[Durham INC] New from the Rev-elution - Jeanne Lucas

[Carl Kenney]

It is a difficult point to make due to how it challenges the way we think about diversity.  In the blog post, I referecncd the merging of the former Durham Public and City School systems.  This is an important link because of how it informs where we are today.  It also uncovers the assumptions of the Civil Rights movement.  Facing those assumptions leaves us feeling like it all was a failure.  I don't believe that is true.  It takes more work than we thought.  That part is true. With both the Civil Rights movement and school merger we functioned with the assumption that bringing two communities together would level the playing field.  We assumed that by offering similiar oppurtunities all would be fine.  What we failed to regard were the massive divides stired by economics.  The disparity in resources outside the classroom has extreme implications related to how young people learn.  It is true that this is not a school system problem.  We have assumed that our schools are failing.  They aren't.   This truth leaves us with no credible solution.  It exposes disparity in a way that was hidden before.  I reveals that many of the black students are doing their best to catch up.  They are always left behind due to a lack of resources at home.  This exposes how economics fuels learning at home, and how it hinders self-esteem and destroys dreams.  How do you fix it?  We can't until we find ways to support the entire family, and that is not a school problem. We can also begin by facing the good and the bad that has come with school merger.  What have we learned so far?  What mistakes have been made?  What are the successes since 1992?  What is left to be done? Carl W. Kenney II
 Date: Tue, 22 May 2012 18:32:00 -0700
From: christinebbd at yahoo.com
To: inc-list at durhaminc.org
CC: inc-list at rtpnet.org
Subject: Re: [Durham INC] New from the Rev-elution - Jeanne Lucas


      From: Pat Carstensen <pats1717 at hotmail.com>
 To: christinebbd at yahoo.com 
 Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 6:41 PM
 Subject: RE: [Durham INC] New from the Rev-elution - Jeanne Lucas
   







....I do think that you could shift tactics a little in what you say about "not solving social problems in the schools," because you seem to be mostly talking about the social problem of legacy from civil rights era, and many of us think the social issues that are affecting the schools are much broader than the legacy of civil rights era and the issues with communicating across communities is much bigger than the schools. Regards, pat

 Yes!  This is what I'm trying to say as well... it's much broader.  I must not be doing a very good job communicating my thoughts.  (My brain drives me nuts half the time).  There is collateral damage from the civil rights era (I.e.: moving the cure to social problems to the classroom), poverty issues, funding,
 bureaucracy... and more.

We need to work on "communicating across communities"... but this isn't an educator's job, to facilitate the communication among the communities.  

I have a question...  When we desegregated the schools, did the communication among communities stop?  Did everyone fall back to let the schools do the job for them?

Or was it there along-side what was going on in the schools?  (I sincerely want to know... I was in Iowa back then).

Christine Chamberlain
   
_______________________________________________
Durham INC Mailing List
list at durham-inc.org
http://www.durham-inc.org/list.html 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20120523/4480a77e/attachment.html>