Talking straight
At long last I have discovered someone who is willing to speak directly to the cultural issues of performance gaps.
"Ronald F. Ferguson, a black scholar and Harvard lecturer, has long studied racial achievement gaps in public schools. Complicated as those issues are, Ferguson boils them down to one: 'The real issue is historical differences in parenting. that is hard to talk about, but that is the root of the skill gap.' According to Ferguson, black households traditionally see schooling as a job for teachers, while white families are more involved in schooling the child or paying for special services." (The Read Aloud Handbook p xv)I'm convinced that he is right that the skills gap has everything to do with parenting, and that there are current cultural differences in understandings of parenting that often fall along racial lines. However, while I am no historian, I think that I would differ with Ferguson slightly. I would say that in the past forty or so years dependence on 'the system' to educate children has emerged. My understanding is that in the pre-civil rights era, the African American family was much stronger, and much more active in parenting, and produced the likes of Ruby Bridges.
So as a parent and an educator (having taught almost exclusively in an African American environment), I want to learn how to encourage, and inspire (with their own history!) my neighbors to express their love to their children by reading great books to them day after day after day.
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2 comments:
Something else to consider - This is really common today in many Hispanic families. I have called the parents of some of my Hispanic students who are failing and the response was "Why are you calling me?" or "What am I supposed to do?". The parents genuinely do not feel they have a role in their children's academic success.
Fellow students in my grad school class this summer interviewed a Hispanic family and they got the same message. The parents want their children to succeed, however they believe that the school/teachers are responsible for formal education.
-Sandy
I have heard that before (although I didn't have more than a couple of Hispanic students), and I think it reinforces the case that it is an issue of cultural understandings rather than race.
The challenge, I think, is to address and change those understandings so that parents realize that they do have the primary responsibility for the education of their children.
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