Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994 TAG: 9403150170
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: William Raspberry
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I find it inconceivable that any significant number of white people should have an interest in perpetuating an underclass - if only because of their fear of crime.
But if there are few people who positively wish these children harm, are there some - many - who simply don't care whether they learn or not? It may not be the same thing, but it's close enough.
What prompts the question is the rediscovery of this quote from the late education guru Ron Edmonds:
``We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to in order to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend upon how we feel about the fact that we haven't so far.''
President Clinton, speaking last year at a session of the Democratic Leadership Council, said something quite similar:
``Every educational problem in America has been solved by someone, somewhere.''
Are these men correct? Clinton certainly is. There are schools where children of uneducated parents learn to speak and write standard English. There are schools whose children, defying all demographic expectations, excel in math and science. There are schools that are safe havens from the violence of the streets - havens, even, from the children's own dysfunctional families. Name a problem and, as the president says, it ``has been solved by someone, somewhere.'' And rarely does it turn out that money is the critical factor in the unexpected success of these schools.
Clinton's point is that we need to pool information, to make available to less-successful schools and teachers the tools and techniques of the exemplary ones.
But it's not that simple. The successful tools and techniques run the gamut from such back-to-basics approaches as phonics and stand-and-deliver traditional instruction to cooperative learning teams to hands-on classes with little apparent attempt to maintain order. Some of the best results come from a near-classical pedagogy, others from rampant creativity, still others from so-called ``direct learning'' and other commercial programs.What lessons is a struggling teacher supposed to learn from that successful ``someone, somewhere'' who has solved the pedagogic puzzle?
And what is she supposed to learn from Edmonds' harsher notion that we already know how to teach all children ``whose schooling is of interest to us''? That her failure to teach some of her children is solely her fault - and not for lack of technique but for lack of will?
Watching the routine success of some extraordinary educators, and the routine failure of others whose children come from similar backgrounds, it's tempting to conclude, with Edmonds, that the miseducation of poor children is willful. I don't believe it. I don't believe it in those school districts where most of the teachers are white and most of the pupils black or brown. And I don't believe it in a place like Washington, D.C., where virtually all the principals and teachers and nine-tenths of the students are black - as are the superintendent, the mayor and most members of the School Board and City Council.
Despite the anecdotal accounts of arrogant or uncaring teachers, I believe most teachers try to do their jobs - both because they want to be successful and because they want the children to learn.Certainly I have been in classrooms where teachers seemed content to concentrate on a few eager learners and write off most of the rest as lost causes. But I have also been in schools where principals and teachers work tirelessly with their children, spend their own money for classroom supplies and enter into loving conspiracies with parents - all without making much difference in the children's academic success.
Ah, but have they tried phonics? Have they tried reorganizing their schools? Have they considered changing principals?
There's no doubt some approaches, some techniques work better than others. But teaching is more art than science; some teachers are simply superior artists.
It might be of enormous help if educational leaders compiled and analyzed and taught ``best practices'' to struggling teachers, as Clinton implicitly suggests. I'm not sure it's helpful at all to suggest, as the sainted Edmonds did, that teachers of most poor and minority children simply don't give a damn.
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB