control of the "Free North." Commerce, banking and industry took up the pattern of flight to the "safe" suburb, leaving the central city open to black power, black self-determination and black control. Realizing their plight, white leaders found it necessary to select some "liberal", "democratic" and "christian" alternatives to keep black people colonialized. Desegregation or racial balance is such an alternative. These were the conditions which influenced the thinking of the Justices of the Supreme Court in 1954. The 1954 decision reflects this racist thinking. It says: Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. This language infers that segregation does no or little harm to white children; therefore, segregated schools must support whites. If an institution supports the folk who give the inference of inferiority to another folk, how can that institution help the so-called inferior folk? The over-looked situation is that social orders are produced and created by human activity, and this is done by systems of behavior typifications which are institutionalized." Individuals then internalize these objectifications of external ize them in perpetuation. Language and socialization facilitate institutionalization completing the circle. Institutions objectify human behavior. Man and his social world herein interact with each other. The product acts back upon the producer. If the institution upholds white European superiority, the make-up of the role incumbents is irrelevant. Blacks will learn to be subordinates and whites will learn to be superordinates. This is the set of knowledge which the institution legitimizes through language and the dialectic. The origins of the roles likewise lie in the same fundamental process of habitualization and objectification as the origins of institutions. Roles appear as soon as a common stock of knowledge containing reciprocal typifications of conduct is in process of information, a process that, as we have seen is endemic to social interaction and prior to institutionalization, proper. No matter what the school, segregated or desegregated, if the role for blacks is inferior, the outcome will remain the same. Simple mixing does not insure redefinition of roles, especially when the larger social order makes no such demands. Desegregation and segregation are solutions chosen by A for B. Both are logical outcomes consistent with the contriently interdependent competitive economic model 12 which exists in this country. In this model, when A wins, B loses, and when B wins, A loses. Inherent in the model are always losers. If A has the power, B will continue to be the loser unless B begins to define situations and problems itself. In most places where desegregation models have been implemented blacks lose jobs. Most blacks have been recruited into teaching because they were systematically excluded from participation in the professional slots in the businessindustrial-military complex. Recent research indicates that hundreds of black teachers have been demoted, dismissed out right, denied new contracts or pressured into resigning because of desegregation and that new teachers hired to replace them include fewer and fewer blacks.13 Moreover, the black principal has been desegregation's primary prey. This is an historical position invariably held by & black man throughout the South. Desegregation, then, serves to create more jobs for whites at a time when the economy is shrinking and industry constricting. : Technology and modernization displace A group as recently documented by the expulsion of engineers by the aerospace industry. These casualties must be absorbed by the system. Since the teaching profession is the primary place of employment, black displacement here is disfunctional with the so-called gains of desegregation, for where will the society employ these new better educated blacks? A careful study of the goals of desegregation show that the models are inimical to the best interests of black people. Desegregation serves the interests of A 11 For complete discussion see Berger & Luckmann, op. cit. pp. 45–118. 12 Morton Deutsch, "Cooperation and Trust." Some Theatrical notes in Interpersonal Dynamics by Warren G. Bennis, Edgar H. Schein, David E. Berlew and Fred I. Steel (Homewood, Ill. The Dorsey Press, 1964) p. 566. 13 Robert W. Hooker, "Integration Cheats Black Teachers," Chicago Sun Times, January 10, 1971. Sec. 2. pp. 2-3. group. Until black people make better definitions of their problems, the solutions will continue to destroy us. The black educational situation is better known. Black students continue to be at the bottom of the barrel when test scores are published. Acklyn Lynch stated in a speech in February, 1971 at the University of Virginia that there were more black men in prison in the United States than there were black colege students of whom sixty percent are women. Carter G. Woodson, noted black scholar, saw what was happening in 1933 when he wrote The Miseducation of the Negro. IIe said: "The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. For example, the philosophy and ethics resulting from our educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation and lynching. The oppressor has the right to exploit the handicapped and kill the oppressed.' The plain truth is that black people have inaccurate conceptual maps of reality. As cited above, A groups control the distribution and dissemination of knowledge in order to preserve certain symbolic universes and that knowledge is institutionalized through certain behavior typification systems which are then internalized by individuals to maintain certain groups in excluded and/or inferior positions. These sets of knowledge preserve the values also. America is depicted often in the curriculum as democratic but seldom as capitalist. Since the country has not yet achieved democracy, the schools should teach the citizens the capitalistic structure so they can understand how it works and can use it to help themselves. Moreover, since food, housing, clothing and medicines are for sale in this country at a profit, certainly the poor and the disadvantaged should first be taught how to make money. Yet, scarcely a word is said about economics except in the sense of consumership. In fact, Jules Henry states that the purpose of education is just that to make people buy! 15 Furthermore, schools where the disadvantaged are educated have programs for training in obsolete skills and trades. No schools train or educate the poor and the disadvantaged in technology or the hard sciences. Few trade schools offer programs for apprenticeship in the building trades. More than likely, blacks are prohibited from obtaining apprenticeships. Most training for such jobs nowadays occurs on-the-job. The problem for blacks and women is how to get on the job! The educational curriculum is dominated by white European feats, exploits and 'miracles. Christopher Columbus discovered America even though the people he incorrectly named Indians were already here. Man began in the Caucasus Mountains when the earliest man bones were found in Olduvai Gorge, Kenya, East Africa. The history of the black people in America began in 1619. Yet they had a homeland in Africa before that time. All kinds of European interpretations strangle Black dreams and aspirations. The Constitution guarantees liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. But, when Blacks agitate for these guarantees, sociologists scream "rising expectations" and "benign neglect." 17 16 Recently, social scientists have become more supportive of these racist, chauvinist values. Arthur Jensen has made attempts to assign Blacks to inferior genetic groups with I.Q. tests. Edward C. Banfield supports the white European culture as the "normal culture", the most profound motivating dynamic being "future orientation." James S. Coleman found that poor children are most sig nificantly affected by the affluence of their classmates.18 Thomas Pettigrew and others found that Blacks could learn better in schools with whites. Such studies further perpetuate the institutional values of male superiority, white European superiority and the superiority of people with money. No significant change will occur in schools until a new value system is designed and implemented based on land, liberty and life. 14 Carter G. Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro, Washington, D.C.: Associated Press, 1933 p. xxxii. 15 Jules Henry, Culture Against Man, N.Y.: Random House, 1963. 16 Arthur Jensen. "How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Scholastic Achievement" in Harvard Educational Review, February 1969, p. 1-123. 17 Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970. 18 James S. Coleman. Equality of Educational Opportunity, U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare, O.E. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966. 19 Thomas Pettigrew, Racial Isolation in the Public Schools, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1967. If culture does indeed provide the standards which are applied in evaluative processes, and if culture is an expression of a general problem-that of the relationships linking man to his environment, then B groups can no longer allow A groups to define their problems, create their values and devise: their norms. Otherwise the motivational and situational factors which work toward uniformities in codes and standards, trends in action such as striving and energy disposal, and choices and interests, will continue to preserve and maintain the system of B group exclusion and cultural denigration. A decision-making apparatus assuring B group participation and power is needed to establish a mutually shared symbolic system in the complementarity of expectations and the double contingency. This is a necessity in institutions shaping the life chances of B groups. Numerous mechanisms must be designed to afford the opportunities of a multitude of interactions among the personalities and roles within the social system of the school. These interactions act as inputs which will affect the outputs by bringing the values of the institution in line with the values of the clients. An aggregate model is needed to accomplish these goals.20 Such a model must give each role and group a position of parity and power in the decision-making. B groups need not feel that A groups will willingly succumb or surrender these powerful institutions which keep them in power. The control of these institutions will result from repeated struggles, conflicts and confrontations. A groups will design programs to absorb the energies of B groups and to displace the liberation goals with survival goals. A groups will co-opt B groups and B group programs so that they veer from the original directions and point toward A group goals and ends. This is to be expected since A groups are in power. However, the struggle must go on. The change will be effective if the values are no longer acknowledged and/or respected. Alternate symbolic universes will be legitimated if the people so decide. The present attempt by social scientists to define decentralization as community control is such an endeavor. The recent statement to this committee by Dr. Marilyn Gittell is an example. Decentralization and community control are two administrative decisionmaking strategies which have been advanced in an attempt to resolve the controversy between advocates of integration and those of community control. People differ in their definitions of these concepts. To some they are synonymous; to others they are not. Some say that decentralization is primarily concerned with restructuring relationships between the school and the central board while community control represents a redistribution of power with a set of exclusive powers assigned to the local community board. Others say that decentralization means two quite different things: reduction in size and the redistribution of the power to make important decisions. Definitions of community control differ from community to community but in most black communities the central concept is that of power. Both strategies operate with an aggregate model. In decentralization approvalveto powers reside in the central office or the central Board of Education. In community control the approval-veto powers reside with the people in the local community board. One such decentralization model is CAPTS, designed and implemented in the Woodlawn Experimental Schools District Project, (WESP), an E.S.E.A., Title III government funded project under Public Law 89-10 in Chicago, Illinois. This project operated under a tripartite arrangement with three institutions, The Woodlawn Organization, The University of Chicago and the Chicago Board of Education. The District was governed by the Woodlawn Community Board which had twenty-one (21) members, ten (10) from the Woodlawn Organization, seven (7) from the Chicago Board of Education and four (4) from the University of Chicago. Under community control, The Woodlawn Community Board would have made policy for the District, controlled the finance and teacher hiring and firing and would have been completely composed and representative of the entire community. However, under the Title III Program and its Memorandum of Agreement with the Chicago Board of Education the Woodlawn Community Board was only a recommending body for the former held approval veto powers. The WCB was a decentralized body, not one of community control. The WESP District, located in Woodlawn, one of the ten (10) poorest of the seventy-five (75) city community areas, had three components: the community 20 Morris Janowitz, "Institution Building in Urban Education" in Innovations in Mass Education, edited by David Street, N.Y.: John Wiley & Son, 1969, p. 273-342. 21 CAPTS-C is for community representative; A means administrators; P equals Parents; T is for teachers and S is for students. component, the research and evaluation component and the in-school component; and three schools: Hyde Park High, Wadsworth Elementary School and Wadsworth Upper Grade Center. The community component had twenty-five community agents who organized and convened some forty parent councils of approximately twenty members each. These parent councils each elected a president or chairman who sat on the Woodlawn Parent Council Advisory Board. These members became alternates for Woodlawn Community Board members. These parent council presidents attended Leadership Training Sessions to learn how to be a Board member, how to use Robert's Rules of Drder, how to understand school law, Board rules and other necessary information. The in-school component had forty community teachers (teachers' aides). These community teachers and parents attended workshops in methods of teaching the Ethnolinquistic Cultural Approach to Oral Language and the Sensory-MotorPerceptual Program. Community teachers had learned to test and screen for the latter program and many of them knew how to teach the first rudiments of reading skills. Moreover, parents had been trained for positions as community agents, community teachers and research assistants and they served in classrooms on teams to solve problems. The primary objective of the WESP was to restructure the social system through a mutuality of effort through subsequent interventions which have two foci: (1) to change the roles and relationships in the community and (2) to change the roles and relationships in the school. The project was not only interested in who works together but how. To the degree that the mutuality of effort effected a restructuring of the social system the following secondary objectives were to be achieved: (1) elevation of achievement scores, (2) an improvement in self-concept, (3) a reduction in alienation, and (4) a sense of power over one's destiny. Mutuality of effort was to be achieved through CAPTS and the CAPTSWESP Decision-making Model was to be the vehicle to restructure the social system. The Model had nine (9) steps. (See Figure 1). Program planning occurred in the CAPTS Congress. First, each group met separately. A plan emerged from a group. It was submitted to the other groups who discussed and negotiated. The negotiated plan was then sent to the professional bureaucracy to be formulated into an educational program. This formulation was sent to the administrative staff for organization. The administrative staff then submitted the proposal to the WCB. The WCB recommended or did not recommend. If WCB recommended and the proposal did not warrent submission to the CBE (this means it does not infringe upon the power of the CBE), the proposal then came back to the administrative staff for coordination and communication, to the professional bureaucracy for implementation and back to the CAPTS Congress for evaluation. Each group first met separately to discuss the method and the instruments to be used for evaluation. These were then negotiated and the evaluation took place according to the negotiated plan. If a proposal or plan failed to be recommended by the WCB or was yetoed by the CBE it returned to the CAPTS Congress and started over again. 22 Chicago Board of Education. Barbara A. Sizemore. "Social organizations and Institutions in Although the Chicago Board of Education never exercised its veto powers, middle-management and the city civil service commission managed to veto often. Line-staff ambiguities provided the school principals with avoidance routes for the delivery of their services and complicated the model also. But, in spite of these obstructions, major accomplishments in effecting change are as follows: (1) the cessation of all gang activity on the Wadsworth Upper Grade Center Yard which the former principal and the newspapers declared a "Viet Nam Battlefield" prior to the project; (2) the creation of one of the first black designed Follow-Through Models in the nation, the Ethnolinguistic Cultural Approach to Oral Language; (3) the elimination of non-ready first grade readers (See Table I); (4) an increase in achievement of third grade children (See Table II); (5) the increase in achievement scores of the Upper Grade Center Young men involved in the Study Skills Survey Experiment; (6) the invention of the CAPTS-WESP paren Formulating Planning 1-Start Here |