Studies Confirm the Dehumanization of Black Children and the ‘Preschool-to-Prison Pipeline’

In any public school system it helps a crapload if you have money and are a member of the "in crowd" (which having money gets you there, generally).

In private schools, pretty much everybody has money, by default definition. So private school students get to look down gleefully upon their benighted publickers.

Yay. Let's all abandon public education and let the market decide who gets to learn to read.

caw

kuwisdelu said:

No, the real problem and the real cause is that there are multiple problems and multiple causes and they are complex and interrelated.

It's poverty and cultural expectations and self-reinforcing stereotypes and methods of communication and environment and. . .

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This. Definitely this.

The UN committee Don refers to in the OP may be right up to a point but I think it's only up to a point. I think parents, neighbours, older siblings, media and all the stereotypes churned out by the pop culture industry have a hand in this as well.

Rufus Coppertop said:

I think parents, neighbours, older siblings, media and all the stereotypes churned out by the pop culture industry have a hand in this as well.

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I don't think pop culture really created any of the problems, though they have helped perpetuate it. Pop culture only reflects what has already been ingrained into our society by Western culture.

kuwisdelu said:

This much is true — for many underrepresented minorities, not only blacks.

Which does not necessarily imply ill-intent. Or intent at all.

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This goes without saying. However, each group encounters racism with different nuances. In this article, the focus is on black children, who suffer in school at rates that are historically incomparable to the other groups, and to say that all minorities suffer (which is obvious) doesn't help anyone. It derails the conversation as a one-size fits all when it does not.

In addition, most of the time the intent is subversive and ill and not overt. It ranges from name mockery to placing students in the back to not answering questions. As a teacher, I see and recognize the behaviors my fellow teachers place on children. It is deafening and disgusting. Arguing that the intent is not there as I see other students not treated the same is questionable. Poverty and other outside influences hinder. Once again, that's fairly obvious. However, how do you explain students that do not encounter these aspects and still receive mistreatment? Education is still a battlefield of inequality and child abuse (emotional/spiritual). I learned that lesson as a student and teacher.

Kashmirgirl1976 said:

This goes without saying. However, each group encounters racism with different nuances.

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That's true.

In this article, the focus is on black children, who suffer in school at rates that are historically incomparable to the other groups, and to say that all minorities suffer (which is obvious) doesn't help anyone.

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The "my group is more oppressed than your group" dance never goes anywhere productive. Let's not go there.

It derails the conversation as a one-size fits all when it does not.

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Everything I've said is an argument against a one-size-fits-all approach.

In addition, most of the time the intent is subversive and ill and not overt. It ranges from name mockery to placing students in the back to not answering questions. As a teacher, I see and recognize the behaviors my fellow teachers place on children. It is deafening and disgusting. Arguing that the intent is not there as I see other students not treated the same is questionable. Poverty and other outside influences hinder. Once again, that's fairly obvious. However, how do you explain students that do not encounter these aspects and still receive mistreatment? Education is still a battlefield of inequality and child abuse (emotional/spiritual). I learned that lesson as a student and teacher.

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If this is meant as a response to me, I think you're reading things into my posts that are not there.

kuwisdelu said:

I don't think pop culture really created any of the problems, though they have helped perpetuate it. Pop culture only reflects what has already been ingrained into our society by Western culture.

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Actually, yeah. I think you're right.

Which is mostly because the extra money is being spent on administrators instead of things which actually help the students.

Yeah. Bureaucracies do that.

A Labour government in the state of Queensland, back in the early nineties cut the number of nurses in hospitals whilst simultaneously expanding the number of administrators in order to improve the quality and efficiency of the health system.

What the hell should we call that kind of stupidity? Fiefdom Syndrome maybe?

What formula would work for measuring the IQ of a bureaucracy? The surface area of the CEO's desk, measured in square feet, divided by the number of hours worked annually by all the people in that bureaucracy maybe?

Yeah.

Don said:

Absolutely, positively correct. This was excruciatingly detailed as a feature rather than a bug of bureaucracies by Ludwig von Mises in 1944, in his seminal work Bureaucracy.

It's great fun to imagine that with the right people in charge this would be different, and it's the fantasy that politicians sell for every vote they garner.

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Works the other way too - those who have an axe to grind with public education try to use it as proof that no matter what, teachers can't teach and students can't learn.

fwiw, I don't know what the solution is.

Don said:

Pick a chart, any chart. Note the "expenditure per student" curve that shoots up like a rocket, and the "test scores" curve that remains flat.

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raburrell said:

Which is mostly because the extra money is being spent on administrators instead of things which actually help the students.

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Don said:

It's great fun to imagine that with the right people in charge this would be different, and it's the fantasy that politicians sell for every vote they garner.

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What we are ignoring is that there are government funding agencies like the NSF and the NIH that tend to have a great return on investment (in the long run, even when it's not clear to the general populace or the common politician). And the budgets of these agencies are a trifle compared to what we spend in many other areas. It's possible for stuff like this to work, when they are not beholden to the common denominators of politics.

What I'd like to see are an expanded systems of grants for outreach work in education. Empower people who have the potential to make a difference in communities by giving them the resources to make that difference. Agencies like the NSF and many private foundations already fund stuff like this, and they are already making a difference, but we could do so much better if we strategically funnel more funding to the right people. This can work. It is already working, on a smaller scale. I've seen it with my own eyes. And we can use it as a model to do better.

What we need is not an agency that aims to fix things. We need an agency that uncompromisingly delivers the necessary resources to the people who can.

+1, Kuwi.
I'd like to think the NSF has gotten their money's worth out of the 3 years of my doctorate they paid for

blacbird said:

In any public school system it helps a crapload if you have money and are a member of the "in crowd" (which having money gets you there, generally).

In private schools, pretty much everybody has money, by default definition. So private school students get to look down gleefully upon their benighted publickers.

Yay. Let's all abandon public education and let the market decide who gets to learn to read.

caw

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To an extent, this is very true. And, when you have lots of families living in poverty in the same school system, often the school system itself is poor too. Low property prices mean low taxes, which mean low funding. I live in one of those areas, where the average wage is $20K per year and a starter house sells for less than $80K. But food isn't somehow magically cheaper. Nor is gas, or clothing. So something has to give. Our local food pantry does a drive every year for donations of school supplies to kids who otherwise won't have the minimum requirements set by the schools (pens, pencils, notebooks, etc.)

But more important, schools have to TELL US, the people without children in the system, that they need help. The PTA does no good when over half of the families in the area have no kids currently in the system (childless, kids in college, seniors). Newspapers often don't tell us that teachers have no supplies, or are buying them out of their own pocket and the schools themselves seldom issue press releases.

Fortunately, teachers can tell us. Individual educators have a voice finally, if you know where to look. There is a way to help your local schools and teachers do the best they can. Donors Choose is how we can know that our little corner of the world needs help.

If you haven't visited and seen the requests for simple things like children's books in the room of an inner city elementary because the school doesn't have enough in the library, you should visit and donate. It'll break your heart to read about a teacher who is assigned just ONE REAM of copy paper (500 sheets) to last the entire school year and is just asking to get a case of paper to share with the kids for drawing and copying chapters out of textbooks (because there are only enough textbooks to keep in the rooms, so kids cant't take them home), or a wish for a microscope because there's not a single one in the rural K-12 school. Or sports equipment because there are only adult sized balls available for little kids who can't handle them and get frustrated. I know first hand about these particular kinds of requests because I helped fund them, or funded them in full. That's the nice part about Donors Choose--you can just give a few dollars if that's all you have. Many individual dollar donations can buy desperately needed books (or musical instruments, or goggles for science experiments.) made unreachable by poverty schools when you have to buy 20-30 of each item.

Common Core is requiring students to read biographies, but many schools, like this one, don't have biographies of anyone today's students will recognize from the news.

Go. Donate. Help the bright, enthuiastic teachers out there not become bitter and disillusioned about lack of funds. You can search by US state, county or even your particular school district. I don't know whether there's an equivalent in other countries. The best part for the US site is that it's a recognized charity so you get credit on your taxes. Again, don't know if there's any EU equivalents.

ETA to clarify on questions I got by PM.

Don said:

In other words, agencies with relatively paltry budgets and relatively small blueprints, where goals and success toward achieving those goals are easily measured, are relatively successful in achieving their stated goals, and less often politicized because the resources to be controlled are relatively insignificant.

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I'd say the success of their goals are by far harder to measure.

I agree. It's the rationale behind "all politics are local" and arguing that creating an overarching federal agency charged with managing the massive system that is public education was a terrible idea in the first place.

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Yet the agencies I cited are federal.

The question of improving "public education" is quite simply not the same as improving education for black children and other underrepresented minorities.

Because none of those conditions in para 1 apply to public education.

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So is this thread actually about the plight of black students, or is it about hammering on public education by whatever means necessary?

milkweed said:

One family I worked for the kids lunch every day was two chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, and a teeny tiney bit of feta cheese. This is what the three kids, and I, ate every day at lunch for a full year. NOW this may be more nutitious than eating chips and hotdogs for lunch, but not by much.

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Dude, it's still food.

We've got inner city schools being built WITHOUT CAFETERIAS, meaning NO FOOD - no hot dogs, no chips, no nothing.

Now consider the most likely student body ratios of which kids will be attending those schools, since they're inner city.

People doing Sundown-to-Sundown fasts for holy days can get lightheaded after hours of school with no food, and they still get to eat part of the day. Imagine how well you'd do in school, and how alert you'd be if you *maybe* got milk *most* of the week, and some high cal, high fat, high sodium, super cheap "food stuff" (read the packages, that's what some say) every other day, or every three days.

An entire school without provided meals is going to have irritable, distracted hungry kidlets. Without fuel, their brains can't keep up with schools that provide nutritional supplementation.

One family I worked for the kids lunch every day was two chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, and a teeny tiney bit of feta cheese. This is what the three kids, and I, ate every day at lunch for a full year. NOW this may be more nutitious than eating chips and hotdogs for lunch, but not by much.

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Isn't that called a Greek salad? Feta cheese ain't cheap. I remember being in lower middle class and in the bottom of the 90s, I brought nothing but crackers because that was all we had in the house after I couldn't get at the bread to make sandwiches. There was no cafeteria in the school (most schools in Alberta do not have cafeterias save for high schools.)

Feta cheese ain't cheap but for the price of it you could afford something more filling and probably more nutritious. Were the parents on some kind of extreme diet or something?

Cyia said:

Dude, it's still food.

We've got inner city schools being built WITHOUT CAFETERIAS, meaning NO FOOD - no hot dogs, no chips, no nothing.

Now consider the most likely student body ratios of which kids will be attending those schools, since they're inner city.

People doing Sundown-to-Sundown fasts for holy days can get lightheaded after hours of school with no food, and they still get to eat part of the day. Imagine how well you'd do in school, and how alert you'd be if you *maybe* got milk *most* of the week, and some high cal, high fat, high sodium, super cheap "food stuff" (read the packages, that's what some say) every other day, or every three days.

An entire school without provided meals is going to have irritable, distracted hungry kidlets. Without fuel, their brains can't keep up with schools that provide nutritional supplementation.

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Ummmm that's how they are building a lot of the new schools out here in the hinterlands as well (aka fly over country), it would appear to be a new trend. What I find most interesting is many school districts are inforcing a policy of kids not being allowed to bring their lunch to school, and then they go and build a school with no cafeteria, oh that's right Micky D's went up across the street from the school.

FWIW it's NOT just inner city schools that are having these sorts of experiences, BON there are black kids out here in the hinterlands, Des Moines and Waterloo both have sizable populations, and many of the black leaders here would tell you that the black kids are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to education.

The question is why? And what can be done about it to solve the problem?

Hapax Legomenon said:

Feta cheese ain't cheap but for the price of it you could afford something more filling and probably more nutritious. Were the parents on some kind of extreme diet or something?

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The dad was from Romania and was convinced it was healthy enough for the kids.

Where's the Black Children in this Debate About Black Children?

I'm sorry, but I saw the title of this thread and thought, "Oh, a discussion of the dehumanization of Black children and how they are fast-tracked from schools to prisons. This might be interesting."

Being a Black parent who put two kids through public schools and on to college and whose nephew has been an unwilling guest of the State of Ohio penal system for nearly a decade, I'm kind of personally vested on the topic.

My bad.

Instead of a discussion of a vitally important subject, mostly what I'm read so far is little to nothing about the dehumanization of Black children and the preschool to prison pipeline; a complex and complicated issue that doesn't lend itself to glib one-liners and simplistic solutions like "public schools bad, private schools good."

I fail to see any sincere interest by the thread originator for Black children as anything but props for yet another in a long list of anti-public school/anti-government diatribes.

Somewhere there is a place where the matter of this misleading thread is being taken seriously and discussed seriously.

That place is not this place.

nighttimer said:

I'm sorry, but I saw the title of this thread and thought, "Oh, a discussion of the dehumanization of Black children and how they are fast-tracked from schools to prisons. This might be interesting."

Being a Black parent who put two kids through public schools and on to college and whose nephew has been an unwilling guest of the State of Ohio penal system for nearly a decade, I'm kind of personally vested on the topic.

My bad.

Instead of a discussion of a vitally important subject, mostly what I'm read so far is little to nothing about the dehumanization of Black children and the preschool to prison pipeline; a complex and complicated issue that doesn't lend itself to glib one-liners and simplistic solutions like "public schools bad, private schools good."

I fail to see any sincere interest by the thread originator for Black children as anything but props for yet another in a long list of anti-public school/anti-government diatribes.

Somewhere there is a place where the matter of this misleading thread is being taken seriously and discussed seriously.

That place is not this place.

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Then talk. Don't just criticize. What better place is there than a world-wide public forum? What have your own investigations revealed? For those of us without a vested interest in schools, and who are a different skin color or economic background (I don't have kids, and am a white middle-aged woman in the upper ranges of income) but who has and IS willing to help in my corner of the world, what positive steps can help humanize the experience? I know teachers, other than on a case-by-case situation, aren't the problem. I know there are terrific, hard-working principals who are doing the best they can for their school and students, and I personally have known district board members who want nothing more than the best for their schools. It's far too easy to generalize, as you say, and lay the blame at the feet of a group of people, but individually, they aren't the problem. Individual parents, teachers, principals, board of education members, and even legislators aren't the entire problem.

So what to do? Encourage (or insist) legislators raise taxes to pay top dollar for the best and brightest, or build more schools where they're needed and accept less money in our collective pockets to pay the price? Insist the system and unions remove the entire tenure system so educators can be held responsible for the product they put out? Come down harder on parents when they don't participate? Come down harder on students who don't participate? Tear down a union system that prevents even the willing from participating in fixing the problems? For example, I've offered to come in as a guest lecturer to high schools surrounding me, to discuss writing or being a paralegal to students. I'm a pretty darned good teacher, even though I'm not formally trained. But I was turned dow flat because a state requirement is that every person who "teaches" students must have a Bachelor's in education and a valid teaching certificate. No exceptions.

What a waste! What a travesty and a shame to exclude successful businessmen/women from teaching about real life industry.

Dehumanizing happens most often when individuals are treated as furniture, exceptions can't be made, and individuality is curtailed. One teacher for every 20 or 30 or 40 desks. One "unit" of sale in the textbook system. But how can you teach a million people a year without some standardized method? It would be impossible to do one-on-one teaching on a nationwide level.

Talk about specific examples you've seen, nighttimer. What different thing could have fixed something you've seen?