How do you see this history affecting
your work as a teacher in RPS (please be as personal and specific as you
can)?Given where Pratt's account finishes and anything you happen to know about
RPS today, do you see any hope for the future?
OR
From the Pratt text and our discussion of it, ask a question of Brian Daughrity, given his knowledge of the post-Brown education/social landscape of the South.
OR
From the Pratt text and our discussion of it, ask a question of Brian Daughrity, given his knowledge of the post-Brown education/social landscape of the South.
First, my question.
ReplyDeleteThe Pratt text touches briefly on the impacts of the various phases of integration on teachers, but I would be curious to learn how those processes contributed to Richmonders' views on teachers and what they do.
I feel all too connected to the Pratt text. I grew up in Henrico county, attending a set of mostly white schools. My parents are decidedly liberal. My mother is writing professor with a social justice bent. My dad clerked for Judge Merhige in the 80's. I feel driven to teach, that it makes the most sense to me. I struggle with how I will be perceived by my students and the wider community of my school, but also with the honesty and origin of my own motivations. Will my students and their parents still see me within the framework that Pratt notes on page 86, “...white teachers fell neatly into one of two camps: (1) the paternalists, who felt that they were fulfilling some kind of missionary zeal by teaching black children, and (2) the bigots, who were indifferent to the plight of black students, but remained in the city's school system because they lacked other options.”? Perhaps this framework should be updated for new white teachers entering the system. Are we either missionaries of the dominant culture, zealous, noble, ignorant and misguided, or are we poor saps who couldn't get a job in a better school system and had to settle for Richmond Public Schools?
I have always constructed my purpose for teaching as distinct from the issues of race or poverty. I sincerely disliked school after third grade or so. Overall, it was a terrible place for me to learn and I was friends with a great many others like me. My defining moments of hearing the call to teach occurred when I realized how much more fun/effective learning could be and how lackluster the practice of my teachers were in my time in school.
Yet I realize also that this narrative is not removed from race and class. I went to a primarily white high school and my upper tack classes were almost entirely white. My neighborhood's median household income was ~$20,000 above the county average and my family in the 2nd highest quartile of the neighborhood distribution. So I can not and should not ignore my own privilege, but I struggle to examine my own motivations in the light of that privilege.
My question is how much of the prolonged segregation has affected the dismal graduation rates of high school students in the Richmond Public Schools? Are the failing levels of achievement attributed to power structures set by the school board and state government, or is negative mentalities also a cause?
ReplyDeleteIn terms of my own reasons for going to teach in the Richmond public schools, I am motivated by the racial disparities in education, both in academic achievement, middle and upper class attainment, and the overall negative stigmatizations and connotations with black people, including the high crime rates. I feel that education may just be the best way to head off an overabundance of African-Americans contributing to that negative image. Over my entire school life, I have heard teachers, students and professors discuss how deprived and unfortunate, African-Americans are. In addition, I have heard that story contrasted with the success of African Caribbean, and newer African immigrants. There is an interesting mix of narratives and experiences within both Virginia, and the country as a whole.
As an African-American male, I hope to inspire the youth to see themselves in a variety of ways and possibilities to hopefully overthrow white and nonwhite America's perceptions of African Americans, whether immigrant or not.
I see this history of RPS as being very germane to my work there, especially in regards to social justice. Inherent to the definition of justice is the aspect of righting an earlier wrong. In the case of RPS, the wrong that has been done to the community, to the families, and to the students is clear as can be. I honestly believe that as a teacher, I can do some small part to help right that wrong. By helping to give the students an education, by helping to coach and mentor them, I can better help them to succeed after high school. Hopefully some will go on to college, but college isn't for everybody. For those students who won't be going to college, I hope that I can help to give them them the necessary skills and education so that they can get a job and begin to stand on their own.
ReplyDeleteThe question that I have is in regards to what has the RPS been like since the Pratt book ended in 1989? It's been almost 25 years (!?!) and I would be curious to hear some more on what those years have been like.
My Question for Brian Daughrity: Can you explain some more details of white flight in Southern cities and the time frames associated with it. The Pratt text does discuss the causes and effects of the "exodus" of white middle class families from cities, but seems to give more of a broad overview. From my knowledge, though there were specific times when there were great numbers of white families moving from cities to suburbs, there are a lot of factors influencing this phenomenon and it probably took place in larger or smaller scales throughout the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteAs far as my work as a literature teacher is concerned, I think reading this text has armed me with a lot of valuable context and history that I plan to use in helping my students draw connections between the texts I teach and their reality here in Richmond. On a broader scale this is both valuable background for me to know as I work within the RPS system and with the individuals greatly affected by that system, and valuable information for my students to understand accurately and accurately.
The text has also already changed the way I perceive and interact with my new community here in Richmond. As I drive through different neighborhoods I find myself thinking about they ways in they have been marginalized or gentrified, and wondering if, though the Food Lion in South Richmond is just as nice as any of the others, I'm the only white person there the white middle class of Richmond assume its in a "bad" neighborhood because of the ethnicity of its clients.
Question for Mr. Daughrity: Do you think that the federal and state governments will ever encourage true racial integration in housing and education in the same way that many of them encouraged white flight and segregation in the mid-20th century?
ReplyDeleteAs for how this history will affect our and my work in RPS, i think it will hang over all of our heads. The reason that so many of these schools are still so segregated is an almost direct result of the policies and events that Pratt writes of. Personally, i am afraid of being perceived as (or actually becoming) the paternalist, White Man's Burden-esque teacher who must do all he can to lift these children, this school, and the community up from the muck of mediocrity and poverty to a glorious future. I want to do the best i can in the classroom to teach students about what it means to be a responsible citizen, how and why the world is the way it is today, and what they can do to change their world if they want to. My goal: just be myself, understand the communities these students come from, and stay humble--i won't be able to do everything.
For Mr. Daughrity
ReplyDeleteSince I never attended school in Virginia, I had never heard of massive resistance before, much less the extreme lengths many people in Richmond went to so they could avoid desegregating public schools. Did the, at least temporary, successes of the massive resistance campaigns embolden or influence any other groups in the South to passively resist desegregating the schools? Or, was it that there were other large, non-violent movements protesting and subverting desegregation in other states that influenced the creation of the movements seen throughout Richmond and the rest of Virginia?
-Sean McFadden
For Dr. Daughrity,
ReplyDeleteDrawing on his time in Mississippi and his knowledge of Richmond and RPS, How is Virginia compare and contrast to Mississippi post-Brown? I'm curious about the years immediately after Brown but also more recent times, because racism is still "alive" in each state, that's evident. It seems to me that Virginia was not as violent as Mississippi but I'm curious to see his view on the sitiuation.
-Kyle Kimbrell
How do we use the historical narrative that Pratt details in combating the ways in which school reform pits itself against a reified version of the problems in urban schools? What I mean....when I read account of school reform...here, in Chicago, in NY, in DC....there's a version of schools that is totally divorced from history....so that when people talk about solutions they refuse to investigate why schools are the way they are except to assign blame for the issues...usually targeting unions or some other scapegoat...but not the history itself and how it's tied especially to race, segregation, and poverty. How do we bring these more complex and complicated histories into the discussion of how to get kids an equitable education?
ReplyDeleteFor Dr. Daughrity,
ReplyDeleteHaving a very limited exposure to racism within schools, my question would be, how can I better prepare myself to cope with the present day racism within my classroom. Since we all have our own thoughts on what the biggest take aways fromt the Pratt text are, another question that comes to mind is what do you believe are the most prevalent point(s) from the Pratt text for us to remember as new teachers within RPS.
The biggest trouble of Richmond’s history presented by Pratt which I think will have the greatest effect on my teaching is of socioeconomics and the creation of ways to demographically isolate the poor. Table 2 on page 92 of Pratt’s text: An educational and socioeconomic comparison of students in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. Seeing this table made me want to dig deeper and get a current understanding of RPS’ socioeconomics. I used the information on the RPS website to find more recent data. Here’s the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://web.richmond.k12.va.us/AboutRPS.aspx
I think it will be challenging to be able to actually understand what some students may be going through coming from low economic backgrounds. This will affect my teaching because in science a lot of learning comes from being able to relate material to real life experiences and examples, but if a student’s schema is limited then how can I help them understand? How will they know to believe me of a bird that exist that they never seen or of a biome that exist outside of Richmond, if they’ve never left the city. I will have to learn their experiences so that I am not assuming that they have experienced certain things I did growing up at their age. I think there is hope if teachers are willing to take the time to understand the students’ background and use relative examples when teaching.
Noticing the large number of public housing projects in my travels in Richmond, I assume many RPS students come from these neighborhoods created years ago for the poor so I did some research on public housing projects in RVA. Here’s a link I found on a demographic break up of Richmond’s Public Housing and a current news article (Check it Out!):
http://www.rrha.org/html/public/demo.pdf
http://wtvr.com/2012/04/03/could-richmond-finally-get-serious-about-its-housing-projects/
Knowing that this may not be every student’s in my classroom situation, I think it’s important to be aware of because I can only imagine problems that may arise in families and the impact on or responsibility of children especially in the secondary level.