Jan. 2010: Reaction blog: NYT article on minorities and poverty in southern schools

My first reaction to this article, as a former sociology major, is to think the journalist is forcing some kind of paradigm shift to say: “it’s not white flight anymore that’s the problem; now, it’s poor minorities’ high, uncontrolled birth rates.” Sounds rather like a next-generation Daniel Patrick Moynihan paradigm to me. My second reaction is to ask, “Why are blacks returning to the South?” This social trend will likely quickly reverse itself once this region’s generation of “educationally deprived” children grows up and finds themselves either ill-equipped to participate in the economy, or will find a decrepit economy which is ill-equipped to reward their work.

To address the e’er-disconcerting conundrum of how to address “educational deprivation” of minority and low-income students, I think the districts in LA that are “experimenting with ways to attract more experienced teachers to high-risk schools” is the key. If students who get less education at home than their white, middle class counterparts, are fully surrounded by high-quality teachers at their schools, year in and year out, then I am confident that the deprivation will close itself. If a teacher can love a student like a parent does (which is expressed by that teacher’s devotion to equipping the student with what he needs to “make it”), then that is the best bet on relieving the home/parent factor, which creates the educational disparity between classes.

On a personal note, the article also strengthened my convictions and hope to return to Mississippi in the future to settle here and contribute the intellectual and social capital I have been unfairly fortunate to have received through my upbringing in Colorado. I aspire to be a professor at a public college here. However, I do wonder if contributing my resources at a pre-college level (high school) would do more to alleviate the South’s so-called “desperat[ion] for a well-educated work force that can attract economic development.” This article has me wondering, how do I reconcile the pull to live in a more economically and educationally “bountiful,” promising land (i.e., New York, Chicago), and the clear need that is here in Mississippi? More and more I feel that this is where I belong. How do I ensure that my motives for putting down roots here and pouring my love for education into this place in particular are good, i.e., not conceited or based on a mere fascination with being in another culture or on a pseudo-radicalist, self-glorifying “mission” to flee my own race and the overabundance of resources we have? I am struggling with something that should work itself out like an easy addition problem!