Movies: School-Based Comedy Raises Issues Spanning Charter-District This Week In EducationDivide

This Week In Education: Movies: School-Based Comedy Raises Issues Spanning Charter-District Divide:

School-Based Comedy Raises Issues Spanning Charter-District Divide

There is much to like about the low-budget mockumentary called "Teacher of The Year (TOTY)" now available for streaming on Netflix and other VOD services. 

First and foremost, TOTY isn't really about education politics or specific approaches to improving schools. This is nothing like Waiting For Superman, Standardized, Bad Teacher, Won't Back Down, Race to Nowhere, and all the others you may have seen or heard about recently. 

Yes, it's set at a charter school, at which there is -- atypically - both union representation of the teachers and some form of tenure that allows veterans to speak their minds. But the charter status of the school and the union representation are mostly plot vehicles, not central aspects of the story. There's no Common Core, or standardized testing. Heaven. 

The plot centers around two main dramas. First is the decision that the aforementioned Teacher of the Year must make about what to do with his future. Like some real-life state teachers of the year (seehere and here), he is frustrated with his work environment and is being tempted to do something else that's much more lucrative and perhaps less stressful. The second plot element is an accusation leveled against one of the other teachers by a student, which could result in the teacher being fired despite his long-standing reputation for being committed to the school and to his students.

But mostly @TOTYmovie is a comedy -- a conglomeration of all the schools you've ever been in before, full of eccentric characters and a mix of high and low humor. There's the handsomely bland  vest-wearing protagonist, Mitch Carter, who breaks up fights, shares his lunch with a hungry student and helps him understand what Shakespeare is all about. There's the perfectly awful Principal Ronald Douche, played by Keegan Michael Key (of Key & Peele), who wants to be superintendent but might not listen to his teachers enough. There's a robotics teacher who thinks that HE should have been Teacher of the Year (and might be right). There are two deliciously horrible guidance counselors (played by the comic Sklar brothers). The assistant principal is a hapless disciplinarian handing out detention slips to bemused students. 

The comparisons to TV comedies The Office or Parks & Recreation are understandable. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer called it a "sweet, gonzo comedy.")

The filmmakers -- Lainie Strouse (the producer) and writer/director Jason Strouse (who's also the principal of an orthodox Jewish school in LA) -- say that their goal was to make something like Spinal Tap or Best In Show -- set in a high school. Another comparison that they like is Ferris Bueller's Day Off (from the point of view of teachers).  Excited about the film's success at 18 festivals over the past year and now online on Netflix and Amazon, the gist of what they had to say during a phone interview last week is that they wanted to make a film about the what it's like teaching in a real school, to tell the story in a silly but realistic way, and to focus on the teachers' perspective rather than the kids'. 

They won't say what school the film was shot at, though part of the deal was giving students jobs as PAs and walk-ons. They told me shooting was done in just 11 days spread out over six months -- and that much of the film was captured in the last few days. The shooting schedule was so fragmented that some of the actors didn't even know that they were in the same film together. 

As for their concerns about education, the filmmakers' only "issues" are that teachers don't make much as other college graduates and sometimes leave for more lucrative careers, and that school and district bureaucracies are a cumbersome bother. The rules and norms of schools breed frustration and tamp down innovation, they feel -- which is why so many people they know used to be teachers but aren't any more (and why highly-qualified non-teachers can't easily become second-career teachers).

Maybe that's the real appeal of TOTY, which is that it's neither glorifying nor tearing teachers down, and raising issues that span charter and district environments alike rather than divide them. This Week In Education: Movies: School-Based Comedy Raises Issues Spanning Charter-District Divide:

How many kids opted out of Common Core tests - Business Insider

How many kids opted out of Common Core tests - Business Insider:

The numbers are in, and a shocking number of kids boycotted New York's standardized tests

A record number of students in New York opted out of statewide standardized tests this year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The roughly 20% of opt-outs quadrupled from the previous year, and indicated that the movement to boycott the tests linked to the Common Core standards had some success.

In April, at the start of New York's standardized testing cycle, there were estimates that huge numbers of parents were set to boycott standardized tests. Those estimates have now been confirmed with about 200,000 of the approximated 1.1 million eligible test-takers refusing to take the exams.

The opt-outs follow a year of acrimony between proponents and critics of the standardized tests.

AP / Rogelio V. Solis

Parents across the state voiced their frustration over the implementation of the Common Core, voicing concerns that the tests contain puzzling questions and that too much of their children's valuable time in the classroom is taken up by preparing for tests.

And Karen Magee, the president of New York State United Teachers — the largest teachers union in the state — urged for a mass opt-out of Common Core testing in March, sparking criticism from advocates of the standardized testing.

Magee, for her part, claimed the tests are not "valid indicators of student progress" and that they exist only to punish teachers, according to the New York Daily News, which reported on her appearance on upstate public radio’s “The Capitol Pressroom.” Diagnostic tests conducted by teachers are an alternative and one she sees as more beneficial to students and teachers, she said.

 But Critics — including Merryl Tisch, the Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents — fear encouraging parents to opt out of Common Core testing could result in the loss of federal funds to schools and districts that don't hit 95% participation levels.

This poses a more dire problem if schools that receive Title 1 funding — federal supplemental funding for at-risk and low-income students — don't hit participation requirements.

The students opting out were concentrated in suburban and rural areas, and were heavily from average need districts that under-performed on the 2014 test, according to High Achievement New York (HANY), a nonprofit coalition of business and education groups.

That is a harmful trend for students in districts that need additional help, HANY claims.

As for the issue of Title 1 funding, the implications, and potential punishments, will become more clear for districts in time.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-kids-opted-out-of-common-core-tests-2015-8#ixzz3idS5kKLY

My Children are not Guinea Pigs! My battle against Common Core.

My Children are not Guinea Pigs! My battle against Common Core.:

My Children are not Guinea Pigs!

It is true.  Unelected organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Achieve, Inc. (funded by Gates), NGA, CCSSO and MANY more are dictating how and what your children will learn.  None of these organizations are elected or accountable to the public.  What gives Bill Gates the authority to dictate what our children are learning or how they should learn it?  He is obviously brilliant, but has no background in education or child development.

Mr. Gates, (a man that dropped out of college) is calling the shots regarding our children's education.  It's also important to note that he is peddling something he won't subject his own kids to.  A few quotes from Gates:

“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.”

Our children are Bill Gates experiment in his eyes.  Data.  Profit.  Not children.  He doesn't sit with them and dry their tears and console them while they are doing homework.  He doesn't see them struggle with spelling, despite the fact that these kids are bright.  He doesn't see the weight of the world on their shoulders when they are dropped off at school.  School once was fun and exciting, but now our children are developing anxiety and physical symptoms because of the damage Gates little project is doing to them.

More quotes from Gates...

"This is encouraging—but identifying common standards is not enough. We’ll know we’ve succeeded when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards."

"to create just these kinds of tests—next-generation assessments aligned to the common core. When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching."

"For the first time, there will be a large uniform base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better."

In an interview, Gates said his role is to fund the research and development of new tools, such as the Common Core, and offer them to decision-makers who are trying to improve education for millions of Americans.  It's up to the Government to decide which tools to use, but someone has to invest in their creation.

It's up to the Government?  What?

There are three federal laws that prohibit federal departments or agencies from directing, supervising or controlling elementary and secondary school curricula, My Children are not Guinea Pigs! My battle against Common Core.:

What Ohio Gov. John Kasich is doing to public education in his state - The Washington Post

What Ohio Gov. John Kasich is doing to public education in his state - The Washington Post:

What Ohio Gov. John Kasich is doing to public education in his state

With two-term Ohio Gov. John Kasich joining the crowd of candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, it’s a good time to look at the public education mess that has developed in his state under his leadership.

Kasich has pushed key tenets of corporate school reform:

*expanding charter schools — even though the state’s charter sector is the most troubled in the country

*increasing the number of school vouchers that use public money to pay for tuition at private schools, the vast majority of them religious — even though state officials say that fewer than one-third of those available were used by families this past school year

*performance pay for teachers — even though such schemes have been shown over many years not to be useful in education

*evaluating educators by student standardized test scores in math and reading — even though assessment experts have warned that using test scores in this way is not reliable or valid.

Meanwhile, the Ohio Education Department in Kasich’s administration is in turmoil. David Hansen, his administration’s chief for school choice and charter schools resigned over this past weekend after admitting that he had unilaterally withheld failing scores of charter schools in state evaluations of the schools’ sponsor organizations so they wouldn’t look so bad. (Hansen’s wife, incidentally, is Kasich’s chief of staff, who is taking a leave from that post to work on his campaign.) There are growing calls now for the resignation of the Kasich-backed state superintendent of education, Richard Ross.

John Kasich, in his own words(1:42)

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is a contender for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Here's where he stands on the Iran deal, marriage, health care for the mentally ill and more, in his own words. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

[Teacher: I’ve loved my ‘very difficult’ job. Now Ohio has made it ‘impossible.’]

Under his watch, funding for traditional public schools — which enroll 90 percent of Ohio’s students — declined by some half a billion dollars, while funding for charter schools has increased at least 27 percent, with charters now receiving more public funds from the state per student than traditional public schools, according to the advocacy group Innovation Ohio. This despite the fact that many charters are rated lower than traditional public schools. Meanwhile, local governments have been forced to pass levies to raise What Ohio Gov. John Kasich is doing to public education in his state - The Washington Post:

Arizona Gets Schooled: Update on Ban of Mexican American Studies « NewsTaco

Arizona Gets Schooled: Update on Ban of Mexican American Studies « NewsTaco:

Arizona Gets Schooled: Update on Ban of Mexican American Studies

ethnicstudiesnow.com/

*A huge victory for Mexican-American studies in general, and for the opponents of Arizona’s ban in specific.Tony Diaz gives us a very complete and detailed account of the issue and the federal court proceedings. Our thanks to Tony for leading on this charge. VL

---

By Tony Diaz/El Librotraficante,Huffington Post Latino Voices

Discrimination is the only explanation for Arizona’s banning of Mexican American Studies, threatening intellectual freedom for the entire nation.

A federal appeals court suggested as much in their opinion on July 7, 2015.

“… the federal judges schooled Arizona with their probing and questioning.

This is the ruling regarding the court case against Arizona’s law used to ban Mexican American Studies. The court heard “Maya Arce vs Huppenthal”, now called “Maya Arce vs Douglas,” in January.

The law prohibits courses that promote the overthrow of the government. However, as the judges pointed out, it was enforced on only the K-12 Mexican American Studies (MAS) program at Tucson Unified School District (TUSD).

This was a monumental ruling because the court recognized the discrimination apparent in the state’s banning and gave the plaintiffs the chance to document it.

It appears that the federal government is ready to put in check Arizona’s rebellion.

The Librotraficantes were honored to be in the court room to witness history and hear first hand the oral arguments. Arizona’s testimony bordered on parody, but the federal judges schooled Arizona with their probing and questioning. Below are some highlights from the proceedings.

Arizona as Opposite Land:

Arizona argued that “student achievement is irrelevant.”

Arizona began its oral arguments by trying to deport America to Opposite Land.

The Cabrera Report and the Cambium Audit are 2 major studies that prove Mexican American courses helps students pass standardized Math and English tests and graduate. Arizona fought to keep the findings from being used as evidence in court.

Arizona’s justification for ignoring the data was mind-blowing. Arizona argued that “student achievement is irrelevant.”

Evidently, generations of teachers have the concept all wrong. Here we thought just the opposite.

The sense this makes is nonsense. And the judges thought so, too.

One judge said that ignoring the findings, “. . . would seem to demonstrate evidence of discriminatory intent.”

You really do have to see it to believe it, and to do so-click here for a link to a video of the oral arguments. And here are more highlights:

The worst job on earth must be serving as lawyer for Arizona. The state’s lawyer was flustered and stuttering when she was pressed to provide an example of a course that could satisfy the different components of the law. She could not.

It looked just like the Daily Show interview where Al Madrigal asked Michael Hicks, TUSD School Board Member, opponent of MAS, to explain how to teach African Americans students about slavery without creating resentment. He too fumbled with Arizona Gets Schooled: Update on Ban of Mexican American Studies « NewsTaco:

Power to speak: School Choice = Whose Choice? | The Argonaut Newspaper

Power to speak: School Choice = Whose Choice? | The Argonaut Newspaper:

Power to speak: School Choice = Whose Choice?

The education marketplace concept — a competitive, not comprehensive model — is wrong for public schools

Last week’s cover story about local schools competing in an evolving education marketplace represents one side of a heated debate. The idea of an education marketplace is an outgrowth of the neo-conservative philosophy that seeks to turn public entities into or over to businesses. Featuring their unique themes or “new-and-improved” models, schools attract customers. Those highest in demand survive. The model warms the public to the idea of privatizing public services.

On the other side, schools are a public good, there to make good citizens for the betterment of a democratic society. In this model, a school serves every child who walks through the gates. If there’s anything like a marketplace, it’s more like TOMS shoes — for every pair bought, another pair is donated to someone in need. Only with public schools, both pairs are worn in the same community.

Plenty of families reject the marketplace framework, where parents are forced to choose among niche programs. They want comprehensive schools, and they want the diversity that comes with them.

Venice High School’s World Languages and Global Studies Magnet is like a liberal arts program. (It’s worth noting that magnets go far beyond competitive themes by utilizing an enrollment formula aimed to cure racial isolation.) With the highest test scores on the entire west side, it is one of LAUSD’s longest-running and most successful magnet programs.

Paul Revere Middle School, too, attracts students from the neighborhoods of Venice and Mar Vista, and exemplifies Westsiders’ desire for well-rounded schools. Some schools are smartly replicating that model. When Stoner Elementary School parents embarked on a school improvement plan, they broadened their offerings to include a music program, a dance program, a STEM lab and a language curriculum. These schools are demonstrating the appeal of comprehensive schools.

Still the marketplace notion is perpetuated as a solution to declining enrollment in our neighborhood schools. However, the real reason enrollment is declining is because of the huge increase in the number of schools on the west side following the approval of dozens of charter schools in the last few years. Pouring a gallon of milk into 20 glasses leaves more room in each glass than if you only filled 10.

It’s true that some of those glasses have gotten shined up; there is some benefit to competition. Charters deserve credit for waking schools and the teachers union up.

But if you have to win a lottery to go to a good school, who is doing the choosing? In most cases, it’s the school. In the education marketplace model, students aren’t customers: they’re currency. The revenue follows them, depleting neighborhood schools of scarce resources.

To follow the metaphor of TOMS shoes, it isn’t just that the purchased shoes go somewhere else — the donated shoes disappear, too. In schools, that means funding for nurses, librarians, assistant principals and smaller class sizes.

LAUSD is making a mistake by pushing neighborhood schools to compete against each other. Schools that resist the pressure are doing a community service and should be rewarded by the district.

When the venerable Beethoven Elementary was pressured to pick a theme, the principal stood up to the school district and continued a comprehensive approach.

Walgrove Elementary should be rewarded, too. Walgrove fully embraces special education students who arrive from dozens of other schools because of Walgrove’s stellar special ed department and the warm acceptance these students experience by the entire Walgrove community.

This inclusion lowers Walgrove’s overall school score, making it appear as if the school is struggling. Walgrove wrestled with the idea of a themed, competitive model but rejected the conversion after a gut-Power to speak: School Choice = Whose Choice? | The Argonaut Newspaper:

CURMUDGUCATION: LA Charter Onslaught

CURMUDGUCATION: LA Charter Onslaught: LA Charter OnslaughtLast Friday, the LA Times brought the news that "a major charter expansion" is "in the works for LA Unified students."  It might have also noted that the expansion was in the works for parents and taxpayers, but I suppose that's not as powerful as noting that this is For The Children.But the lede will give you an idea of

by mike simpson / 1h 

Why Can't the America that Creates 'This American Life' Also Integrate Our Schools? | John Thompson

Why Can't the America that Creates 'This American Life' Also Integrate Our Schools? | John Thompson:

Why Can't the America that Creates 'This American Life' Also Integrate Our Schools?

Paul Tough, formally of the New York Times Magazine, wrote that school reform was the result of "liberal post-traumatic shock" from supposedly losing the War on Poverty. Believing that it was too hard to fight poverty, trauma, segregation and the other causes of education underperformance, reformers sought a test-driven, instruction-driven shortcut. This reductionism has continued to fail.

A remarkable This American Life series, by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Chana Joffe-Walt, explains why there are no silver bullets and why we should embrace the challenge of integrating our schools in order to build an education system worthy of our democracy.

Hannah-Jones begins "The Problem We All Live With -- Part One" with the social science research that explains why NCLB-type reform has proven to be incapable of turning around schools with intense concentrations of students from extreme poverty. When schools face a critical mass of problems created by generational poverty and trauma, a "tipping point" is crossed. As explained by the Chicago Consortium for School Research, it is very unlikely that answers for failed schools will be found inside the four walls of the classroom. In schools located in the poorest neighborhoods, and that serve everyone who walks in the door, a system of socio-emotional supports must be established before instruction-driven, curriculum-driven polices can work.

Sadly, reformers who sought to deputize teachers as the agents for reversing the intertwined legacies of poverty and oppression dismissed such research as "low expectations" and "excuses." The accountability-driven reform movement only made sense if teachers knew how to overcome poverty -- even in our most segregated neighborhoods -- but didn't bother to do so. They convinced politicians and edu-philanthropists to test, sort, reward and punish their way to school improvement. In other words, opposing reforms based on teacher quality and competition, and advocating for comprehensive, science-based policies, was dismissed as giving up on poor children of color.

Hannah-Jones offers a corrective to that corporate reform ideology, and she reminds us that in 1983, St. Louis began "the nation's most successful metro-wide desegregation program." The desegregation experiment wasn't perfect, but "test scores for 8th and 10th grade transfer students rose. The transfer students were more likely to graduate and go onto college... In surveys, white students overwhelmingly said they'd benefited from the opportunity to be educated alongside black students."

One of the best things about Part One is its ending. The state of Missouri claims that it will do right by the Normandy district -- a school system it helped devastate -- by employing the usual reform tactics. They will reconstitute the system, increase Why Can't the America that Creates 'This American Life' Also Integrate Our Schools? | John Thompson:

Residential Concentration of Poverty (and Wealth) and the Impact on Public Schools | janresseger

Residential Concentration of Poverty (and Wealth) and the Impact on Public Schools | janresseger:

Residential Concentration of Poverty (and Wealth) and the Impact on Public Schools

Paul Jargoswky, the Rutgers University professor of public policy and director of the Rutgers Center for Urban Research and Urban Education, has just published a new brief on the growing concentration of poverty in many urban neighborhoods across America:

“To address the root causes of urban violence, police-community tensions, and the enduring legacy of racism, the genesis of urban slums and the forces that sustain them must be understood.  As a first step in that direction, this report examines the trends in the population and characteristics of neighborhoods of extreme deprivation… The number of people living in high-poverty ghettos, barrios, and slums has nearly doubled since 2000, rising from 7.2 million to 13.8 million… Poverty became more concentrated—more than one in four of the black poor and nearly one in six of the Hispanic poor lives in a neighborhood of extreme poverty compared to one in thirteen of the white poor.  To make matters worse, poor children are more likely to reside in high-poverty neighborhoods than poor adults.”

The problem is not merely the persistence of poverty but also its growing concentration. Jargowsky speculates about the causes: “Recent economic troubles have clearly contributed to the sharp re-concentration of poverty since 2000.  But another huge factor, in good economic times and bad, has been rampant suburban and exurban development.  Suburbs have grown so fast that their growth was cannibalistic: it came at the expense of the central city and older suburbs.  In virtually all metropolitan areas, suburban rings grew much faster than was needed to accommodate metropolitan population growth, so that central cities and inner-ring suburbs saw massive population declines.”

Cities with the highest concentration of poverty are more likely to be mid-size cities with many in the Midwest: “Whereas concentration of poverty used to be a big city problem, the fastest growth in black concentration of poverty since 2000 was in metropolitan areas with 500,000 to 1 million persons—places like Syracuse, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; and Wilmington, Delaware.  In Syracuse, for example, the number of high-poverty tracts more than doubled, rising from twelve to thirty.  Syracuse now has the highest level of poverty concentration among blacks and Hispanics of the one hundred largest metropolitan areas.”  Concentrated poverty among African American residents is highest in these ten cities: Syracuse, NY;  Detroit, MI;  Toledo,OH;  Rochester, NY;  Fresno, CA;  Buffalo, NY; Cleveland, OH; Gary, IN;  Milwaukee, WI; and Louisville, KY.   Among Hispanics, concentrated poverty is highest in these ten cities: Syracuse, NY;  Philadelphia, PA;  McAllen, TX;  Detroit, MI;  Springfield, MA;  Rochester, NY;  Milwaukee, WI;  Fresno, CA;  Buffalo, NY; and Cleveland, OH.

“Unfortunately,” explains Jargowsky, “poor children are more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods than poor adults… The gap is largest for poor children under 6 years of age, by 16.5 percent compared to 13.8 percent for poor adults.  The gap in high poverty neighborhood residence is even larger for the black poor, with 28 percent of black poor children less than 6 years old residing in concentrated poverty compared to 24.2 percent of black poor adults.  Whites, however, show the opposite pattern, with white poor children less likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods than white poor adults.”

Stanford University sociologist Sean Reardon has conducted massive research (here and here) on growing segregation of families by income and a closely related widening income inequality achievement gap at school.  Reardon’s research confirms that families are increasingly raising children in communities of either concentrated poverty or concentrated wealth.  Reardon was recently interviewed by Sam Pizzigati for Too Much, an online monthly published by the Institute for Policy Studies:  “We’re concerned about racial segregation, in part, because of the economic segregation that goes along with it.  Racial segregation often means that blacks or Latinos are unequally concentrated in poor, disadvantaged Residential Concentration of Poverty (and Wealth) and the Impact on Public Schools | janresseger:

Should educational materials be set free for all to use? Some say, yes. - The Hechinger Report

Should educational materials be set free for all to use? Some say, yes. - The Hechinger Report:

Should educational materials be set free for all to use? Some say, yes.

etter signed by more than 100 educators, scientists, lawyers and techies arrived last week on the digital doorstep of the White House.

The correspondence, which is written with constitutional flair, requests something that at first sounds simple: Make educational materials and professional development that are funded by the government free and widely available to the public.

“We, the undersigned organizations from the education, library, technology, public interest and legal communities are writing in response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s call for ideas to strengthen the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan,” the letter begins. “To ensure that the value of educational materials created with federal funds is maximized, we call upon the President to issue a strong Administration policy to ensure that they are made available to the public as Open Educational Resources to freely use, share, and build upon.”

Open Educational Resources are commonly referred as OER (pronounced O-E-R). And they might prove to be far more powerful in reshaping our schools than the banal acronym implies.

What is OER? In the simplest terms it can be summarized quite succinctly: free. Outside the education beltway of wonky, jargon-filled insider chatter, there is an example well known to just about everyone with an Internet connection: Wikipedia. It is a free, online encyclopedia that can be repurposed and rewritten by anyone, anywhere, without fear of violating copyright laws.

But the OER crusaders have loftier goals than putting door-to-door dictionary salesmen out of business. They see a future where educational materials (read: knowledge) aren’t locked behind a gate. And the movement didn’t start last week. After nearly a decade, it has a growing list of case studies to share.

A nonprofit called CK-12, for example, has devoted considerable resources to the development of free digital materials for STEM, the shorthand used to describe four subject areas: science, technology, engineering and math. The organization is working to spread those free educational materials widely.

Some supporters believe OER is a critical ingredient for advancing the use of digital tools in classrooms. Among those signing the letter sent last week to the White House was The Learning Accelerator, a nonprofit advocacy organization that offers technical support intended to, well, accelerate the adoption of blended learning. Among its many other projects, the organization is in the midst of Should educational materials be set free for all to use? Some say, yes. - The Hechinger Report:

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Terrible Price of Fearing for Your Child's Safety- A Very Personal Response to "Between the World and Me"

With A Brooklyn Accent: The Terrible Price of Fearing for Your Child's Safety- A Very Personal Response to "Between the World and Me":

The Terrible Price of Fearing for Your Child's Safety- A Very Personal Response to "Between the World and Me"

This review essay was originally written for "Jewish Currents"

Let me say at the outset that I cannot be objective in reviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates new book, "Between the World and Me," which is addressed to his 15 year old son, who burst into tears when learning that the Ferguson  Grand Jury refused to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown.   I have a 11 year old bi-racial granddaughter who is  the light of my life- she is beautiful, smart, athletic  with a great future.   But when Michael Brown was killed, the first thought that came into my mind was “Thank God she is not a boy.”  No grandfather should think such thoughts, but those are the thoughts Black parents have to think every day. Because as Coates reminds us,  Black bodies, for as long as we have been a nation,  have littered the pathways that whites have walked toward their version of  “The American Dream,” and even today, the life of a Black person can be snuffed out if he or she is in the wrong place and the wrong time and those who do the killing will rarely be punished.

  The image of America as a nation whose progress has been built on the exploitation and murder of Black people is not going to win any popularity contests in mainstream political discourse. There are historical works, such as Edward Baptist’s "The Half  Never Been Told," which provide concrete evidence for such an argument, with a tone that is less confrontational, and with a less pessimistic vision of the American future.

   But what Coates does, with unmatched clarity, is to describe how Black parents, and children, and entire communities have been traumatized by the fear that  Black life is cheap and could be sniffed out at the drop of a hat with little recourse from  the law because the law is complicit in its devaluation. And he does so in a way that may be more effective than an historian or a sociologist presenting data because he takes us into the mind of a parent terrified for the life of their child, a perspective any parent can readily identify with

Here is how Coates  describes this fear to his son. There is no distance in his writing. Just imagine what it takes to address your own child this way:

“I am afraid. I feel the fear most acutely when you leave me and in this I was unoriginal. When I was your age, the only people I knew were black, and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid….

“It was always right in front of me. The fear was there in the extravagant boys of my neighborhood,  in their large rings and medallions, their puffy big coats and full length fur collared leathers, which was their armor against the worlds. . . . I think back on those boys now and all I see is fear and all I see is them girding themselves against the bad old days when the Mississippi mob gathered around their grandfathers so that the branches of the black body might be torched, then cut away. The fear lived on in their practiced bop, their slouching denim, their big T-shirts, the calculated angle of their baseball caps . . . .

“I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew, the music that pumped from boom boxes full of grand boast and bluster.  The boys who stood out on Garrison and Liberty up on Park Heights loved this music because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were With A Brooklyn Accent: The Terrible Price of Fearing for Your Child's Safety- A Very Personal Response to "Between the World and Me":