Diary of a pre-certified teacher, Vol. XIII: Whatever it takes

In 1990 Canada formed the Harlem Children’s Zone, a massive social experiment that set out to change the way poor black kids are raised, read to, spoken to, even fed. In 1997 the Zone started a program encompassing 24 blocks; in 2007, it was expanded to cover almost 100 blocks. It involves both charter schools and public schools. Canada has been on Oprah and 60 Minutes, and his results are impressive. Here one just one stat from the website: “Of the 161 four-year-olds that entered the Harlem Gems in the 2008-2009 school year, 17% had a school readiness classification of delayed or very delayed. By the end of the year, there were no students classified as ‘very delayed’ and the percentage of ‘advanced’ had gone from 33.5% to 65.2%, with another 8.1% at ‘very advanced,’ up from only 2%.”

This is wonderful, hope-filled stuff. And if we can be blunt, it is easily verifiable to anyone with familiarity with the problems holding back many poor black families. A few weeks ago in my “Foundations of Education” class, we had a discussion about stereotypes. Karen, our professor, put some statistics on the board: Asian kids do better in school than all other groups. Blacks do worse than anyone else. Why is this? Karen asked. Using common sense, students replied: because Asian families emphasis work and learning early on. It’s not a race thing as much as a learning thing—an infant learning thing. To use an example from my own people: in 1945, two kids are born in Belfast. One has parents that do not read to or encourage him. The others are music fans; the house is filled with American soul, rhythm and blues, Christian hymns, and folk songs. It’s not hard to figure out which kid flunks out of school and becomes a drunk and which becomes Van Morrison. Unfortunately, Karen rebuked the students who made this argument. “You’re using stereotypes!” she said. Yes. Stereotypes that are true—not because of race but because of facts about how the human brain develops.

What is so brilliant about Canada’s breakthrough is that it has the potential to push past the left-right debate about education. The other day in class Karen read aloud an excerpt from Jonathan Kozol’s book “Savage Inequalities.” Kozol is a sad-sacked geyser of liberal empathy, his books and lectures long laundry lists of rat-infested schools with collapsing infrastructure. But Kozol has little to say about the crisis of bad parenting in the black community. On the other side is libertarian Charles Murray, who thinks that IQ is destiny and any attempt to change it is futile. But perhaps the key is to take the best of the liberal and conservative argument. By all means, fix the infrastructure of our schools. And when that is done, completely revolutionize the way poor black parents raise their kids—and use shame if need be.

Recently in the New York Times, Geoffrey Canada summed up his philosophy: “For me, this is not an intellectual debate. This is quite literally about saving young lives. For parents in devastated neighborhoods such as Harlem, the decision to send their child to the local failure factory or a successful charter school is no choice.” It takes both a village and good parents to raise a child.

Augustine Brehon is a name assumed to protect the author, who is currently receiving his education certification near Washington, D.C.