum, and teaching
practices .
To begin with, we in education can no longer hold ourselves above
reproach for the failures we produce . We must be willing to readily
admit that our record in urban education is a sad one with little, if
anything, to recommend it or us . Further, we have lived too long on the
records of the past and upon the achievement of a few who "make it"
in spite of us, not because of us . Finally, we must face squarely the
fact that many students get absolutely nothing out of their school experience
. Even many who graduate are unable to read or write at a
literate level .
We are obviously in an educational crisis-a crisis more subtle than
a "hunger" crisis or "military" crisis, but a crisis nonetheless . The
dangerous potentialities of the educational crisis are demonstrated
through the anti-social behavior of many of education's rejects and the
fatal consequences ensuing from their attempts to survive in a world
where the odds are stacked against them .
Anyone seriously interested in analyzing the etiology of the "crisis"
must be well aware of the causes and of what we must do. Since 1945,
our country has undergone almost unbelievably swift revolutions in
science and technology, economic and political affairs, and demographic
and social structures . But despite revolutionary advances that have made
NEGRO DIGEST March 1970 3~