Changing the Odds for Young People

Home is the most unequal environment in education, and school should be an arena of equity, Mr. Conrath points out. Can public alternative schools begin the necessary intervention for equity? Absolutely. If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. - Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle ALTERNATIVE education can become a catalyst for America's unrealized hopes. Alternative schools can help many of our young people overcome their most debilitating handicaps: the rampant pessimism, the failure to trust in effort, and the lack of confidence in our institutions caused by generational poverty. Public education in the U.S. is certainly based on an ideology of equality, but that equality is still unrealized in practice. If alternative educators are to help children of poverty develop personally and obtain a high-quality education, they must show other educators what to do and persuade them that the agenda of alternative schools is consistent with the ideology of public education. To have a sense of the frustrations of schoolhouse life for many youngsters who enter kindergarten filled with hope about school but lacking in such resources as medical care and nutrition, we can look to what might seem an odd place: grand opera. Giuseppe Verdi, in his opera Simon Boccanegra, which is set in 14th-century Genoa, composed a situation in which the lead character, Boccanegra, is asked to be a candidate in an election between plebeians (low born) and patricians (high born). Boccanegra, a plebeian, does not want to run in this election, but he agrees to do so because he believes that a victory will enable him to marry his true love, the daughter of a patrician. As the opera opens, the patrician father is seen on stage grieving, for he has just found his daughter dead. Boccanegra rushes in asking for one more chance to see his true love, whom he has not been allowed to see for six years. The father agrees. Boccanegra is overjoyed. A messenger arrives with the news that Boccanegra has won the election. When he enters the room where his true love is and finds her dead, Boccanegra is not only devastated, but he is also stuck with an office he did not want. The music begins, and everything for Boccanegra goes downhill from there. This is not a comic opera. To return to the children of poverty, consider a third-grader with little or no medical care and inadequate nutrition, who has been labeled poorly motivated and inattentive. Well-intentioned teachers may have overdosed her on warm fuzzies to make her feel good about herself and to help compensate for life's frustrations. By the time she reaches middle school, this youngster might well be told she is a slow learner - based on the results of an I.Q. test rather than on findings from broader measures. She may find herself having difficulty concentrating on details of a classroom assignment because she has a nagging toothache and her family cannot afford to take her to a dentist. She may be placed in low-level classes that make extensive use of dreary, mindless worksheets rather than intellectually stimulating material reserved for gifted students. By the time she reaches high school, her attendance is likely to be poor, so she will end up in the office and be told that she needs to take responsibility for her life, that passing or failing is her choice, and that she has the right to fail. Furthermore, near the end of the term she may well be told that she has too few points to pass a certain course, even though there are three weeks left. It will be impossible for her to make up those points because late work is not accepted. After all, high standards must be maintained. When she expresses her opinion of this policy, she is told she has a bad attitude and is suspended for three days. This is not a comic opera either. The fact is that home is the most unequal environment in education, and school should be an arena of equity. …