The Blackboard Jungle, Revisited

When I was young, I was fascinated by movies like Glenn Ford in The Blackboard Jungle or Sidney Poitier in To Sir, With Love – an outsider going into “tough” schools and fighting the attitudes of students, parents and teachers.  The other day, I visited a very large, inner-city school for a job interview.  The school was recently saddled with a negative rating from the state and was looking for teachers to boost their social studies department.  I spoke with a couple of, I assume, very nice people.  One was the director of curriculum for social studies and English instruction and the other was the department head for the social studies department.  Over the course of the next thirty or so minutes, it was made clear to me what is wrong with that school and inner-city schools in general.   

First of all, and this applies to all schools, the fear of litigation and “unfair hiring practices” has compelled schools to use a “script” of ten questions or so through which to judge each applicant.  How can one appropriately evaluate someone through standardized questions?  It is symptomatic of the U.S. education system and the Department of Education’s paradigm.  They seek the most streamlined, standardized way to conduct business.  So, in an attempt to evaluate possible teachers, they picked a system of questioning that is designed only to get canned answers to canned, obvious questions.  What is gained from these questions?  It is hard to tell because it took little intellectual effort to come up with them and for a cagey, teaching veteran such as myself, it takes even less effort to answer.  During my answers, I have to shoehorn in my views and my theories of education to a group of people to be heard (and then, in all likelihood, ignored).  Unless school officials are capable of and allowed to ask better questions of teacher applicants, I’m not sure how one can hire better teachers. 

Second is the horrible mindset of school officials in inner-city schools.  When former president George W. Bush introduced his No Child Left Behind education policy, he referred to a soft racism.  It was a racism of reduced expectation for minorities.  When the subject of the interview turned to testing, the coordinator said that the school’s test scores were fine and their biology scores were great, given their demographics.  For the record, the school is made up of a predominantly Mexican-American population.  I was not aware, having earlier taught for seven years in such a school, that Mexican-Americans were predisposed to do poorly in biology.  She masks her racism by saying that she is there for the children, where she is needed the most.  Even the use of the word “children” infantilizes them – a part of her mindset.  The liberal philosophy cannot be enacted unless someone is placed in a permanent state of disadvantage.  So, under the auspices of helping, they perpetuate an “ingrained” sense of ineptitude.   

The denouement of this debacle came when I asked my final question.  Why should I teach at this school?  Earlier in the interview, the curriculum director asked if I was willing to take a job teaching “regular” classes and not Advanced Placement – something I’ve done nearly exclusively for the last ten years.  I was honest in that I said it was a factor, a large factor, but not the only one.  When I asked my last question, the curriculum director said, “You have to want to be here.  We want people here for the children and not for any personal desire to teach this or that.  It must be for the children.”  First of all, that does not answer my question.  Second, it is a ridiculous philosophy.  By that notion, I should not even be interviewing but content with my current assignment because it is for the “children.” 

Until inner-city schools are operated and driven by administrators and teachers that expect the exact same standards as the “good schools” expect of their students, these beleaguered programs will never progress.  As long as administrators seek out teachers with the same non-sensical philosophies as they, the students will continue to wallow in a state of disadvantage.  When we seek to extend students latitude for their failings, we continue to cripple them.