How the “System” Works: The School System

Introduction:

Education has been used for decades as the go to excuse for why many minorities aren't succeeding. Back in the height of eugenic beliefs, it was believed those of an inferior race didn't think the same way as those of the Aryan race and therefore no one should be surprised that they don’t excel in the arts and sciences. Later, it was believed that minorities as a whole don’t succeed because many don’t care enough about education. In this post I’m explaining how these ways of thinking create an inaccurate depiction of how the school system effects social success. The truth is, it matters little about the amount of education a person receives. The reason that many minorities don’t have social success or economic mobility is because the system has been designed to limit the amount of mobility that certain racial and ethnic groups have. This is never more evident than in the design of the school system. The school system is major part of the system of oppression, and I am planning to explain how the design of the school system reflects and amplifies racist and prejudice beliefs while at the same time creates an atmosphere where lower class students are directly and unjustly targeted. I will show how the class divide in the school system also creates a race divide and explain how it has helped to perpetuate oppression at a systematic level.

Class Divide:

For the reader to understand how minority students are affected by the school system, they have to understand the history of the school system, and how the class divide that was present in American society during its creation, was only reflected and amplified in the curriculum. The reader will then understand this sad truth: that the school system was not designed to create equal opportunities for the poor and rich. I’ll be using the creation of high schools as an example to explain why.

In the 1800’s, education was a tool available only to the wealthy, because the more well off could afford teachers and schooling. Teens from working class families, in the early 19th century, were usually already at work and would leave school by the time they were thirteen to help support their families. But at the beginning of the 20th century, due to the rise in technology and need for factory workers and not artisans, many of these poor adolescents who would usually be at work learning a trade had nothing to do until they were old enough to work in factories. Many poverty stricken teenage boys roamed the streets during this time period. The privileged seen this as problem, because at the same time the poverty rate and crime rate were exploding and the blame was placed on the poor adolescents. To fix this problem, public high schools were created. Those behind the creation of high schools believed it could be used to house adolescents until they were arrested or were old enough to work. Not only that, but it would be a way to train the youths in the rising technology. The school system then, and now, has been used as a medium to fix social problems for the elites. This shows that schooling wasn't seen as a means to create equal opportunities in the 19th century, but as a way to control the poverty stricken for their own motives (Kat et.al p.1–5).

It’s plain to see that the purpose of creating high schools was seen as a way to control the poor and less fortunate. But many will argue that this can’t be true for a number of reasons. That there are many examples of people who worked hard and became successful. But how likely is it for someone from a low socioeconomic background to transcend their economic category? How does it happen?

Social Approval:

Many people will be skeptical about believing that the school system prevents minorities from moving up the socioeconomic ladder. They will point to President Obama and Oprah Winfrey and calm that “They did it, other minorities can too.” People look at these celebrities of color and use their success as evidence that there is no system of oppression, that these people are highly educated, go-getters and that everyone else in their race is just plain lazy. This is a harmful and inaccurate fallacy.

It has been proven in a number of ways that education alone cannot lead an individual to economic prosperity. Mike Rose, a well-known educator, is renowned for his belief that all students can learn if teachers take time and try to understand them. In his article, “I Just Wanna Be Average”, Rose reflects how he was taken off the vocational track in his high school and put on the college track by a teacher who realized a mistake was made. This one teacher changed the course of Rose’s life, and supports my point. Many students aren't given the same opportunity Rose was given in school. In today’s society a person rarely moves away from the economic standing they were born into. Studies show that students from socially oppressed ethnic and racial groups and from lower income families tend to engage in resistant behavior as they encounter a school environment that they sometimes experience as hostile (Tozer,pg.6) and statistics show that their is racial wealth gap between whites, African-Americans and Hispanics. Believing all this to be true, then it’s plain to see the correlation between the wealth distribution in this country and schooling of the children of the non-dominant racial groups.

This isn't to be taken as a demonstration that African American and Hispanic children are not as capable of learning as their white counterparts. It’s to show that the children of these groups are not given a fair enough chance to reach their full potential as students because of their families socioeconomic status. Therefore, to give these students a greater chance to meet their full potential, their families, in theory, must be put in a better economic situation. And to do that, there has to be a social reform…if you look in depth to the argument being presented you can see a pattern emerge. Look at it this way, if difficult home situations leads to students with low performance in school, and low performance in schools leads to some student’s education stopping with a high school diploma. This leads to these students taking up low income jobs which continues the cycle when their children start school.

Again, not to say that it is not impossible for a student of a low economic background to move to a higher economic standing. What is to be understood is that it is not the status quo, and that those who usually do, generally have help. When a person of low economic standing gains social acceptance or approval be an individual or group of high economic standing for whatever reason, said individual is more likely to move to a higher economic standing as well. This term will be referred to as social approval from this point on in the post.

It is with this social approval that an individual can obtain any upward movement. Rose is a great example of this, as well as President George W. Bush. In Karabel’s article “Legacy of Legacies” he describes Bushes chat with the dean of his high school over his college choices, where the dean suggests that Bush, “consider applying to schools other than Yale”. Though Bush’s grades and extracurricular activities were quite unexceptional. Bush was admitted to Yale. This came about only because Bush’s father and grandfather were graduates. This privilege given to Bush and other, just as unexceptional, students further proves my point. In the system that this society has set up, intelligence level is rarely a factor. With the right social approval any student can transcend their economic situation. However, this is a privilege usually reserved for those already of high society. In this case it is not about education at all. This example shows that people in high social standing are rarely put there of their own hard-work and education. In the case of President Bush and many like him, the opportunity wasn't sought-after and obtained through long hours of studying and backbreaking extracurricular activities. It was simply given to them because of who they knew and who they were related to.

The system is designed so that those at the top stay there, leaving little to no room for those at the bottom to move up. The current economic system ensures that someone will always be at the bottom of the economic ladder. Yet, who generally makes up this lower class, and how did they end up there?

The Lower Class:

As I've mentioned before, lower class usually consists of people of socially oppressed racial and ethnic groups, such as African Americans and Hispanics. These groups throughout history have made an effort to obtain social and economic equality, however there are many examples of sabotage by members of the dominant social group that prevents equal opportunities from ever being obtained, further perpetuating social oppression of these groups.

For example, in many American states, the amount of African-American children in special education programs have exploded since the 1960’s. Joel McNally coins this over-representation of black students in special-ed courses as a “Ghetto within a Ghetto”. Research into the matter was done and it showed that nationwide, black students were three times more likely than white students to be labeled mentally retarded and twice as likely to be labeled emotionally disturbed (McNally, p.2). The lifetime consequences that faces the black children after high school limits them significantly. According to research done by Gary Orfield and Daniel Losen in their book Racial Inequity in Special Education:

“Post-high school outcomes for these minority students with disabilities are strikingly inferior. Among high school youth with disabilities, about 75 percent of the African-American students, as compared to 47 percent of white students, are not employed two years out of high school. Slightly more than half (52 percent) of African Americans, compared to 39 percent of white young adults [who have been in special education], are still not employed three to five years out of school. In this same time period, the arrest rate for African-Americans with disabilities is 40 percent, as compared to 27 percent for whites” (McNally, p.4)

These striking results demonstrate a small part of the social injustice that minority students face. The same way that Presidents Bush family’s social class standing determined that he would succeed no matter his grades. The reverse is true for many minority students. That they won’t succeed no matter their grades. Again, this relates back to the design of the school system. And it’s not just the amount of minority students in special-ed. Take the SATs for example. This is a standardized test that thousands of students take every year to prove they are college ready. Yet, many students who take this test don’t know the real story behind its design.

Carl Campbell Brigham, a professor of psychology at Princeton in the early 1900’s, with strong eugenic beliefs created the SATs as a means to “…identify and reward those citizens whose racial inheritance had granted them…superior intellectual endowment,” (Owen, p.1). And as a result this test has created a racial, income, and gender gap with its test scores that only increases as more students were made to take it due to the policies emphasized in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Fairtest, http://www.fairtest.org). With all this understood, it is safe to argue that, not only will the school system never create equal opportunities for the rich and poor, it actually encourages social and economic inequality.

Economic Problems Stemming from Policies:

Though the blame of social and economic inequality cannot be placed on the school system as a whole. In truth the school system only reflects and amplifies the problems already present in society. Therefore, the problem’s facing African-American’s and other socially oppressed groups occurred not in the schools, but in the government itself as mentioned in the last post.

It had been a long time since the end of slavery, however by the 1920’s the unemployment rate for blacks and whites were about equal, creating a good start for economic equality (Katznelson, p.6). However, after the stock market collapse and the Great Depression of the 1930’s, many of the economic policies in President Roosevelt’s New Deal put in place to help American’s get back to work intentionally excluded African-Americans (Katznelson, p.12). At this time a majority of the House of Representatives were southern democrats from Jim Crow states. With their influence they were able to successfully exclude blacks from a lot of the policies that could have benefited them. Even after World War II, when the GI Bill was created to help returning soldiers, many black soldiers in the south were denied access to promised benefits. So during the 1940’s and 50’s, while the rest of America prospered the African Americans of the time were left stagnate and many near and below the poverty line. It wasn't until the 1960’s that the economic gap between African Americans and whites was addressed. President Johnson in his Great Society program, talked of providing better schooling for African American children so they could better compete for jobs.

However, as mentioned before, there are many reasons why the education system can do little for this socially oppressed group. In essence, Johnson, like many other politicians, placed the blame for why African Americans weren't prospering as a group, on the school system. Johnson was also feeding into the fallacy that education could create equal opportunities. Yet, as I've explained before, the school system isn't capable of doing that because of how the system works. So, instead of facing what the government did wrong and correcting it. The blame was displaced and put on the school system, so that the policy makers and politicians who made the laws that left an entire group of people stuck in the lower end of the economic ladder didn't have to face backlash, admit fault, or change the policy. In truth, it was a way of fixing the problem without fixing the problem.

What This Means for the System of Oppression

It should be apparent that the school system doesn't create equal opportunities for rich and poor, nor does it bridge the race gap in this country. The school system is only a medium that facilitates oppression. This institution is the perfect conduit for social oppression because it allows poor minority students to be easily targeted by the methods stated before. Of the four institutions that make up the system of oppression, the school system can be thought of as the conductor, which leads many minority students down a path where they can be further oppressed through social control, the most obvious route being into the criminal justice system. This will be looked at in detail in a later post.

Conclusion:

I will reiterate that this post is a commentary on the education system as a whole and not on the individual within said education system. I know all too well that a student from a working class family can beat the odds and be the first of their family to attend a university. However, I cannot look at all the other students in my graduating class and say that every student had a fair chance. From starting high school with a class of over 1200 students and ending it with close to 300, I can’t help but think that the problem goes deeper than over 900 students not caring about their education. If we really want to rid ourselves of oppression and create a united society, we must stop placing blame on the victims in this rigged system. Education the way it stands and where it stands today will never be a solution to this problem. We must go to where this problem is stemming from and pluck its roots. But that would involve better understanding the system of oppression that consistently places minority students on a track that leads them down a route to have their rights further oppressed.

References

FairTest Reacts to the 2009 SAT Score Release. (n.d.). Retrieved July 09, 2014, from http://www.fairtest.org/fairtest-reacts-2009-sat-score-release

Inventing the SAT. (n.d.). Retrieved Feb. 09, 2015, from http://aliciapatterson.org/stories/inventing-sat

Ira Katznelson — New Deal, Raw Deal. (2005, September 27). Retrieved Feb 09, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700484.html

Karabel, Jerome. “Legacy of legacies”. (2004, September 13).

Katznelson, Ira. “When Affirmative Action was white” transcript.

Katz et al. “Early Industrial Capitalism: Public education and social problems”.(pg. 45–51)

Krugman, Paul. “Graduates versus oligarchs”, The New York Times. (2006, February 27)

McNally, Joel. “A ghetto within a ghetto”, Rethinking Schools. (2003, Spring).

Rose, Mike. “I just wanna be average”. Retrieved Feb 09, 2015, from

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/mmartin/rose.pdf]

Tozer, Steven. School and Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (6th ed.). Published: McGraw Hill, New York. 2009