Teach the “Unteachable”
By Mary Theroux • Monday March 12, 2012 11:34 AM PDT • 15 Comments
The Secretary of Education, representatives for the Civil Liberties Union, and others are rightly outraged by the recent release of a report from the Department of Education, showing that overall, black students are three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their white peers.
How can a child who is not in school get an education? What becomes of children who do not therefore get educated, and what does this portend for our communities and the future of a pluralistic society?
At the same time, it is heartbreaking to hear the tales of students like Jada Williams, eager to learn, yet equally deprived from an education because she moves from one chaotic classroom controlled by disruptive students to another. And when Jada issued a plea to be taught, she was instead relegated to a warehouse school for problem students, where even less learning was possible.
So what do statistics and stories like this tell, and what’s the answer?
Are teachers and administrators racist, doling out unequal treatment to black and Hispanic children?
The New York Times headline reporting the statistics would seem to imply as much: “Black Students Face More Discipline, Data Suggests.”
Are black children truly three and a half times more inclined to gross misconduct, the only answer to which is suspension or expulsion? After all, black children are about three times more likely to be born to a single mother, and Hispanic children about twice as likely, than whites, and thus statistically far more likely to live in poverty and have less supervision and discipline.
Or is a large part of the problem that black and Hispanic children are disproportionately relegated to schools whose teachers and administrators are less competent, incapable of controlling their students, and thus disproportionately resort to the extreme of suspension and expulsion?
The data also showed that schools with a lot of black and Hispanic students were likely to have relatively inexperienced, and low-paid, teachers.
The good news is: We don’t have to know the right answer!
We don’t have to address the issue on a sociological level. We don’t have to wait to first change these children’s home lives or socio-economic situations in order to provide them a bright future!
Here’s some inspiration from the movies: “Dangerous Minds” portrayed the true story of former U.S. Marine LouAnne Johnson, who turned a classroom of mostly African-American and Hispanic students from East Palo Alto, a pocket of crime and poverty in the otherwise idyllic Silicon Valley area, from violent, profane, inattentive, dead-end kids to engaged students with hope for a future. “Stand and Deliver” portrayed real teacher Jaime Escalante inspiring his lower-class, drop-out prone students to excel, eventually involving over 400 students in his East Los Angeles public high school math enrichment program, and establishing an AP Calculus program that produced better results than Beverly Hills High.
Unfortunately, exceptional teachers like Jaime Escalante most commonly find their fellow unionized teachers jealous of their success, complaining that a teacher who achieves such exceptional results makes their own failings look bad. The surprising documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman’,” and high profile pronouncements increasingly coming from “left/liberal” public figures such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and others, similarly indict the capture of American public schools by teachers unions for the failure of American students.
But these are among the most powerful vested interests, and waiting for a change from within could be a very long wait, indeed. Meanwhile, millions of children continue to learn no discipline, much less gain an eduction—both of which they will need to succeed or even support themselves in the 21st century—while the voices of thousands like Jada’s continue to be drowned out in the cacophony of their public school classrooms.
In one thing, let us agree across the political spectrum: it is unacceptable that public school teachers and administrators throw up their hands, declare failure, and kick kids out to face dead-end lives.
Beyond those rare teachers whose stories are turned into movies are many, many individual teachers, and numerous independent and parochial schools, working with the same populations yet managing to educate, graduate, and produce individuals with strong prospects for success in college and the world at large. Private “military-type schools” of all different ilks take “incorrigbles” and turn out disciplined graduates.
The Independent Institute’s Independent Scholarship Fund provides children in the Oakland/East Bay—home of one of the worst school districts in the country, with a drop-out rate double that for California as a whole (a state itself ranking nearly dead last in the Nation’s Report Card)—private vouchers allowing them to attend any of the more than 300 private schools in the East Bay. These children come from some of the worst neighborhoods and have already experienced some of the most terrible things that can happen in anyone’s life, yet they excel in these schools, and 100% of the high schoolers graduate and go on to attend college.
All that it would take to end these tragic drop-out, arrest, suspension, and expulsion statistics would be to end the fraudulent public school monopoly, abolish the Department of Education, quit sucking resources to Washington and state capitals to be expropriated to the politically connected. As has been done successfully with other former socialized property in Europe, turn over ownership of public schools to members of the community, who can then be free to run them, sell them, or license them to for-profit, non-profit, Parent/Teacher ESOP structured schools (see, for example, our book, Can Teachers Own Their Own Schools?, or whatever other myriad offerings educational entrepreneurs devise. We would soon see a rich variety of educational alternatives better suiting every kind of learner: from the highly-motivated and bright to the tough disciplinary cases, disabled, and less-gifted learners.
As we have seen in every other sector of our society, productivity multiplies under competition. Let’s quit buying into the myth of the common school, and educational entrepreneurs would soon do as students such as Jada, stuck in chaotic drop-out factories, beg: “Find a more productive way to teach the so-called ‘unteachable’”.
Tags: California, Civil Society, Culture, Education, Family, Urban Issues 
Are you serious?? Have YOU spenat any amount of time TEACHING?? I think not....
Mike | Mar 12, 2012 | Reply
Yes, Mike, I have.
And more importantly, I’ve spent years tracking the remarkable difference in outcomes when children are allowed a choice in education regardless of their economic situation. Why should only the rich be able to send their children to a school that best fits their needs? Why should schools and teachers who can’t control their classrooms and teach their charges be paid to continue failing?
My proposed scenario ought to be one under which teachers would have a higher greater chance of success with their students and career satisfaction, as well.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary L. G. Theroux | Mar 12, 2012 | Reply
The students have to meet the teacher half way. It’s unrealistic and unfair to ask that teachers be super educators, master motivators and mentors to a class who is uninterested in learning or giving the reacher respect. The students’ families have to be held accountable too, as do the students themselves.
clay davis | Mar 12, 2012 | Reply
Actually I believe the student must go all the way. The teacher properly is only a tutor. At first the student will learn to meet the desires of others. Soon after they must gain the desire and value for themselves otherwise education will not happen.
This process I believe is corrupted in the socialistic philosophy of compulsory government schooling and cannot be otherwise. Consider that ‘accountability’ is typically the language of the moral reformer. Socialism is made up wholly of this reformer’s spirit.
outcomes like passing or failing are the appropriate means to keep people accountable to objective standards.
Alternatively, the open and free market plan emphasizes the freedom of all to find the best means at the best cost to achieve the level of education sought for.
Albert | Mar 12, 2012 | Reply
Clay:
Yes, students must be engaged. We may not be able to reach their families—many of them have no real family in the sense we are accustomed to.
Choice/competition provides motivation and innovation that can produce and suitably reward the quantity of “super teachers” that are indeed required to motivate and mentor these otherwise lost kids. Teachers that aren’t super motivators/mentors can also find perfectly good places in an education “market” serving all.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary L. G. Theroux | Mar 12, 2012 | Reply
The impact of having a monopoly situation in education struck me a couple of years ago. I work in technology and software – we’re building smartphone apps, adapting our software away from the PC to accommodate rapid change. And it’s hard to imagine life before the iPhone, which only arrived about 5-6 years ago. Look at prezi.com, the Wii, the Kinect, ipad education apps – imagine this kind of creativity in classrooms. Contrast the rate of change in tech (where we still have quite a bit of freedom and competition) to what we see in education...Textbooks are centrally chosen, large publishers fight to get the contracts, a fair amount of money goes to administrators needed to fill out paperwork, change is expensive. And I would say too that teachers aren’t rewarded for or given the freedom to innovate/change teaching methods to fit their students. I’m not a teacher, though I am a parent with kids in a very good public school. But the lack of innovation is what strikes me as being a shame. There are a million ideas and people out there who could turn education around. Imagine setting them free to do it
paulanz | Mar 12, 2012 | Reply
PS: have a look at the Cato event here – http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=7671 Sweden, yes, Sweden instituted school vouchers years ago partially because they believed it was unfair to lock people into bad schools – the most ‘egalitarian’ position was to allow them to choose. The framing of the issue we have in the U.S. of the education debate where liberals protect public schools at all costs, and conservative elements trying to get freedom of movement and vouchers, is not the only one, though it has a life of its own and persists beyond all reason.
paulanz | Mar 12, 2012 | Reply
Good blog. Perhaps I may be permitted to have the temerity to recommend the book I co-authored: “Wot, No School? How schools impede education“. Although aimed at the UK education system it seems to have messages for the US as well, (available via Amazon).
The whole, mainly state paid for, educational establishment has created a status quo that allows for innovation only when it suits (and that usually entails spending more money). No one asks the fundamental questions:
Why do children have to go to the same classes simply because of their age (with no reference to differences in speed of growing up or of ability or aptitude or inclination)?
Why do we rigidly separate “primary” schools from “secondary” schools at a fixed age – or any age?
Why has no one taken the advice of a retired secondary school teacher who said (of the UK): “Education in this country will never function effectively until pupls, at least at secondary level, can choose their area of study and do not spend every day wastefully being forced to learn much of what they do not want to know.”?
Why does the teaching profession and its institutional back-up fight tooth and nail against parents and pupils who want to choose where they wish to go to school by having educational vouchers, if it’s not to protect themselves from legitimate competition?
Above all why do they use the terms “school” and “education” as if they were synonymous? Most learning takes place out of school but the profession behaves as if education can ONLY take place in school and that therefore only they can have a say in how it’s organised or administered.
Finally, nobody asks what is Education FOR? rather than what are Schools for?
John Harrison | Mar 13, 2012 | Reply
Thank you, Paula, and John.
We’re always grateful to have the opportunity of learning about other resources, and I have added a link to your book, John.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 13, 2012 | Reply
Maybe Bertrand Russell was ahead of his time .
richard | Mar 13, 2012 | Reply
Mary Theroux, 3/13/2012
May I take the liberty to address other aspects of your article that I consider equally important? Why didn’t the Department of Education, when it had the chance, honor Jamie Escalante, as a National role model? School personnel throughout the Nation could have enjoyed learning from him, or maybe not? Did he prove to be a great inspiring educator, motivating his students in learning a difficult subject? If not him, why not? He remained loyal and devoted to his students–he met the criteria for receiving an award as an Honourable Educator with Distinction.Racism–hatred, must not omit a lesser talked about category: White against White. Thanking you for this opportunity to comment -
Keep up the good work!
James de Laurier | Mar 13, 2012 | Reply
The modern American Public Education system is modeled on the Prussian System of the 19th Century. That is,a top down system not to educate(that is teach people to think for themselves,to reason things out and to be self reliant)but instead the present system is set up to indoctrinate. To teach people to obey and follow orders. Hence the dumbing down of Americans. The only answer,on a national level,is to work for a Constitutional Amendment,on the Federal level,similar to the 1st Amendment that prohibits a state religion. That is a Constitutional Amendment that separates education from the state. Once this Amendment is in place,all public education from preschool,secondary education,community colleges and State Universities must be either privatized or closed within 3 years of the Amendment being enacted. This would also include all the administrative and bureaucratic offices relating to public education.Any tax money that is used to pay for public education must be used to lower everyone’s taxes. Only by dismantling completely,root and branch,the present system can any real positive changes take place. There is no hope whatsoever for any real reform of the present system. It really calls for a revolution.
libertarian jerry | Mar 13, 2012 | Reply
Mary,
Many thanks. I’m delighted and flattered.
Best wishes
John
John Harrison | Mar 14, 2012 | Reply
Do you also advocate for schooling, unschooling or free-lance tutoring? Were it not for the predatory nature of the state, I would have been teaching children to read, write and learn how to earn as my livelihood. (There have been studies showing how easy it is to teach children to read and there is a multitude of methods and curricula available.)
clarence | Mar 18, 2012 | Reply