“Another Brick in the Wall:” Who Gets to Decide What Our Public Education System Will Be?
"Another Brick in The Wall"
Roger Waters & David Gilmour
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave them kids alone
Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!
All in all, it's just another brick in the wall
All in all, you're just another brick in the wall
On 7/03/24, the Zinn Education Project newsletter appeared in my Inbox, featuring “What Teachers Are Saying” about teaching People’s History. A smattering of stories from the more than 160,000 teachers who use resources provided by Zinn Ed.
As I’m fond of doing, I scanned for teachers in MS (where I grew up and went to school) and in MN (where I now live). I was thrilled to find Cristina Tosto using the “Teaching SNCC” lesson at Pascagoula High School in Mississippi. A thirteen-year veteran of teaching, Cristina has a M.S. in American History with a focus in African American Studies. In 2015, she was a Mississippi Civil Rights Fellow for Teaching for Change. She has participated in seminars and institutes by the National Endowment for the Humanities at Duke and Delta State universities.
I’ve said before that my own K-12 experience depended far too heavily on memorization and regurgitation and that I wrote The FOG MACHINE to determine how I could have grown up in the height of the Civil Rights Movement and not learned the history of my childhood. Perhaps this teacher would share with me why and how she taught the history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and 1964 Freedom Summer, both of which feature prominently in my historical novel.
I immediately reached out to offer Cristina a classroom copy of my novel and ask if we might speak. I wanted to know how she was faring in these challenging times for the American public education system and what I could do to support her.
In “America’s Education System Is a Mess, and It’s Students Who Are Paying the Price” (The 74, July 20, 2023), David Steiner writes that: “On the one hand, the defenders of public education blame chronic underfunding of schools and of teacher salaries in particular, and an overreliance on teaching to the test. On the other, their conservative critics point to lack of school choice, poor teacher preparation programs and (more recently) the woke invasion of classrooms.”
No matter your view on causes or solutions for the challenges facing our public schools, I dare say most would agree that our students are falling behind and our teachers are experiencing burnout at alarming rates, all too often leading them to give up teaching altogether.
We don’t need no thought control… What was Cristina’s experience “Teaching SNCC?”
Cristina’s story in the Zinn Ed newsletter was about her experience with the lesson “Teaching SNCC: The Organization at the Heart of the Civil Rights Revolution” developed by social studies teacher Adam Sanchez. Adam teaches at Abraham Lincoln High School in Philadelphia and is an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and a Zinn Ed teacher leader. This lesson is a series of role plays that calls for students to imagine themselves as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members and debate key questions SNCC members faced.
The “Teaching SNCC” lesson prepares students for their roles as SNCC members through multiple activities, including having them write letters to their parents explaining why they would be joining the Freedom Rides and watching the movie Freedom Song about SNCC’s first voter registration project in McComb, MS. They are then asked to tackle questions just like those that SNCC members debated, such as: “Should SNCC focus its efforts on voter registration or direct action?”
James Forman: Executive Secretary SNCC
https://www.crmvet.org/images/imgband.htm
Civil Rights Movement Photographs
Photographer Unknown
Cristina had sparked my curiosity when she wrote that she wished others could see for themselves how her students strategized and embodied their roles as SNCC members. I asked if she could paint me a picture of what that looked like.
“The kids had seen what the movement was all about, what people were fighting for, and how people had been treated. They were really getting into it. One kid in particular, David, was leading the class in their discussion. I tried to just be quiet.”
Cristina described how they wrestled with the issue of inadequacies and inequities in the Black public schools as compared with the white schools. “Do we tell these kids not to go to school?” someone asked. “Is that what’s best for them?” someone else asked.
“It took a while for the kids to finish their SNCC meeting. That was exactly how it went in real life with SNCC members arguing and talking for hours about what to do.”
On this particular question, one of Cristina’s students finally said, “Well, why don’t we just teach them ourselves? Let’s just make our own school for them.”
The anticipatory goosebumps I’d had imagining what would happen as Cristina recalled the experience became full-fledged goosebumps as she exclaimed, “They actually came up with the idea of freedom schools without realizing it!”
“It was so awesome to just see them. And I tried to point out that these people were great, they’re heroes, but they’re no different than you. They were able to do all these things and make great change. And they’re the same as you are. The power they had, you also have.
“That was probably the best, most inspiring teaching moment I’ve ever had!”
Cristina elaborated. “It was encouraging to see my students understand the grassroots organizing of the Civil Rights Movement. But it was even more rewarding to watch them engage with the material in a social, emotional, and critical way. They’re not only learning history, they’re learning skills that can be applied to real-life scenarios.”
Cristina Tosto, on using “Teaching SNCC”
We don’t need no education… What’s behind student apathy?
I immediately wondered if students at Cristina’s school receive any kind of training in critical thinking skills.
“It is seriously lacking. And that is very, very concerning. I think about this all the time. I don’t know what they’re getting at a lower age, outside of high school, as far as critical thinking goes. But I do feel that testing has really taken away from the focus on learning to be critical thinkers instead of just learning how to perform on a test.”
But my question had struck a nerve. Cristina continued, “There’s a serious lack of critical thinking and a high level of student apathy.”
And Cristina is not alone. “Nearly half of teachers—and 58 percent of high school teachers—say that their students showing little to no interest in learning is a major problem in their classroom,” wrote Madeline Will in “Student Apathy Is a Big Classroom Challenge, Teachers Say. Cellphones Aren’t Helping” in the April 04, 2024, issue of Education Week. “Those results are from a new survey by the Pew Research Center of more than 2,500 public school teachers, which was conducted from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14.”
Cristina told me that she and her friend, who teaches in New York, have shared their experiences being disheartened by students’ reactions to their efforts to make learning interesting and relevant for them.
“I showed Glory to my African American Studies class this year.” Glory is a 1989 Academy Award-winning movie about the first U.S. all-Black regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, and the young white Army officer assigned to lead them during the Civil War. “I remember being shown Glory when I was in school and how impactful it was for me.”
“I looked around and nobody was paying attention. Some were on their Chromebooks. Others had their heads down sleeping.”
Cristina wonders if high school students today “have so much access to technology that they don’t see the need for education. They think they can just Google and find out whatever.”
Her friend suggested that “kids think compliance and getting the right answer is learning.” The kids that both teachers have in their classrooms now were in elementary school during COVID-precipitated remote learning. “So, they might have missed out on that time where you hook kids into learning and the beauty of the process of learning.”
Jenn Breisacher, founder of Student-Centered World, agrees. “The rapid pace of current events and technological advancements often makes traditional curricula seem outdated, failing to capture the unique perspectives and interests of today’s generation of students. … To combat student apathy, schools need to foster a classroom environment that promotes active learning and critical thinking.”
How? “Providing students with more control over their own education…integrating current events and extracurricular activities…developing a school year curriculum that includes practical, real-world applications…building relationships between teachers and students.” (“What is Student Apathy and Why is it a Problem?” May 11, 2024, StudentCenteredWorld.com)
This notion of student-centered education was central to the 1964 freedom schools and has continued to be so for their descendant schools over the last sixty years. “The curriculum should be linked to the student’s experience” is one of the principles the original Freedom School curriculum was designed to serve.
Furthermore, “what made the 1964 freedom schools so extraordinary was the centrality of the question,” as I wrote in my 7/31/24 Blog post “I Have a Dream:” What are Freedom Schools?” Students were taught that they had “not just the right, but the responsibility to question. … Key questions all teachers asked were:
· What does the majority culture have that we want? That we don’t want?
· What do we have that we want to keep? Get rid of?”
Making education more about asking questions than regurgitating answers strikes me as the epitome of both active learning and critical thinking.
A panel discussion I recently attended titled “Banned Books Week Webinar: What Can We Do?” soundly underscored the power of the question for me. In response to a prompt from the moderator about strategies for going on the offense against book bans, author and educator Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul proposed that teachers create a set of “critical lenses” to be applied to material students are assigned. These might include:
· Who is affirmed by this? Erased by this?
· Who has the power? Who does not?
Dr. Cherry-Paul posited that once they have considered such questions, kids will naturally seek out what’s missing in what they have read. And so, limits of or inaccuracies in what is being taught or not taught will be naturally addressed. This seems to apply equally well to banned books and restricted curriculum.
How is Cristina faring otherwise?
Even as she fights student apathy, Cristina recognizes strengths of her school district. They are not currently experiencing book bans or school board-mandated course content restrictions. And she has a highly supportive principal. “I think this is in large part because there is so much diversity in the district.”
And she is certainly not giving up. Cristina developed “What Would You Do? Students Grapple with Risks Faced by Voting Rights Activists,” a role-play lesson which will appear in the second edition of Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching to be released in early October to coincide with Teaching for Change’s 35th anniversary.
Annie Devine—one of 24 “roles” students are asked to take on—
speaking at an evening gathering in Canton, MS,
during the “March Against Fear” begun by James Meredith.
Alabama Department of Archives and History,
Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection
What, beyond her belief in the essential tie between voting and democracy, prompted Cristina to develop this lesson?
“Whenever I teach of the 1950s and 1960s, there is always at least one student who will display their bravado and exclaim what they would have done in those situations. … Finally, it dawned on me. Despite teaching my students about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the ordinary people involved in the Civil Rights Movement, my students did not fully understand and appreciate the amount of courage and self-sacrifice it takes for people to choose to resist and organize. … Furthermore, my students did not understand that even seemingly minute actions to stand up can be an act of resistance.”
In the “Deepening the Learning” section of her voting rights lesson, I’d read that students were surprised to learn that the roles they had played were based on the lives of real people from Mississippi, and once they learned that, they wanted to learn more. So, I wondered whether this speaks to what I call the “power of story,” that enables us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and understand an arc in time, as compared with education that her friend from New York calls compliance and I call memorization and regurgitation.
“I try to teach stories. As a colleague once told me, ‘You can’t hate someone whose story you know.’
Margaret J. Wheatley: speaker, teacher, consultant, advisor
“That is so true! Even if you still detest how they are or who, you still have a little more understanding or empathy of why they believe the way they do—not making it right, but that’s just the way it is. If everybody could just really hear each other.
“When doing this lesson, most of the students say, ‘I’m not going to bother. I’ve got to worry about me.’ When they find out that the number on their little piece of paper corresponds to the name of a real person from Mississippi who said ‘yes’ to the call for action, they get excited and want to learn more about ‘their person’.”
Cristina wants this to be the year that she recommits to active teaching, especially bringing in Civil Rights Movement veterans and others who have lived the history she teaches. To leverage the power of story and “show them that these are regular people. They just decided to take action and move a little differently.”
But she admits to being nervous about how her students would respond. Would they put their heads down and not pay attention?
Herein lies an irony of monumental consequence. Cristina is a young, energetic, passionate teacher fatigued by the crisis of student apathy. And she is, legitimately so, concerned about how her students might respond. Yet, sticking with the more traditional methods of teaching will likely only compound the apathy.
When I read the Zinn Ed article with the stories of Cristina and other teachers, I was filled with joy and hope. I contacted Cristina because I wanted to support teachers who are taking risks for the good of their students and society. Her disheartenment gave me pause and, truth be told, disheartened me. How tragic it would be if even one more teacher like Cristina were to give up teaching in the face of today’s challenges in our public education system.
And so, I determined to write this post, in the hope that at least one reader will resolve to act—on behalf of our magnificent teachers and precious children. To learn more about active learning and critical thinking. To become involved in local school boards. To speak out in support and encouragement. … To be part of building—becoming “another brick in the wall”—a public education system that works for the betterment of our children and our society.
Canva image by Take Care Creative
Who gets to decide what our public education system will be?
Cristina told me, “I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I want to teach the truth. I want people to know what’s real. What the real deal is, so we can try to do better.”
Rethinking Schools magazine asked teachers and students to write about how Black Lives Matter protests and racial justice uprisings following the murder of George Floyd were affecting their teaching and learning. In a contributing piece called “Our Schools Should Be Filled with Anti-Racists,” Cristina wrote: “Imagine what society could accomplish if people knew that progress happened because average people cared enough to take action.
“Our schools should be filled with anti-racists — people committed to the work of anti-racism. As educators, it is our job to ensure that our students not only understand the legacy of racism, but to engage them with the tools to create an anti-racist and equitable Union. Though the weight of my profession is heavier than ever, I am hopeful. I am hopeful that this will be a time of national reckoning.”
Our public education system is a living organism that must evolve to serve our children and our society. As we continually strive to construct such a system, who gets to decide what “another brick in the wall” will lead to?
Like the Civil Rights Movement veterans, like the students in Cristina’s “Teaching SNCC” class—people just like you and me—WE get to decide! IF we recognize and exercise our own power.
Thanks for reading this Stories from Civil Rights History, Then and Now Blog post by author Susan Follett.
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