Editor’s note: This commentary is by T. Elijah Hawkes, who is principal of Randolph Union Middle/High Schools. He has been a public school principal for 15 years. His writing about adolescents, democracy and schooling has appeared in various books and publications.
Public parks become hospital wards, refrigerator trucks become morgues, and car factories retool to make respirators. People, places and things are being repurposed in the Covid crisis. Schools are adjusting, too. And reopening schools in a time of pandemic is a confusing and stressful project, unlike anything most educators have ever experienced. As a school principal, I know that a lot is being asked of schools these days – and so I hesitate to say it – but now is the time to ask even more.
Pandemic safety concerns are paramount, but school communities must not ignore the other dangers that trouble our country if we want to keep our education system – and the democracy we serve – from going under. The dangers are many. Environmental degradation, economic inequality, austerity regimes, deep-rooted racism, and violent authoritarian systems ravage communities across the globe, including here in the United States. These dangers are not external. And our schools are part of the problem.
Name any crisis and the odds are that a high school graduate is making it worse. How could it be otherwise? Few brick-and-mortar institutions play such a significant role in shaping both individual conscience and national consciousness. In 1940, less than half of 25-year-olds had a high school diploma; today it’s over 90%. And too many students in this country graduate with flawed understandings of their nation, themselves and other people – and they sometimes go on to do terrible things.
Derek Chauvin was a high school graduate when he killed George Floyd, bound on the ground, begging for air and mercy. And it’s safe to assume David Richard Nelson was a high school graduate when he shouted, “There is no racism!” while his partner painted over a Black Lives Matter mural this summer. “There is no oppression!” he hollered to the world on now-viral video. In their basic dispositions, these former high school students are not outliers. Their words and actions may be extreme, but an emaciated understanding of history and a crippled capacity for empathy are not uncommon today.
Many people in this country were surprised to learn, on the occasion of Trump’s June rally in Tulsa, about the massacre of black citizens in that city in 1921. This ethnic cleansing crime of great proportions was a shock to many because it was not taught to most. We learn a lot about mass graves dug in far-away Auschwitz, but little about mass graves dug by white supremacists in our own country’s recent past.
I must wonder about the schooling of the high school age boy charged with first degree intentional homicide for shooting protesters in Wisconsin this week. This boy was part of a white vigilante militia patrolling the streets. He may have attended a high school in a nearby town. If we look at the school’s course catalog – 52 pages long – we’ll see that there is no mention of “race” or “racism” in any course description. There is only one course description that mentions “democracy.”
Miseducation like this is a misuse of tax dollars and a betrayal of our schools’ responsibility to serve our democracy. It starves our children’s hunger for truth and weakens their muscles of compassion. And it can pave the way to bloodshed. As Nahlia Webber, executive director of the Orleans Public Education Network, wrote recently, schools help “socialize Americans for White violence and Black death.”
Some will say this is a misguided back-to-school message at a time when many ache for hope. It’s indeed bad news for educators to consider our complicity in the problems of our society. But therein lies a silver lining. To be complicit, means one has power. We can be the change we seek.
I see change and feel hope when I watch my students addressing pressing contemporary topics in their classes – from sustainable food systems to restorative justice reforms, from climate change to income inequality. In recent years, I’ve seen students produce documentary films and radio journalism, draft legislation with state representatives, lead faculty meetings on white supremacy, organize countless events in the community, and gather students from across the state for the first-ever statewide student-led conference on racism in schools.
All of this was born of the day-to-day curriculum, enabled by the efforts of educators who orient their classes to address the needs of our society. The work is ongoing. My colleagues recently began a review of what we teach through the lens of our new Democratic Engagement Standards. These were adapted from Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards. We’re looking for where our teaching supports self-awareness, empathy with others, and an understanding of democratic rights and responsibilities. And we’re looking for where we need to do better. Whether our classes are in-person or remote this fall, this work will continue.
Parents, community members, and students can help educators in this work. Teaching Tolerance is one of many organizations with an extensive catalog of resources for teachers. Explore their website and share relevant content with the educators you know. Other useful resources include:
· Facing History and Ourselves, an organization that helps situate contemporary issues of hatred and bigotry in historical context.
· The Zinn Education Project, which digs into primary sources to surface the stories of people who have been historically silenced.
· Rethinking Schools amplifies the voices of contemporary LGBT and BIPOC educators, and their white allies, with teaching resources on race, class, climate and so much more.
· TODOS: Mathematics for All is an organization of anti-racist math teachers that I discovered this summer.
· For resources that put science teaching and learning in a socio-political context, check out SENCER: Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities.
· For essays by young people on countless topics of personal and political importance, I recommend the magazines and books of Youth Communication.
· And to support media literacy in this time of media mayhem – when truth and lies, fact and fiction, can be difficult to discern – check out the News Literacy Project. I can’t wait for them to resume publishing weekly digests for teachers this fall.
Share resources like these with educators you know. I’ll be sharing them with my own children’s teachers – even at the elementary level. This work is important especially at the elementary level. As we resume instruction this fall, don’t just ask that schools safely do what we used to do. Demand more honest and courageous teaching about who we are as a nation and the challenges that we face.
