Vast Carelessness and School Reform

I. At School

This past week has been thought provoking.  Earlier in the week I conducted a full day inservice with a principal and a dozen teachers, many of whom I have worked with during the last two years.  I so believe in the work they are committed to doing on a daily basis at this southward school in Newark, NJ.  I work with this staff on a monthly basis and this week we closed the session by viewing a brief film that portrayed learning at a public school in Brookline, Massachusetts.  After the video ended, the principal paused and then spoke with the teachers about how she has to be mindful when she sees videos of other children learning to not minimize the potential of that learning because the children portrayed are living in such safer situations than the children who attend her school.  She said,

I'm thinking that those children in that classroom all ate dinner the night before.  That they did not have to walk past multiple murder sites from the last few weeks on their way to school.  I have to remind myself that our kids can learn as well too. 

To contextualize the principal's comments find below an image of a map that chronicles murders during the last year that happened where this school is located (map includes an adjacent city).

from here.

So I have been thinking about the kids at the school who arrive hungry, who arrive scared having travelled streets many adults would fear to tread, who arrive ill lacking the resources for medical care.  I can recall sitting in an 8th grade classroom at this school last spring when one girl reading from her notebook told about a shooting that had taken place up the street from the school the day before. Another child read about being the only surviving male in his family having seen his brother and cousin each killed within the past year and the weight of those deaths on him and his mother.  All of this weighs and I find myself thinking about the school solutions that are routinely offered (longer school days, longer school years, rigorous curricula, CCSS implementation, teacher education and evaluation) and I want to shout, Time Out!

This is not to say that those routinely offered solutions are good or bad, but rather that they often obfuscate the larger problem of racial income inequality that we don't seem to talk about very often and certainly do not entertain it as a viable solution to what ails us.

II.  Carelessness

So all of this was on my mind when I sat down earlier today to read the Sunday NY Times and found Sam Polk's rather narcissistic essay, For the Love of Money, gracing the cover of the Sunday Review. Polk, a former hedge-fund trader, situates his rather obscene desire for money (laments the smallness of a $3.6 million bonus) as an addiction--as if such maneuvering might recast the capitalist society that in many ways is responsible for producing the crime-ridden and hungry-child neighborhood I first described at the start of this post as something akin to a personal addiction problem that has now been conquered. Sam Polk is all better. There's no ownership in what his actions wrought.  There's no acknowledgement that the very bonuses he was given came on the back of the middle class and poor and have helped to create the abject poverty and hopelessness in a city where 111 murders have taken place this past year.  Rather Sam Polk has authored an all about me essay that only the disillusioned wealthy could write and sadly the NY Times could print.

I was reminded while reading Polk of the end of The Great Gatsby where Nick Carraway muses:

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made […]. (9.136-145)

It's this extreme carelessness of hedge-fund traders and market speculators who make money out of hunger that is most disturbing.  They harm you and me, our kids, our neighborhoods, our country with little regard, if any, for their actions beyond how their actions influence their rather petty selves.  The end of Polk's essay has an almost Jonathan Swift  Modest Proposal feel to it--if only Polk was writing satire.  Polk has traded his hedge funding which creates income inequality for now helping the poor he helped to make manage their obesity and food addictions. Yes, you have read that correctly. His new nonprofit, Groceryships, is designed "to help poor families struggling with obesity and food addictions."

Making Ends Meet: Children's Books That Explore Social Class, Homelessness, and Poverty

I. Contemporary Works

Boelts, Maribeth. (2009). Those Shoes. Illustrated by Noah Z. Jones. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

Castaneda, Omar. (1995). Abuela's Weave. Illustrated by Enrique O. Sanchez. New York: Lee and Low Books.

Chinn, Karen .(1997).  Sam and the Lucky Money. Illustrated by Cornelius Van wright ad Ying-Hwa Hu. New York: Lee and Low Books.

Cohn, Diana. (2005).¡Si, Se Puede! / Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A. Illustrated by Francisco Delgado. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press.

Cohn, Diana. (2011). Roses for Isabella. Illustrated by Amy Cordova. Great Barrington, MA: Steiner Books.

Cooper, Melrose. (1998). Getting Through Thursday. Illustrated by Nneka Bennett. New York: Lee and Low Books.

from A Shelter in Our Car.

Croza, Laurel. (2010).  I Know Here. Illustrated by Matt James. Toronto, ON: Groundwood Books.

Cumpiano, Ina. (2009). Quinito's Neighborhood. El Vecindario de Quinito. Illustrated by José Ramírez. New York: Lee and Low/Children's Book Press.

DiSalvo, D. (2001). A Castle on Viola Street. New York: HarperCollins.

Fine Edith Hope. (2007). Armando and the Blue Tarp School. Illustrated by Judith Pinkerton Josephson. New York: Lee and Low Books.

Gonzalez, Rigoberto. (2003). Soledad Sigh-Sighs. Illustrated by Rosa Ibarra. San Francisco, CA: Children's Book Press. 

Gunning, Monica. (2004). A Shelter in Our Car. Illustrated by Elaine Pedlar. San Francisco, CA: Children's Book Press. 

Hazen, Barbara. (1983).  Tough Times. Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. New York: Puffin Books.

Kurusa. (2008). The Streets are Free. Illustrated by Monika Doppert. Buffalo, NY: Annick Press.

Lyon, George Ella. (1994). Mama is a Miner. Illustrated by Peter Catalanotto. New York: Orchard Books. 

from Yasmin's Hammer

Malaspina. Ann. (2010). Yasmin's Hammer. Illustrated by Doug Chayka. New York: Lee and Low.

McGovern, Ann. (1999).  The Lady in the Box. Illustrated by Marni Backer. New York: Turtle Books.

Mora, Pat. (2000). Tomas and the Library Lady. Illustrated by Raul Colon. New York: Dragonfly Books.

Perez, Amanda Irma. (2008). My Very Own Room/Mi propio cuartito.Illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez. New York: Lee and Low.

Ryan, DyAnne DiSalvo. (1997). Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen. New York: Harper Collins.

Seskin, Steve and Allen Shamblin. (2006). A Chance to Shine. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. San Francisco, CA: Tricycle Press.

Smothers, Ethel Footman. (2003). The Hard-Times Jar. Illustrated by John Holyfield.  New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Stuve-Bodeen, Stephanie. (2008). Babu's Song. Illustrated by Aaron Boyd. New York: Lee and Low.

Williams, Laura E. (2010). The Can Man. Illustrated by Craig Orback. New York: Lee and Low.

Woodson, Jacqueline. (2012). Each Kindness. Illustrated by E.B.Lewis. New York: Nancy Paulsen Books.

II. Historical Fiction 

Birtha, Becky. (2010). Lucky Beans. Illustrated by Nicole Tadgell. Morton Grove, IL: Albert Whitman & Company.

Fitzpatrick, Mary Louise. (2001). The Long March: Choctaw's Gift to Irish Famine Relief. San Francisco, CA: Tricycle Press.

Henson, Heather. (2008). That Book Woman. Illustrated by David Small. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Hopkinson, Deborah. (2006). Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building. Illustrated by James E. Ransome. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books / Random House.

Johnson Angela. (2003). I Dream of Trains. Illustrated by Loren Long. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Levitin, Sonia. (2007). Junkman's Daughter. Illustrated by Guy Porfirio. Sleeping Bear Press. 

Lied, Kate. (1997). Potato: A Tale from the Great Depression. Illustrated by Lisa Campbell Ernst. Washington, DC: National Geographic.

Lindsay, Kathleen. (2008). Sweet Potato Pie. Illustrated by Charlotte Riley-Webb. New York: Lee and Low Books.

Miller, William. (2008). Rent Party Jazz. Illustrated by Charlotte Riley-Webb. New York: Lee and Low Books.
Mills, Lauren. (1991). The Rag Coat. Boston: Little, Brown.

Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. (2011). The Secret River. Illustrated by Leo Dillon and Dianne Dillon. New York: Atheneum Books.

Rocklif, Mara. (2012). My Heart Will Not Sit Down.  Illustrated y Ann Tanksley. New York: Knopf.

Schoettler, Joan. (2011). Good Fortune in a Wrapping Cloth. Illustrated by Jessica Lanan. Walnut Creek, CA: Shen's Books.

Wallace, Ian. (2005). Boy of the Deeps. Toronto, ON: Groundwood Books.

III. Nonfiction

from Brave Clara

Brown, Monica. (2004). My Name Is Celia/Me llamo Celia.  Illustrated by Rafael Lopez. New York: Cooper Square Publishing.

Herrera, Juan Felipe. (2001).  Calling the Doves/El canto de las palomas. Illustrated by Elly Simmons. New York: Lee and Low Books.

Jimenez, Francisco. (1998). La Mariposa.  Illustrated by Simon Silva. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Lyon, George Ella. (2009). You and Me and Home Sweet Home. Illustrated by Stephanie Anderson. New York: Atheneum Books

Markel, M. (2013). Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909. Illustrated by Melissa Sweet. New York: Balzer & Bray.

Schrock, Jan West. (2013). Give a Goat. Illustrated by Aileen Darragh. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House. 

Shulevitz, Uri. (2008). How I Learned Geography. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

from How I Learned Geography

Down and Out in America

Children from the Martinique Hotel by Matt from here. 

"Success within the lives of those I’ve known for all these years is as much a matter of their inward growth—in decency, in character—as of their outward victories. And, at the end, uncertainties remain..." Jonathan Kozol, (Kindle Locations 2001-2002).

I.

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." I've often puzzled over that line that Joyce penned--until today.

II.

It is the stories Jonathan Kozol tells that makes each and every work by him stay with me and well after I finish the actual reading reveal ways of seeing that I almost knew before. I finished reading Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children and am feeling anger, sadness, impotence, and gross incompetence.  The history of poor children living in Manhattan and then later in the South Bronx that Kozol writes about occurs while I am an adult.  This is a history and yet it is not one from a distant time.  It is from the time I have lived.  As such, I feel an ownership that comes alongside such neglect.

Neither geography nor time can distance us from what happened and failed to happen in the lives of the children and families Kozol chronicles.  In the end of the 1980s while children were living at the Martinique Hotel I was living just across the river, falling in love, teaching, traveling, and beginning a doctorate at an uptown university.  The distance between that life and the one being forged at the Martinique gives me pause.

What Kozol describes feels like a nightmare--a distance that those there could not claim.

III.

We spend an inordinate amount of time discussing education in the United States and very little time, if any, discussing the economic injustices that give rise to poverty and make it feel inevitable.   Since the rise of right-wing conservatism that was fully ushered in via Ronald Reagan the conversation about shared sacrifice and equity which framed the conversations coming out of the 60s and 70s have been silenced so that we might argue about family values, education, marriage, health care, abortion while ignoring those among us who are forced to do without even the basics.

IV.

In 1988, Reagan when asked about U.S. homelessness said this:

“Well, it’s been so exaggerated. Millions, there aren’t millions. Real research reveals probably 300,000 or less, nationwide. And a lot of those are the type of people that have made that choice. For example, more than 40% of them are retarded, mentally deficient people, that is the result of the ACLU. Look at the girl in NY who went to court after Koch had ordered her to get off the street and be put in a shelter. She went to court and actually fought, under her Constitutional rights, to go on living in that cardboard box on the street.“ (from here). 

This is the same man for whom airports, libraries, and other monuments have been built to honor.  I didn't see it then and I certainly don't understand it now.  The meanness of Reagan's rhetoric continues today and is stunningly unapologetic as it finds voice in conservatives who claim to love. I don't doubt they do love, just that such love is awful stingy.  Just consider how Mitt Romney can say this without hesitation even as he tries to gain your confidence in the way of a vote:

“I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it." (from here). 

V.

If poverty is in need of repair?  As an artist, I have been making images of people down and out in America for the last few years. Here's one look:








Work Cited
Kozol, Jonathan (2012-08-28). Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America, Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

When Billionaires Lie - Reclaiming Our National Voice: By The People

There are 77,000 residents in Camden, NJ. In 2009, more than half of them lived below the poverty level ($22,000 for a family of 4) with about 18% of these people living below 50% of the poverty level.  Children fare even worse. 75% of boys under 5-years of age that same year lived in poverty. Nearly 70% of 5-year-old girls in Camden lived in poverty in 2009 as well, suggesting that nearly 3 out of 4 kindergarten girls lived in poverty. Close to 70% of the  Camden families living in poverty were headed by a single female, with no husband present.

Camden has been dubbed the murder capital of America.  In January, 2011, nearly half of its police officers were let go. 167 police officers and 67 firefighters were laid off.  This is a city that had the highest crime rate in the US in 2008 and second highest last year. Since the layoffs in January, crime has risen in the city. 

The Courier-Post of Cherry Hill and the Philadelphia Inquirer shows there have been 79 aggravated assaults with a firearm this year in Camden, up from 22 during the same period in 2010. Shootings nearly doubled, increasing from 16 to 30.

Camden is waiting on the installation of surveillance cameras that police say they will use in their attempt to curtail crime. This is a $1.8 million project that is awaiting installation.

In comparison, in 2009 in Bill Gates' hometown, Medina, Washington which boasts the third highest per capita level in the state, the town:

Camden, NJ 3.13.11

"installed cameras at intersections along roads entering the city; the cameras are used to capture the license plate number of every car, and a security system automatically notifies local police if the captured number is recorded in a database.^[4] Travelers are notified of the presence of the system with signs that read "You Are Entering a 24 Hour Video Surveillance Area"; according to Medina's police chief, all captured information is stored for 60 days even if nothing negative is found in the database, allowing police to mine data if a crime occurs later.^[4] One of the city's council members said the system was motivated by the belief that the need for crime prevention—Medina had 11 burglaries in 2008—"outweighs concern over privacy."^[4] 

 The poverty level in Median in 2000 was 0.8%.

A lot has been written about poverty and its impact on students' academic achievement. David Berliner (2009) identified six out-of-school factors (OSF) that influence student achievement. These include:

"(1) low birth-weight and non-genetic prenatal influences on children;
(2) inadequate medical, dental, and vision care, often a result of inadequate or no medical insurance;
(3) food insecurity;
(4) environmental pollutants;
(5) family relations and family stress; and
(6) neighborhood characteristics.

These OSFs are related to a host of poverty-induced physical, sociological, and psychological problems that children often bring to school, ranging from neurological damage and attention disorders to excessive absenteeism, linguistic underdevelopment, and oppositional behavior" (p3).                        

This past Sunday I went Camden to photograph.  For the last half year I  have been making images most Sundays as part of a yearlong project (A Year of Sundays). I spent about 2 hours in Camden and tried to capture some sense of the city.  The images were taken throughout the city. Perhaps the most compelling site was the cross with the words, "Heal Camden" written at its base. I find it challenging to believe that poverty, especially such abject poverty and racial isolation as is present in Camden isn't the main issue we should be addressing in this country.  

Instead of this false conversation about schools, I want to suggest that we should be asking:  How is it that some in this country are billionaires while others live on less than $11,000 a year for a family of four? What conditions give rise to such extraordinary differences?  What conditions, polices, beliefs, and practices increase the economic disparities among citizens? Who benefits from shifting the national conversation from economic injustice to failing schools?

The myopic attention to public schools and "greedy" educators, by billionaires, is nothing less than an organized and well financed method to shift attention from themselves, their gains, and their interests to public school "failures," regardless of what data actually states (again see Berliner, 2009). In doing this schools then become the problem to be "solved" while economic injustices created by these same people and the system that continuously privileges them and their interests above all else remains untouched.

I found it ironic while reading Jane Mayer's article, "Covert Operations" (New Yorker, 2010) about Charles and David Koch, that their self interests were so readily seen and oddly connected to the Berliner report. Mayer writes:

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States.

Camden, NJ  3.13.11

It seems ironic these billionaire industrialists who are highly critical of public schools, own a corporate interest that is one of the top ten polluters in this country. Pollution is no friend to poor children.

Berliner outlines the environmental hazards that affect children, especially poor ones.  Every single environmental hazard mentioned by Berliner is a problem for residents of Camden, which contains 2 federal Superfund sites and 114 contaminated sites. Some might consider such numbers evidence of environmental racism.

Common pollutants in Camden include: lead, mercury, PCB's, solvents, arsenic and petroleum products. According to Berliner (2009), cognitive and behavioral problems are associated with mercury poisoning, while neurological damage is caused by lead pollution and exposure to PCBs. In the Camden mayoral Transition Report on Family Wellness (2010) the need to address environmental issues is noted.  The report concludes:

Camden, NJ 3.13.11

"Most houses in Camden were built before lead was banned in 1970 and contain lead paint. Lead levels in the drinking water in many homes and in Camden’s public schools have also been found at dangerously high levels. Chipping and exposed lead paint can be breathed in as dust or be swallowed. Children who become lead poisoned suffer from learning disabilities, delayed growth, brain damage, and behavior problems...Camden City residents have elevated rates of cancer of the lung, esophagus, stomach, liver, kidney, and pancreas. Lung cancer rates are especially high compared to the state-wide rates."

All of these factors influence how children learn, fail to learn, and in some severe situations may be less likely to learn. Clearly the state literacy and mathematics assessment results in Camden Public Schools during the last three years show very poor student performance.  Stripped from the realities of the city, its violence, poverty, and illness--one might be inclined to believe those who blame public school educators for the failure.  After making the trip to Camden, I would be less likely to do so and hope these images and information make it less likely for you to believe the rhetoric too. The deplorable condition of the city suggests that learning may well be a low priority, given the need to survive.  Quite frankly I wonder how teachers and administrators in Camden do the work that they do.

Instead of routinely blaming public school educators, the "billionaire" money might well be used to inquire from experienced inner city teachers what issues they and their students face that inhibit learning, influence how they come to know children, as well as  how they work to overcome those issues and sometimes fail to overcome those issues. This information would be invaluable.

Educators who work in inner cities have much to tell us.

Finally, we must keep the issues related to economic injustice as actionable items.  Instead of being distracted by billionaires and their followers situating learning problems as public school education issues to be "fixed" via charter schools, value-added evaluation, and merit pay--we should keenly look at the larger economic system that creates severe inequitable conditions, makes learning so hard for children, and focus our national attention there.