Education....

I have somewhat of a unique perspective on public education in Rhode Island. Like many others, I spent 13 years as a consumer in RI public schools under the impression that the instruction and curriculum that was provided to me was pretty much the standard in all districts. I remember very well that education was valued in my household and that it was assumed that both children would eventually land in and graduate from a four year college. I attended Coventry High School and believed, as most of my classmates did, that we were attending a reasonably "good" school. One piece of evidence to support this belief was that we were surrounded nearly exclusively by white students. We had definitely internalized the notion that white students in suburban schools had a near monopoly on academic achievement in Rhode Island. Schools in urban areas were burdened with high concentrations of "minority" students who were either unwilling or unable to perform academically thus diluting the overall quality of instruction that was available. We had a two pronged defense against this.... First, we had a clever system of "leveling" that limited our contact with the chronic underachievers. While this group was made up exclusively by whites, we had the feeling that they probably resembled the students in urban schools in every respect except for skin color. Secondly, we had segregation on our side. I have come to be a strong critic of educational segregation but I unconsciously and probably rightly viewed this as an advantage during my high school years. We perceived ourselves as deservedly being among the educational "haves" in the state by virtue of the fact that we had earned our access to a quality education. We did our work. We got good grades. Students in urban districts had the same opportunities but wasted them with chronic absenteeism and drug use. With the insight of hindsight and a more developed capacity for critical thinking, I now recognize how uninformed and shortsighted we were. Especially in the area of drug use. I am now fully confident that my affinity for intoxicating substances between the years 1993 and 1996 would have trumped most students in Providence or Central Falls and....I was unquestionably a light user in my school.

The perception on the part of whites that they are they are the beneficiaries of our segregated public education system is the primary reason why we have made next to no progress in integrating schools. Derrick Bell rightly argued that white folks only support change when there are clear, tangible benefits associated with it. One of the key elements to our belief that we were entitled to the superior education that we were receiving was that we had earned it while students in lesser schools had not. We had been taught and bought into the notion that we were the product of the educational choices that we had made....nothing else. We believed that the educational segregation that we "benefited" from was simply the product of where people chose to live and there was little that could or needed to be done about it. It was just a few years after I graduated from high school that the foundations of these assumptions started to erode....information is a dangerous thing.

Most people do not have the opportunity to spend as much time in as many public schools as I do. Between the months of September and March, I make upwards of 30 visits to Rhode Island high schools. I also read in the area of 1000 college applications from this same group of students annually. It is in this process that one realizes the degree to which the notion of a "culture of poverty" is absurd. High School seniors in our urban schools are generally no less committed to academic achievement than the Coventry High School students that I spent 4 blissful years with. What we had that they don't is an established framework to achieving these goals. We had greater access to pre-k education that really plays a critical role in determining how and at what pace a student progresses in the academic years that follow. The Anyon article was eyeopening for two important reasons. First, it confirmed

POST INTERRUPTED BY READING GUIDES!!! I WILL FINISH THIS THOUGHT TONIGHT.