To Believe or Not to Believe, That is the Question

Those who would reform American education must beware the difficulty in reforming a system which already performs its true function, maintenance of the socioeconomic hierarchical status quo, perfectly. Would be reformers of urban public education (UPE) might initially take great comfort in the need for their services apparent in bulbous dropout rates and other assorted commonplace city school maladies. But the UPE reformer consigns herself to irrelevance when she mistakes the chaotic malaise of UPE as a sign of dysfunction, when in fact the apparent dysfunction is a symptom of UPE’s true function, the cementing of class immobility. The yet-to-be-seen successful UPE reformer must first take the necessary leap of faith and truly believe that really existing UPE is, against all outward appearances, a smashing success, in that it covertly fulfills its sub rosa, sinister function. Only by recognizing UPE for what it is, an instrument in the never ending story of class struggle, and by letting go of what UPE pretends to be, a flawed but curable system for the delivery of education to the masses, can a would be UPE reformer even begin the daunting task of initiating meaningful transformation. As long as the aspiring UPE reformer clings to her belief in UPE as a charming fixer-upper she will remain an unwitting accomplice in the maintenance of UPE as the guarantor of class immobility, as she will inevitably fail in achieving the impossible task of fixing what ain’t broke.

No one is more important in maintaining our necessary collective belief in the fiction of UPE as fixer-upper than the exceptional UPE alumnus who exhibits class mobility. This individual is shot forth from the belly of the beast like a Heimlich-dislodged chunk of meat, a propulsion necessary for the survival of UPE as currently constituted. If we follow the script we should see in this exceptional individual what is truly possible if only we were all to believe in and support our public schools. Ironically, it is the fact that we all already believe in our public schools, a belief paradoxically strengthened by their constant teetering on the verge of collapse, thereby increasing the intensity of our need to sustain them via our belief, which allows them to continue to function as instrument of oppression for the students condemned to their halls. Is it just coincidence that UPE produces just enough “success stories” to keep us all believing that we are just a reform away from tapping the limitless potential of the millions of children in urban schools, a belief mysteriously resilient to the contradictory fact of life as it is lived on city streets?

As a clinical social worker in a major UPE school system, I show up for work each day in order to help one more child become the exception that proves the rule. In doing so I am effectively attempting to feed the machine with the exceptions necessary to maintain our collective belief in the “potential” of UPE, and by now we all know that in touting someone’s potential we are merely gift-wrapping the reality of his or her current shortcomings. Wrapped up inside the shiny silver packaging of UPE spin is the coal-black heart of economic violence. If I am going to be complicit, as we all are, let me be so from within where at least I can spring a few of the inmates.

So how might the "potentially” successful reformer, one who believes in the true truth of UPE as the eight hundred pound gorilla sitting not in the room but on the backs of UPE’s students, initiate meaningful transformation? First and foremost, she would have to be a good liar; in order to penetrate the inner sanctum of UPE she must cloak herself in a false but outwardly convincing belief in the party line of accelerating student achievement, which if enacted would of course only ever serve to mint a modicum of exceptional individuals. Once ensconced inside the machine she would have to achieve the fantastical outcome of radicalizing millions of currently colonized consciousnesses, an act which looms larger than moving mountains. But Gandhi got the British out of India. And, perhaps more to the point, Dr. King got Jim Crow out of the American south. Of course, they shot Dr. King as soon as he started preaching economic justice. Which, with untold thousands of Americans dying and killing in the global “war on terror”, leaves me wondering what you and I are willing to lay down our lives for? In the meantime, I’ve got some exceptional children who need my clini(radi)cal assistance.