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School Daze: Elijah Anderson is a terrific sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who has done some of the best ethnographic research I've ever read. His most recent book, Code of the Street, is a continuation of his longtime study of Philadelphia's toughest neighborhoods and the often brutal, but more often persevering and heroic people who live there. Given that my aim is to spotlight two different conceptions of urban education, permit me to start by pulling from Anderson's book, which is subtitled, Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. Keep in mind that at the root of his interpretation is the perpetual and all-powerful tension between two conflicting cultures in the ghettos and communities he describes: one marked by a quest for "decency"; the other scarred by "the street." "For many alienated young black people," Anderson writes, "attending school and doing well becomes negatively associated with acting white." With each passing year, he claims, "the school loses ground as more and more students adopt a street orientation, if only for self-defense in the neighborhood." Anderson also discusses how such schools are corrupted into "staging areas" for the streets. "Violence is always a possibility," he writes, "for the typically troubled school is surrounded by persistent poverty, where scarcity of valued things is the rule, thus lending a competitive edge to the social environment." However, he notes, the "trophies" up for grabs in such places are not academic. Rather, they are those of the street, with the most esteemed prize being respect, over which many kids kill and get killed. Anderson emphasizes that "most young people in these settings are inclined toward decency." But that when the code of the street rules, "they are encouraged to campaign for respect by adopting a street attitude, look, and presentation of self." He writes, for example, of a 15-year-old boy who, once safely out of his mother's view in the morning, sheds his "square clothes" for a black leather jacket. And then, in a further effort to look "street," he hides his books under it. Consider now a recent report by my favorite conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, No Excuses: Seven Principals of Low-lncome Schools Who Set the Standard for High Achievement. Participants in the "No Excuses" campaign, author Samuel Casey Carter writes, may hold different views about vouchers and other policy issues. But "we agree that there is no excuse for the academic failure of most public schools serving poor children." For example, he quotes Irwin Kurz, principal of a K-8 school in Brooklyn, who declares, "It's a lot of garbage that poor kids can't succeed." Though high expectations alone aren't enough. "You have to intend on actually getting the job done." Kurz is followed by Hellen DeBerry, principal of Chicago's Earhart Elementary, who says, "Economic status has nothing to do with intellectual ability. You have to set your standards regardless of constituency." How to reconcile the good news reported by the Heritage Foundation--which has ferreted remarkable success stories from around the country--with the gloomier picture reported by Anderson? The easy point to make is that it stands to reason that among the thousands of schools serving disproportionately poor and minority students, some will be uncommonly strong. This is the case, for no other reason, than it's mathematically impossible not to expect at least some of them to be led by rare educators--men and women of boundless dedication and true genius. It's also no great secret about what educational practices work best, and not just in inner-city schools. Carter lists such common-sense elements as affording principals wide latitude, setting high and "unyielding" standards, and testing students continuously to assure they meet the standards. It is a scandal that so few schools pursue such methods earnestly. Still--and this is has long been the crux of the matter for me--I don't think most observers appreciate how hard education in big cities such as Minneapolis and St. Paul can be. I agree with critics like Carter, as well as my other conservative friends working and writing in the field, who demand that not a single school be let off a single hook. Not an inch of wiggle room must be allowed. I applaud and thank them for leading the nation back to academic rigor, halting as that trek is. I also respect their unconditioned faith in the ability of all children to make it, regardless of anything socioeconomic or demographic about them. Yet I also find my colleagues' confidence in the capacity of school systems to replicate outstanding programs to be unrealistic. Beyond taking into account bureaucratic inertia, I start from the premise that most teachers and administrators--like most people-- tend toward the average. But as is self-evident from No Excuses, the principals saluted by the Heritage Foundation are anything but ordinary. They're exceptional. Or, if you will, if it were all that easy to copy great schools, many more would have been duplicated, instead of mutilated, by now. But even closer to the heart, my problem with more than a few critiques from the right has to do with their downplaying of the often nasty and ruinous complexities of urban life Anderson writes about. Such discounting (as it might be put in diplomatic circles) is unfortunate. It's also unfair to many teachers and administrators, be they stunning at what they do or just middling. -- Mitchell B. Pearlstein is president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis. |