One of the ways American public education helps cultivate cultures of spiritual, social (and even, at times, physical) death that condemns the lives and futures of our children is in how it neglects the skills kids need to be successful in adulthood. From the low quality of curricula and instruction in reading that leads to kids ending up on the path to dropping out, to the rationing of opportunities (including Advanced Placement courses) that can help poor and minority kids get on the path to college and career success, our children — especially those from poor and minority backgrounds — are starved of the academic and cultural experiences that can help them write their own stories of success.
In this Voices of the Dropout Nation, Vickie Gunnells-Hodge offers her own perspective on how schools can help build civilizations of love for our children — and what reforms must be made in American public education in order for this to happen. Read, consider, and take action.
Everything in America has evolved except our deficient public education systems. Let me tell you all the ways.
In the rest of American society, economy, and culture, children and adults are given the capacity to think critically, to heighten expectations, to expand the boundaries of their futures, and become socially proficient in navigating through life. This is because American society, built on competition, demands adults to be successful. This isn’t true in public education.
Our children, especially in areas of economic distress, need to move beyond lowered expectations. They need academic knowledge and the avenues for cultural expression so they can expand the boundaries of their own futures, and so that they can expect more from life. This also isn’t true in education.
Our children need adults in their lives – including in school – who prioritize meeting their needs and focus on their concerns. The reality is different. Often in schools (and at home), some adults prioritize their own needs being met, while making the children in their lives deal with or suffer the consequences. It is why our children, especially those coming from backgrounds of instability, struggle in school as well as in relationships with others around them. When they cannot trust the adults who are supposed to care for them, they will falter in everything.
Our adults in schools (as well as at home) can do this work. This issue is that we hide from it. In public education systems, we hide behind the excuse of what is or is not each parent’s job with regard to their child’s attitude toward education. We cower behind the excuse that there are deficits in Title I schools and reduction s in budgets. We complain that our schools are low-performing. What we don’t do is take the easily adoptable steps toward helping students learn how to navigate in society, to build up their own capacities for future success, to think critically as well as solve problems effectively, and to master the lexicon of living.
As sociologist Pierre Bourdieu made clear, there are four things – academic and social – our children should learn before they become adults. Addressing those areas is what schools should do.
Our schools should help children concretely learn about social capital, or how to network as well as develop friendships and alliances that helps them attain opportunities for advancement. This helps students understand the need to develop attitudes and behaviors needed to take advantage of their potential for success. Our schools should offer those learning opportunities.
Our schools should teach children about what Bourdieu called symbolic capital, which in the context of education and life, means actively participating in classes and organizations that help them learn what their career and life interests are, as well as hone their talents. This means opening up all opportunities for every student to build themselves up.
Our schools should offer teach our students about the importance of economic capital, or learning how to manage their own finances, understanding how to manage scarcity and abundance, and comprehend how economic decisions, personal and otherwise, lead to different outcomes in their own lives – including their own ability to become financially secure.
And our schools should help our kids understand the importance of cultural capital, in this case, how to make good choices in their learning that can help them create futures no one can take away from them. This capital, which is formed by what students learn and how they are taught in school (as well as what parents teach them at home), is the most powerful of all because it shapes everything else children do both now in school and when they enter adulthood.
Society expects our children to be ready to take advantage of every opportunity. Our schools need to help them become proficient in every area so that they can open the doors of all opportunities.
