Common Core curriculum mean to students at risk of being shot?
Last month, Terrence Roberts became the fifth student from the same high school in New Orleans to be killed by gunfire in a six-month stretch. Just one murder in a school can dramatically alter its community, identity and academic trajectory, but what does school become after a sordid span of five murders? What lessons should be taught? What goals should the teachers and students work toward?
Philosopher John Dewey famously said, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” Unfortunately, the deaths of students at NET Charter High School accentuate the point that schools and curricula should never be so focused on the abstract future that they ignore social contexts, economic forces and—unfortunately—the guns that students face in the here and now.
Poignantly, NET Charter actually teaches in the vein of the Dewey quote. The mission of NET is “to provide struggling high school students with the skills, confidence, and experiences necessary to succeed in the education and career paths of their choice.” NET enrolls students who’ve often been expelled from other schools. It fills a market niche created by the inability of other schools in New Orleans’ highly decentralized education system to hold onto students.Ironically, other schools advancing the notion that an “academic” environment may not be for some students make NET’s mission more difficult. Consequently, New Orleans’ public schools post some of the highest suspension and expulsion rates in the nation.
NET should be applauded for taking on the most challenged students. It should also be lauded for accepting the responsibility that other schools have seemingly abandoned. However, the murders at this one school underscore why it cannot do so as an exception. The five deaths in six months also