Chapter 6
RULES OF THE GAME:
Real-Life Learning
One of the luxuries of classroom education is that the student can make mistakes without serious repercussions. In theory, at least, there is a kind of insulation from the pressures and anxieties of real life. The teacher can calmly and gently show the student his mistakes and suggest ways for doing better.
Admittedly, there is something unreal about all this, especially for the older student. This is why more and more educators have sought to include out-of-school opportunities as part of the total learning program. It is also the major reason for permitting students to have a real say concerning their lives within the school.
Some people, unfortunately, assume that these new processes reduce the need for direction by the teacher. But the opposite is true. "Real-life learning" experiences require greater care, planning, and responsibiity on the part of those responsible for the well-being of children. For, if the educator fails to do his professional duty in the out-of-classroom situation, he subjects his students to real-life dangers. This was the lesson in the incident at Beta High School.
Beta High was one of those massive, mostly black urban schools weighed down with problems, yet rich in potential. The surrounding community, one of the most politically active in the city, showed a constant interest in the affairs of the school. The principal was a white man with great empathy for his black "constituency." The people respected him. It looked like the perfect time and place for school-community cooperation. No wonder so many people jumped into action when a student, Randy Jackson, came into conflict with his social studies teacher, Arthur Humphrey.
The student had failed his course the year before, but was rostered to Humphrey's class once again. There was nothing in the system of class assignments to prohibit this kind of potentially explosive repetition. By October, the student, acting as spokesman for other dissatisfied pupils, complained to the principal about Humphrey's approach to teaching. The students charged that Humphrey was "irrelevant and not able to relate to black youths." They claimed that he did not teach black history and did not permit free discussion by the students.
The principal, who had rated the teacher satisfactory the year before, appointed a committee of five students and two vice-principals to assist the teacher in preparing more stimulating lesson plans. When the teacher failed to meet with the committee, the students, under the banner of the Black Student Union, organized a boycott of Humphrey's five classes. The students demanded that the teacher be transferred in the name of quality education.
It still was not a big thing. There were informal, as well as formal, ways for a school to move out a person who doesn't fit the particular situation. The fact that it had been students who raised the issue didn't make the matter less valid. The teacher himself quickly announced that he would not wish to remain in the school if he were not wanted. Very possibly the students were going to get their way without a lot of fuss.
It is important to note, however, that no professional pointed out to the students that the removal of a single teacher could hardly ensure the achievement of quality education. To the contrary, several teachers and administrators openly joined with the students in demanding that Humphrey leave the school. These adults actually gave support to the student boycott by organizing substitute classes in the school auditorium. Later, however, they characterized this activity as a safety precaution. It was one way to keep the students out of the halls and away from the boycotted teacher.
Meanwhile, a civic group dedicated to improving public education set up pickets outside the school. These community people carried signs proclaiming, "Our Children Want Better Education" and "Quality Education for all Children." It was quite obvious that they were going to test out the issue of community control.
The teachers' union, of course, was keeping a close watch on the situation. They were well schooled in the history of the New York City Ocean Hill Brownsville debacle. Thus, when it was revealed that the principal of Beta had consulted with community leaders, the union immediately charged the principal and his staff with encouraging a student-community take-over of the school. No sooner had the principal announced that he would, indeed, recommend the transfer of Humphrey"a learned man but not an effective teacher" than the union called for a strike vote.
The students could hardly have been expected to understand all the political goings-on. For them, the issue was clear-cut and here-and-now: they wanted to get rid of a teacher whom they didn't like. They had little sense of the scope of the community-control issue. That was not their concern. More important, they had no sense of the power of the teachers' union. In their eyes, the boycott was directed against one person, not against ten thousand teachers throughout the city.
Similarly, the students were not able to relate an upcoming bond issue to the matter of transferring
Humphrey. They had no way of knowing that the Board of Education, in order to avoid the controversy and chaos of a city-wide teachers' strike, would certainly not support their demands at the cost of millions of dollars needed for new school construction.
Of course, the students weren't dumb. They just needed some education, but those who might have given it to them were, themselves, embroiled in the conflict.
Meanwhile, the union leaders published a statement by Humphrey, who now asserted that he had
been the victim of a "frame-up." But his personal problems were unimportant, he said, compared with the overriding issue of quality education. He now outlined "bold new approaches" for obtaining quality education at Beta. He said that he stood ready to carry on discussions with students, teachers, and community.
The union, thus, skillfully trumped the community's hand. Public opinion on all sides supported the union and demanded that the Board of Education take an authoritative stand that professionals, not students or community people, were in charge of the schools.
The Board members, having delayed action as long as they could in the hope of maintaining community support for the bond issue, now ordered the students to halt their boycott. The principal was instructed to direct all students to attend their classes and stop
harassing teachers.
The principal had no choice. He publicly announced that he did not condone any protests that disrupted education in the schooL The student leaders, stunned and unable to accept the sudden reversal of their position, continued the boycott. The board, now certain of support from most other parts of the city, obtained a court injunction forbidding student and community interference at the schooL It also directed the union not to strike; but, of course, the union had no intention of striking since it now appeared that it had won its point.
And so it had. A few days after the bond issue was approved, the superintendent of schools ruled that he saw no valid grounds for transferring Humphrey.
In terms of real-life politics the case was closed. The union had won its battle, having protected Humphrey and having staved off community control. In an open celebration of victory, it even voted to censure the superintendent for not supporting the boycotted teacher in the first place.
The Board, while chided for inaction, got what it wanted the bond issue had passed.
The community felt that it had almost won, and at an impassioned meeting before the Board vowed to test the issue again at a later date.
But what about the students who had started the whole thing? Their leaders were suspended. The teacher whom they wanted removed was still in his classroom. Because there was no outlet for the energy generated during the boycott, the chances were good that the school would be faced with continued turmoil and interruption of the learning process. But most important of all, it seemed that the students had learned very little from their experience. Just as students need guidance in learning how to understand and evaluate works of literature or history or science, they now needed help if the boycott were to be a meaningful experience and not just a time out of school.
The staff of the Office of Community Affairs tried to help the students reflect upon the past months' activities. The students needed to see that they had engineered quite a feat by organizing over a thousand students in a peaceful boycott which forcefully demonstrated their grievance. On the other hand, their lack of experience in setting up demands and negotiating for changes had caused them to gain nothing for their hard work
We introduced the students to planning strategies. They quickly came to discriminate between their demand for quality education and the community's desire to wrest power from the union.
Some people saw our work as "plotting with the students." But in our view it was a matter of education. The content was "leadership" and "politics"; but our educational aims were the same as those of any teacher: we wished to give the students necessary information and guide the development of specific skills so that eventually they could carry on for themselves.
Through our meetings with the students and staff, the idea was developed for a task force dealing with improving education at Beta. Students and staff and community people met to establish criteria for evaluating teacher-student processes. Other committees were formed to review curricula, facilities, and the relationships between students, faculty, and parents.
A two-day problem-solving session was held for voicing concerns and for discovering or creating processes for handling them. Top administrators from the Board of Education presented themselves at the workshop. Virtually every department in the central administration had the opportunity to make specific commitments for help, services, and resources. One administrator was given the duty of bird-dogging these promises to ensure delivery. But the most effective work took place within the school-community committees.
It was exciting to watch students and teachers listening to each other and working together. All sides agreed that they were tired of controversy and wanted to concentrate their efforts on improving education at Beta.
Significantly the Beta conflict not only focused attention on the unmet needs of a single high school, it provided the impetus for two other developments important to the entire system. The first, suggested by a Board member who had opposed such efforts in the past, was a series of off-site training sessions for small teams of students, parents, teachers, and principals from high schools throughout the district. Under the guidance of group dynamics experts, participants learned the techniques of negotiating and winning acceptance for changes in their own schools. The second effort was the formation of a city-wide committee charged with developing a student bill of rights. If teachers are protected by a union contract, why not a document that delineates the powers, duties, and rights of students? Approximately one year after the original excitement at Beta, the Board of Education formally adopted a student bill of rights.
Conflict in schools is often viewed with dismay and alarm, a bad time in education to be passed by with maximum speed at minimum cost. A more realistic perspective may be to see conflict as inevitable, and oftentimes healthy. If the energies released can be harnessed in charting new solutions, rather than in posturing, accusation, and suppression, we can use conflict as a constructive force in institutional change.
