Forty-seven years ago, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the unanimous decision in the court case that has made educational history, Brown v. Board of Education:
We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.... We conclude that in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
This decision struck down the “separate but equal” precedent that was set in the infamous 1892 case of Plessy v. Ferguson that permitted states to institute racially separate public accommodations to include public schools as long as the accommodation was identified as equal. The 1954 decision handed down by the Supreme Court required the desegregation of public schools across America, declaring that separate learning facilities could not be equal. This decision did not, however, prohibit segregation in other public areas nor did it require the desegregation of public schools by a specific time. Yet, here we are, nearly half of a century later, and we still have not achieved equality in education. We still experience separatism.
Today, the process is less obvious but just as deliberate. Poor and minority children are forced to attend the schools that are in their neighborhoods regardless of the schools’ ability to educate them.
Although the separatism that exists today is not strictly a racial issue, it is still separatism by design, relegating poor and minority children to an education that is not only separate but also still unequal. Today, the process is less obvious but just as deliberate. Poor and minority children are forced to attend the schools that are in their neighborhoods regardless of the schools’ ability to educate them. “Though the discrimination may not be intentional, its pervasiveness, as measured by actual statistical impacts, amounts to a deep pattern of institutional racism in US public schools.” (Education Week) Because schools are funded based on property taxes in their district, schools in poor communities tend to receive less funding because property taxes are lower, while schools in upperclass suburban communities are well endowed. But then, we already know this. Allow me to offer a new topic to consider.
The book Magic Trees of the Mind by Marian Diamond and Janet Hopson discusses in fascinating detail the development of the mind from conception to young adulthood. The author argues that a person’s ability to learn is developed through nurturing the child’s growing mind intellectually, emotionally, and creatively.
Diamond begins by discussing intriguing research that she conducted to study the brain structure of lab rats. After comparing the cerebral cortexes of deceased rats, the rats that were exposed to a more stimulating environment had a significantly larger cortex than did rats that were exposed to an impoverished environment. The results of this study raised questions in naysayers because of their disbelief in the ability for the brain to grow or for intelligence to be nurtured.
Continued research indicated that the nerve cell bodies were farther apart in rats from the stimulating environment than in the thinner cortex of the impoverished rats. The researchers proved that branching of dendrites was causing the cortex to get thicker and thus, a thicker cortex indicated a higher level of intelligence.
This research begs for an answer to a question that is haunting policy makers, educators, and concerned parents: What is the correlation regarding the factors that perpetuate the achievement gap that exists between suburban learners and disadvantaged children from low-income communities and less stimulating environments?
Convinced that early childhood experiences predict a child’s intelligence quotient, many child development experts believe that poor children lack the ability to learn because they lack the experiences that encourage learning. In an effort to reverse the tragic findings of Milton Friedman’s A Nation at Risk, President Lyndon Johnson developed IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provided funding to the schools that had a certain percentage of poor, underperforming students and Head Start programs. These programs targeting poor families were developed to help increase the learning potential of these children. Initial studies showed a dramatic increase in their IQs at this level, but over a period of time, their IQs became fairly equal. Could it be possible that it isn’t money that these children need, but the need is for an equally stimulating environment and similar experiences of their suburban counterparts?
To me, the conclusion is dramatically simplistic. First, one must define learning and knowledge. If the experts believe that children’s experiences directly reflect their ability to learn, then how could their aptitude to learn be tested on subject matter that was not within their experience? President Johnson said it best in a commencement address he delivered at Howard University in 1965:
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains, and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of the race, and then say, “You are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
Thus, it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.
This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
These people do not have the same advantages, the same experiences, and therefore the same knowledge of those they are competing with. But does this in any way predict their adaptability or their aptitude to learn? Absolutely not! It does, however, reflect the environment that is their reality.
A child’s ability to learn and to physically expand his mind is developed based on his experiences.
Early language experience includes such things as watching “Sesame Street,” being read to, playing with magnetic letters, talking with adults, having books in the home, hearing nursery rhymes, and so on. Some children come to school with as little as 300 hours of early language experience, while others come to school with as many as 3,000 hours (Phi Delta Kappan 1999). Further, this indicates that intelligence is a factor of nurture. If that, indeed, is the case, and these children, barring their socioeconomic status, are born without disability, what indicator exists that says they cannot learn? I would agree that there is a direct correlation in socioeconomic status and the educational achievement gap. However, I would argue the question of knowledge and the ability to expand knowledge by expanding experience. English, math, reading, and science have not been these children’s experience, and it is difficult to learn that which you have not seen, let alone experienced. How does one know that he knows unless he has experienced it for himself?
Overall, researchers make strong points from the perspective of an educational expert, or neuroscientist, though they never consider the perspective of or sought input from the children’s parents who make up their environment. This is the mistake educators are still making today. We educators, including myself, tend to take a condescending, paradigmatic approach to education, in which we are the experts, and we know what’s best for someone else’s child. Yet we complain because there is little or no parental involvement. Is that because we have intimidated or belittled parents to a point that they aren’t comfortable in being actively involved in their child’s learning process? But who knows the experience of the child better than her parents?
Howard Gardner theorizes that people possess multiple intelligences that should be identified and nurtured in order for them to reach their fullest potential, but that this society has placed a great emphasis on academia (reading, writing, arithmetic, and science). Yet again, we overlook the obvious. If a child has not had experiences that would prepare him to learn these subjects as well as another child, does that mean he is less intelligent or just of different intelligence?
The Meantime Volume 1 Number 2