Schools for Tomorrow Blog

Behind the front-page Presidential race headlines about bitter voters and Bosnian sniper fire, it’s always worthwhile take a look at how education issues are affecting the Presidential race.  This week’s EdWeek reports on how Barack Obama talks about education in his stump speeches.  Obama’s gift, supposedly, is his ability to connect with audiences.  He excels at what linguists call “code-switching” – consciously modifying speech to slip from one culture to another.  Obama speaks urban black to urban blacks, Sentatorial wonkish to senators, and academic liberalese to, well, to you and me, all more or less authentically.

Nowhere might this trait come in handy more than in education.  We all know that vast disparities exist in the educational experiences of black and white students  — black students, on average, come from poorer families, are more likely to experience violent crime, are more likely to drop out of school, and perform worse on achievement tests. 

The EdWeek article reports: 

The Democratic presidential candidate has been pitching an audience-pleasing message of economic populism to crowds of a few thousand packed into each gymnasium. But he gets some of his loudest applause when he segues to education — and a bit of a lecture to mothers and fathers on how to be parents.

Sure, there is the usual critique of current government policies. But the cheering peaks with a dose of tough talk.

"Parents if you don’t parent, we can’t improve our schools," he said. "You’ve got to parent. You’ve got to turn off the television set in your house once in a while, you’ve got to put the video game away once in a while." …

"You should have a curfew in your house so your children aren’t out in the streets all night. You should meet with the teacher and find out what the homework is and help that child with the homework. And if you don’t know how to do the homework, don’t be embarrassed, find someone to help you."

"Fathers, be fathers," he added. "Be a part of your child’s life. Be a part of your child’s life and try to make them proud.

"And the last thing is, if your child is misbehaving at school don’t curse out the teacher. You know who you are. It’s not the teacher’s fault that your child is misbehaving. That’s some home training."

The crowd reacted raucously and Obama laughed. "You know what I say is true, though. Don’t blame the teachers, and the government and the schools if you’re not doing your job."

For white Americans like me, the experience of African-Americans in our schools is one which is hard to broach.  Many well-meaning white folks have a split personality on the subject.  Half of our brains knows that the legacy of slavery and segregation underlie historical inequities which our schools have barely begun to acknowledge, much less address.  But the other half values personal responsibility and hard work.  That half knows that parental involvement, high expectations, and positive cultural attitudes towards education are keys to success, too.

Obama has a rare ability to broach these subjects while bringing audiences along, especially black ones.  In a recent Newsweek column, Jonathan Alter waxes Obamish in a similar vein:

Remember the 1998 movie "Bulworth," where Warren Beatty plays a U.S. senator suffering a nervous breakdown? When Beatty’s character tells astonished black Democrats that it’s time for them to "put down the chicken and the malt liquor," it’s final proof that Jay Bulworth is crazy and suicidal. But consider what happened late last month in Beaumont, Texas, when I covered Obama speaking before an African-American audience. A woman asked about health care and Obama explained how, for the first time in human history, thousands of obese children, many of them black, were being diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes—a disease that is killing millions and helping bankrupt the health-care system. He told the crowd that kids couldn’t keep on "drinking eight sodas a day," then went in Bulworth’s direction.

"I know some of y’all got that cold Popeye’s [chicken] out for breakfast. I know," Obama said with a smile. He continued: "That’s why y’all laughing. You can’t do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school … It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, ‘Do good in school,’ and then when that child comes home, you got the TV set on, you got the radio on, you don’t check their homework, there is not a book in the house, you’ve got the videogame playing."

Instead of being jeered, he was cheered wildly.

When we consider which Presidential candidates would be best for education, we should consider their policies, the ins and outs of their views on merit pay or school choice or standardized testing.  But we should also consider who can make people – kids, parents, teachers, everyone – do their best.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 3:54 pm and is filed under The national stage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.