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FREEDOMWAYS | FOURTH QUARTER 1972

cation theory and mocks proposition that "the black ghetto child become a superchild, lifting himself through reading and language skills to a nobler and greater world of the future."

Lawrence Hawkins' "Urban School-Teaching: The Personnel Touch" has something to say but it's old hat. Kenneth Clark thoroughly presented the case that teacher behavior and expectations are important. Haskins, however, overemphasizes this factor when he says that "boys and girls become largely what our professional conduct toward them causes them to become." So long as the larger society is an alien, hostile, or indifferent environment the black child suffers and has to deal with a tremendous "disadvantage." Teachers who are committed to the social change necessary to end oppression on all fronts are teachers who are committed to the full development of the pupil's powers to make things happen. "Tea and Sympathy," in Lerone Bennet's words, are not enough.

Another editorial by Wright, "Shankerism," defines the problem as it is. Shankerism (for Albert Shanker, New York City Teacher Union head) is the result of the need for institutions, including the unions, "to face the need for and fact of tremendous social change." True, and Wright goes on to hint at a compromise solution that seems very unlikely to be acceptable to the teachers, that is, that they be transferred out of the city or even the state if necessary to find another position. The black community in Ocean Hill-Brownsville took a firm position toward the issue of incompetent teachers. So did Shanker and the union. In view of the entrenched power of the educational establishment this article reads like a worm pleading with a steamroller.

"A Message to the Establishment" is a dialogue between Norma Jean Anderson and Frank Kent, ex-Commissioner of Human Rights for the State of Minnesota. Dr. Anderson discusses frankly the felt need for community control of the schools but then, after asking the Commissioner what he sees his role in helping as being, lets him get pretty far away with the answer that desegregation is the antidote for disruption. She concurs, suggesting that integration might really be desirable if white students were bussed into the ghetto schools. She does point out, however, "that you can't integrate learning tools" and so quality education will have to become part of the black "home school" whether or not integration takes place. Her suggestion that educational parks would correct the system of racial imbalance needs further consideration. What type of education it would offer and who would control the educational park are still fundamental questions.

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