Rainbows in the Puddles

Lining up literature for this independent study was much more difficult than I thought it would be. A lot of the books I am reading were published longer ago than I would have liked; there just aren’t a whole lot of books on the politics of textbooks published recently. It’s striking to me, then, how frequently I see books published in the late 1980s or early 1990s that talk about the exact same issues that dominate discussions of American education today. In Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, he quotes a high school principal saying

“We are preparing a generation of robots. Kids are learning exclusively through rote. We have children who are given no conceptual framework. They do not learn how to think, because their teachers are straightjacketed by tests that measure only isolated skills. As a result, they can be given no electives, nothing wonderful or fanciful or beautiful, nothing that touches the spirit or the soul. Is this what the country wants for its black children?”

A pastor from that same community, which is besot with chemical factories and waste dumps, offers a related perspective:

“The toxic dangers aren’t the worst. It is the aesthetic consequences that may be the most damaging in the long run. What is the message that it gives to children to grow up surrounded by trash burners, dumpsites, and enormous prisons? Kids I know have told me they are ashamed to say they come from Camden.

Still, there is this longing, this persistent hunger. People look for beauty even in the midst of ugliness. ‘It rains on my city,’ said an eight-year-old I know, ‘but I see rainbows in the puddles.’"

Teachers need to be able to help kids to find the rainbows in the puddles, whatever that may be in a given community. Primary and secondary education is supposed to help us make sense of the world around us, and equip us with the skills and tools we need to make our way in the world. It’s not a process for which there is a one-size-fits-all approach.