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FREEDOMWAYS
FOURTH QUARTER 1968

There is no doubt that much of the academic retardation so prevalent among Negro children is a function of negative attitudes and inept practices among the professionals who run the schools. My experience suggests, however, that only a small proportion of these teachers and supervisors are consciously motivated by indifference toward their pupils or a desire to hold them back. Quite the contrary! Most of them really do not know how to teach children from impoverished backgrounds, and they assuage their professional conscience through recourse to pseudo-scientific theories about why their pupils "cannot" learn. Blame the victim!
Here and there about the country, there are many institutions and educators who are fighting hard to combat the stultifying ideology and stodgy practices which prevail among schools serving the Negro poor, and they are getting some results. I believe, however, that a major turn in educational practice will require massive intervention from without.
Our profession is now responding to the undemocratic social-class and racist values which are currently dominant in the culture, values which can be changed only through substantial restructuring of the society and the school system it supports. The profession will respond differently when the democratic movement achieves sufficient power to place the education of the poor much higher than it now is on our nation's list of priorities.

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Tom feelings

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