Imagine a Secretary of Education for America’s Schools

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When the President of the United States appoints a Secretary of Education who openly, vocally, and financially works to destroy the public’s schools, we can sigh and hope to outlive her time in office, giving what support we can to the teachers we know and the schools that serve our communities.  Or we can declare the experiment in democratic education over (as some have already done), and shed tears for what this generation of children will miss and what our country will lack when their schools are closed and they, and their friends, are outsourced to private “education management companies” called “charter schools.”

Or, we can heed Maxine Greene’s admonition to foster in each other a social imagination – the imagination to envision a more just society, a creative public spirit, and a collective sense of urgency to make democracy work for everyone.  For Greene, an esteemed professor at Teachers College and a tireless advocate for educating through the creative arts, a social imagination was not idle musing or wishing what might have been.  An informed social imagination leads to action for justice.

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I invited readers to imagine along with me what it would mean if we had a Secretary of Education for America’s children:  a cabinet member who understands the gravity of being the voice of the children –all our children – at the highest levels of government, and who acts accordingly.   Now we need to imagine what a Secretary of Education would do in her first months in office if she understood, cared about, and used her power to advocate for the public’s schools.

Again, cue up John Lennon’s “Imagine” or maybe “What a WonderfulWorld.”  And let’s imagine together…..

Imagine a Secretary of Education who understands that an investment in America’s infrastructure absolutely must include making sure that every public school, in every neighborhood, is built as an engaging learning environment and an asset to its community. That secretary would call in the Secretary of Labor to remind him that building good schools, and renovating older ones, is a great for job creation – for the workers immediately employed and for economies that that powerful learning will generate in the schools they build.  Our imagined Secretary would enlist the Secretary of Health and Human Services and colleagues NIH and the CDC and EPA for their expertise in assuring the building materials are built with children’s health in mind, safety from toxic chemicals, with clean air and water a given.  She’d of course call on the expertise of the Department of Energy and the professional organizations of school architects for specs on energy efficiency and renewable systems throughout, to model for the children a reverence for nature’s resources as well as to reduce expenses.

Imagine a Secretary of Education who tells the Congress and the President and infrastructure designers to get ready to build, but not until she has consulted with teachers and parents about what they want their school buildings to be.  Lively learning centers, yes.    Abundantly equipped, yes – even in the poorest neighborhoods, the most remote rural counties.    And inviting to all – a place where teachers want to teach, children are excited to spend their days, parents and neighbors know they are welcome to visit and volunteer.   Well acquainted with the amenities in private schools, the Secretary will already know that teachers need offices and conference rooms for study and lesson prep and collaborating across disciplines; teachers won’t have to ask for those basics. But teachers will want to weigh in on things this particular Secretary of Education may not think of – a community clinic with mental health services as well as basic family medicine, spaces for parents to meet, a community liaison who knows well the families’ languages, needs, assets and network of referral services throughout the community.

Imagine a Secretary of Education who understands that learning involves all the senses.   She might take a literal walk in the park to confer with the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the Secretary of the Interior as well as the leaders of Nature Conservancy and various urban park systems to ask how they could work together to make sure every American child has places to play outside. She would have read Last Child in the Woods on the plane in from Michigan and arrived fired up to get America’s kids outdoors, exploring, discovering, skinning their knees and – the radical part – getting to play!

I’m beginning to like this imagined Secretary of Education.  Though I doubt she’ll materialize on her own. It will take a village – a very large and energized village and its teachers – to “raise” her.  In a future post, we’ll imagine what she might learn from America’s teachers – if she did decide to become the Secretary of Education for all of America’s children and all of the public’s schools.

Add your imaginings to mind in the Comments section here:

 BORDERS:  WALLS OR BRIDGES?

TEACHING THE US-MEXICO BORDER, Part 2

INJUSTICE AND HOPE

A friend recently vacationing in Canada tells of a headline she saw in a local newspaper:  “BUILD A BORDER WALL! MAKE THE U.S. PAY FOR IT!” 

A dig at a US presidential candidate’s racist rants against Mexicans –  against the people of Mexico, Mexican-Americans, against people of “Mexican heritage”?

A plea to end the flow of guns from the US into Canada, a country with strict gun laws and far fewer gun-related deaths than in the US?

A shout of Canadian pride – “we’re Canada, not the 51^st US state!”? 

Stepping outside the rhetoric of fear and hate gives us a different viewpoint:  we quite literally see things differently.  Linda  Christensen, a teacher who visited the US-Mexico border at Tijuana/San Diego, came up with a  novel approach for helping her Oregon high school students come to their own understandings of  “the border”:  she had them step into a border community.

Her “Life on the Border” lessons take her students to Chilpancingo, a village they first encounter in a photograph. The picture shows a trash dump and what the students quickly label as “shacks,”  a scene that would seem to confirm her students’ stereotypes of the poverty and disgusting conditions on “the other side.”   Together the class “reads” the picture, cataloging the visual clues:  bottles, cans, dirty water, dead trees.  Clues that lead to questions:  where was the picture taken? When? And by whom? And what is in the river? And the tacit question: is this what life is like in Mexico?

Image Source:  http://www.rethinkingschools.org/img/publication/mx/chilpan.jpg

“My students didn’t stand on the banks of Rio Alamar and smell the acrid odor of a town drowning in toxins.  But they learned how to step into a picture and connect with a community on the other side of the border.”

Once the students can see – and even smell – the scene and want to know more, they are presented a story to read from the Washington Post:  “A Toxic Legacy on the Mexican Border.”  Its message is stark (and well understood even by the struggling readers in the class):  the waste is not from the carelessness of the local residents.  Its source is a toxic dump left behind when Mexico shut down an US-owned  battery recycling company.  Its owner, according to the reporter, escaped prosecution for “gross environmental pollution” by crossing into San Diego, leaving behind up to 8,500 tons of toxic chemicals from the battery parts piled on the site.  Winds and rains pick up the toxins and drop them onto Colonia Chilpancingo, a village of 10,000 workers, continuing the health risks that began when the factory’s furnaces were spewing toxic metals.

Linda Christensen writes that she and her students keep two ideas in mind as they read:  injustice and hope.  Whether reading about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, or now this story of one village on the US-Mexico border, she invites her students to read actively, asking the questions and seeking evidence to explain the injustice they encounter.   They are also instructed look to identify “the hope in this situation.”   The toxic waste in Chilpanciago leads to questions of knowledge (“did anyone know this was happening?”) and power (“would toxins be allowed to poison a rich neighborhood?”), of governance and responsibility (“who pays for the cleanup?”) and legal consequences (“how can the polluter escape prosecution just by crossing a border?”).  The students learn from the Post article and readings from varied points of view, and from their teacher’s visit to the Colonia, that hope is taking the form of activists who are educating citizens about the risks while at the same time organizing to pressure the government and the polluter to clean up the site.  They even marched on the owner’s San Diego office, reminding him by name “You forgot something in Tijuana.”

We can’t shield our students from the hateful words of politicians and social media, but we can, along with Linda Christensen and her students, seek out injustice and identify sources of hope by stepping into the issues, stepping into the stories, stepping up to and across borders.  An exciting time to be teaching if we do it right!

Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas: Border Air Quality Education - Curriculum

REPOSTED FROM ANGELA VALENZUELA'S BLOG

In my last two posts, I celebrated the lives and work of Grace Lee Boggs and Dolores Huerta -- not just as strong, tireless women who are inspirations in themselves, but for what they have taught us about justice:  it has to be worked for, that work takes sustained organizing to built collective strength, and it must begin where we live. And for us as educators and parents that means where the children live.

The old ASARCO "chimney"  that towered over the El Paso/Juarez landscape has been demolished, so it might be easy to forget that the toxins it spewed for decades still poison the air, water, soil and lungs of El Paso and Juarez.  How thrilling that this new curriculum out of UTEP not only assure that that toxic legacy won't be forgotten, but empower children and their teachers to learn the science and the activism needed to create a healthier future for their communities.  

I am grateful to Angela Valenzuela for bringing to our attention this very clear example of a Si Se Puede vision of educating our children!   (And yes, the curriculum is in both Spanish and English!)  A long and detailed post, with many helpful links; I include it in its entirety for its elegance and completeness and for its power to inspire the curriculum you need in your community to address the barriers to social and environmental justice.