I was shocked when I discovered the growing numbers of children who are dealing with poverty, chronic illness, broken or dysfunctional homes in inner -city schools. Children are exposed to drugs, violence, a lack of supervision; and perhaps most significantly, the lack of positive male role models.
Education experts agree there have never been more of a need for Black males to step-up to the plate and serve as positive role models for our children. Female-headed households with absent fathers are far from rare in African-American family life (70%); especially inner city school aged children. According to the Department of Education, it is not uncommon for a Black child to enter middle school without having interacted with a positive male figure.
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| Photo by Anthony Alden |
African American parents are far too dependent on teachers who have no cultural understanding about the needs of Black children to educate them.
It’s is a proven fact that in suburban school districts teachers are not majority Black unlike inner-city schools teaching staff that’s disproportionately white (80%) in some school districts.
This has become a race issue because Black children academically are receiving a failing grade and in some cases inferior education not because of the race of the teachers but cultural insensitivity and awareness.
In order to understand the needs of Black children you must understand the culture differences and upbringing styles that drastically differ between white children and Black. If you don’t show authority and set clear limitations its easy to loose control over a class room especially in Black communities.
Traditionally Black parents and our educational institutions had strict styles of discipline that were laid down by generations of Blacks. Children were made to understand the consequences of negative behavior. Corporal punishment was a means of disciplining that seem to make our children behave. You have a lot of negative influences (gangs, drug abuse, crime,teen pregnancy) that have the potential to consume Black children if they are not discipline.
“Integration integrated new ways of parenting that conflicted with the “boy go out and get me a tree branch” approach my parents used. They put more fear into me then gangs or peer pressure so quit naturally I conformed to their rules”.
I was a substitute teacher for a year in a major inner-city school district and quickly learned children play on perceived weakness of an instructor. I also worked in suburban white districts compared to inner-city schools it was a day at Disney. Kids in inner-city schools act out more because they are frustrated, depressed, often profiled as under achievers, suffer low self-esteem, and lack discipline. Because of the absent of fathers gangs and drug dealers become some children surrogate fathers. When you have dysfunctional role models and environments you have dysfunctional behavior. If you come from a middle to upper class upbringing without any reality of the environments that shape the children your teaching it’s hard to relate so you grow impatient and give up hope.
When I was growing up I went to Ella P. Stewart Elementary School in Toledo, Ohio. Stewart was 100% Black student body. Now mind you this was before forced integration, you went to the school that was in your neighborhood so you walked to school everyday. Toledo schools were still voluntarily segregated. I remember having only two white teachers from grades kindergarten through eight and I got a great education. More importantly, I had a strong bond with my teachers. They were strict and had zero tolerance when we acted out but I thank them to this day.
Teaching back then was a career not a job. They truly cared about you and often they taught at the same school for two or more decades so they were responsible for educating several generations of children. The parents knew each teacher by their first name; schools not only served the community to educate our young but also acted as an extended family.
There weren’t many Black male teachers when I was in elementary school; however, unlike today 80% of my classmates came from two-parent homes. We were poor, but our communities were not shattered with absent fathers and violence. The few male teachers we did have were strong minded and fearless. We respected them like we respected our fathers; their authority was not to be challenged nor was disrespectful behavior tolerated.
After I graduated from middle school, the tradition continued for about another two years and then slowly city school districts they started transferring the teachers who had tenure and seniority to suburban schools in the name of integration. Like one-way busing, our brightest and best teachers went to segregated suburban schools and the Black schools became a training ground for new inexperienced college graduates who had no cultural knowledge about Black children and the community in which they lived.
I always said schools in the Black community were the first line of defense like the church that insulated our children from what we didn’t get at home. When these institutions broke down, the communities that surrounded them also deteriorated.
There’s enough research out there to document why schools in the inner cities failed and are still failing, administrators and educators know the problems but refuse to fix them. Our schools have failing grades because our children are getting inferior education. Parents are failing their children because we haven’t created secure, safe, nurturing environments for them to develop to their full potential.” Ignorance is no excuse for failure.” We need to get back to basic self-help strategies (strong PTA) and old school values (each one teach one). If our children are our future we better wise up to the chalk writing on the board.
Anthony Alden
