The Half Empty Cup
There's all sorts of shit talked about inner city schools in this country. And California public schools seem to be among the worst in the nation. So it's not surprising to see some fine examples of ignorance teaching in the Oakland public school system. I'd been driving a cab in Oakland for a couple of years before I tried my hand as a teacher, well... as a substitute teacher. I'd met and dealt with the adults that come out of the Oakland school system, and in a fit of idealism I wanted to try to make a dent in the lack of intellectual curiosity that I'd seen so often. I'd probably just seen one too many of those miracle teacher movies. And sure, Oakland had been ridiculed when the school district had proposed adopting Ebonics as an official language. Or, maybe it was just technically meant to be classed as an official dialect. Either way, though, as I recalled there had been talk of trying to teach in 'Ebonics'. I assumed that the thought behind the idea had been that teaching in 'Ebonics' might actually generate some interest, so the kids would be more inclined to pay attention. I wasn't deluded enough to think that a mildly brown half-Iranian punk rocker intellectual cab driver such as myself would be taken seriously if I tried to speak 'Ebonics'... but I'd spent enough time driving people from the 'neighborhoods' of East and West Oakland that I did feel mildly intrigued by the underlying thought of 'Ebonics' All the same, it was probably a thought rambling around in the back of my head.
So one day I took a sub job teaching English in a middle school here in Oakland. The lesson plan for the day called for 10 - 15 minutes at the beginning of class to read a story about an artist who's commissioned to do a mural in a poor black neighborhood, and the conflict that is generated by the perception that she's "taking over" and "taking airs" around the community. The story was about 7 or 8 pages long. After the quiet time, during which I took roll, I was supposed to play a tape of a man reading the same story, and the students had another 20 minutes of time to listen to the tape and follow along with the story. It was a no-brainer, all any of the students had to do was pay a little bit of attention. Then they were supposed to work their way through a couple of pages of photocopied questions, but then there was a question at the end asking for an opinion and a reference to the story to back the opinion up. The simple questions of reading/listening comprehension seemed boringly straight forward. It was that last question that intrigued me though. An opinion with a reference to the story to support that opinion. Using evidence to back up an opinion... why is it such a difficult concept. I vaguely remembered how strangely alien and uncomfortable the idea had been for me 20 years before though, so I was curious to see what would happen, and at the same time I was trying to think of how to "show them the light". Nonetheless, I was caught completely flatfooted by the answer a student gave me as I tried to spoon feed her the process for answering such a question. At one point reference was made to the flags of a variety of African nations included in the mural. As I recall, Rhodesia, Kenya, and several other nations were mentioned... and I thought that point might be of some interest with the black students in particular. So I asked one girl who didn't know how to close her mouth anyway (there's always someone in class that can't stop chatting with their neighbor)... I figured I might as well see about trying to put her droning voice to work (if this someone is going to be talking anyway, then as a teacher I feel obliged to engage the student, because the other choice is to try to talk over him/her... it's not fair to the students who are paying attention, but that's the Catch-22 of a school system with a dysfunctional disciplinary mechanism)... so I asked her "What do you think? What is it that changes the main character's opinion about the mural?" "I think it's when he sees the flag of Africa." she answered. So far so good. She'd answered, and she'd remembered something from the story. I'd noticed that she'd just referred to it as "the flag of Africa" though... and I wanted to be sure she hadn't fallen into the notion that Africa was just a very big, vague country somewhere. I wanted to teach her something. Oops. "Ok," I said... "the flag of Africa? What is Africa?" I was hoping she'd say ' It's a continent', and catch her own mistake. Instead, she said "It's a state." I just blinked. I was too shocked to do anything else for several seconds. This was Oakland. The land of experimental Afro-Centrism... and this girl's parents, and friends, and first through 6th grade teachers, they'd all failed to mention to her that Africa was a continent?! "It's a what?" I asked her again. "A state..." she repeated, looking at me like I was too stupid to understand the answer the first time. She said it as if it was a state that bordered Louisiana and Mississippi or something... I just stared. For several seconds. And during that time, no one said anything to correct her. Then she suddenly burst out laughing at some joke one of her neighbors must've whispered. I guess I just snapped. Maybe I'd been driving a cab too long, and I'd lost some veneer of politeness. "Do you know how ignorant you just made yourself sound?" I couldn't help saying... if she'd been paying any attention I might've been able to resist. If she hadn't started laughing at some joke one of her neighbors had whispered to her right then, I might've been able to resist. As it was, I couldn't. The class just laughed at her. What the hell?,
she deserved it. Kind of anyway. "Africa is a continent." I told her. "Yeah, that's what I said." she answered... I just had to shake my head. " It's a continent. And on that continent are several countries... including Rhodesia, and Kenya, and Nigeria, and Ethiopia, and even Egypt... And each of those countries has its own flag, because they are their own countries. And do you know why those county's flags were included next to Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, in the mural in the story?" Blank silence. "Because those flags are the symbols of the independence for those nations from colonialization. Just like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are symbols of the struggle for independence from oppression for the black communities here in the United States." Blank silence. "When do you think slavery happened?" "Like, a long time ago... like in the Bible..." answered one student. Hell, at least he had an answer. "Uhh... well yeah, but in the Bible it was the Jews that were the slaves, not the Africans. In the Biblical times though, North America was populated by the Native Americans... " etc. To make a long lecture short, none of them had any idea of when their ancestors were slaves... assuming that they were at some point. None of them had any idea when the Civil War, and Emancipation had happened. They were all shocked to hear that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had lived in the 20th Century for fuck's sake! So much for Afro-Centrism. I wonder though,
how many of those kids bothered to really listen to my history lesson...
and whether or not a couple more might've listened if I'd been speaking 'Ebonics'.
I never did figure out if it would've been better protocol to ignore all the other facets of the issue at hand, in order to try to teach how to use "textual evidence" to support one's conclusions. After all, it was an English class, not a Geography or History class. Not that I suppose it really matters, since half the class probably wasn't paying attention anyway... I guess I'm a 'see the cup as half empty' kind of guy.
The Rethinking- substitute stories You gotta be shitting me Alex...
|
