A KIPP charter school in Nashville is on the forefront of a new corporate marketing strategy to promote segregation as a "positive" for civil rights, and the local NPR station is helping out. And how is this KIPP school doing that? Actually, it's nothing new, for it involves heavy doses of propaganda that lead children to believe at an early age that they, alone, are responsible for their own life conditions and outcomes:
Many schools aspire for racial diversity. But that’s not quite the aim of the newest charter school in North Nashville. KIPP Nashville College Prep Elementary says it is embracing what is a reality . . . that students are primarily African-American, and instead of swimming against the current, it’s trying to turn cultural isolation into a positive.As this KIPP is using the same dehumanizing "no excuses" regimen that have earned KIPP the moniker, Kids in Prison Program, along with the festooning of Ivy League college banners, the NPR reporter seems to think there is something different going on, even though he's uncertain just what it is:
The differences are subtle. But they're everywhere.It is horrible to see this kind anticipatory set up for self blaming in KIPP middle schools, but to see this kind of positive psychology brainwashing used with disadvantaged kindergarten children is truly criminal. One has to wonder if these children get to sit on their "thrones" when they are isolated and humiliated "on the porch" for breaking rules, with their "MISCREANT" signs around their necks.
It's the college banners that hang in every classroom — they're all promoting historically black institutions. The murals on the walls show smiling black children, reading books while sitting on thrones. Kindergartners learn the new school song, set to a hip-hop track.
"All of the power is in my hands. I now can conquer the world," they sing.
It is less than terrific to be trapped in a gang infested neighborhood with peers being gunned down frequently. Ample credit should be allocated to the forces of institutional racism and out of control capitalism.
ReplyDeleteAbigail Shure
Having a positive Black Cultural affirming school environment is a good thing. BUT, if it is coupled with a pre-prison like atmosphere and mostly white teachers, it is a very very bad miseducation system. And this seems to be the case here with KIPP-Nashville (and all the other KIPP schools who use some form of permutation of this "cultural misappropriation".
ReplyDeleteAnd remember: most US public schools in urban areas are segregated because of segregated housing patterns. So you will get most Black and Latino student populations... where there's little chance to have integrated classrooms. The issue is not that quality education only flows when there are white students present. And the issue is also about realizing that you can have an excellent quality education -K-12- via a well developed African-Centered/Latino-Centered curriculum and pedagogical approach. The independent African Centered schools of the 1960s and 70s as well as the La Raza (or Chicano) centered school of the 70s and early 80s have proven that.
Again, if KIPP-Nashville is mixing bits and pieces of African-Cnetered education within a pre-prison set of disciplines, it is aiding and abetting the white supremacist miseducation policies so normalized in US public education.