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Who Owns Your Chalkboard?
By Lafe Tolliver, Esq.
Guest Column
I had a nightmare that I want to share
with you. No, this was not caused by some strange sage
cheese that I had with a rye cracker nor was it generated by
some smoked salmon pate with an undercooked dill dressing.
It was caused by comments I read where
some black people are nonplussed about how the Catholic
Schools are able to keep and maintain a high-level
educational system and, into which system, black parents
have gladly placed their kids assuming they have the bucks
or their kids can get scholarships to do it.
It is about an attitude of commitment
and a willingness to make pledges of time and money to
further a grander goal and that is the proper education of
one’s
kids so that when they graduate, they are not
embarrassed by their lack of cognitive and rhetorical
skills; and their inability to compete with their peer group
for jobs and
positions.
It is about changing one’s perception of
what is important and what is marginal. What is important is
making sacrifices of time and effort and money so that the
next
generation can excel.
It is about deferring the purchase of
that 200 dollar pair of Jordan shoes or the latest X Box or
Wii system so that your child can get a math/science tutor
so he or she can pass the SAT or ACT tests and get into
Howard or Harvard.
It is about having your kids in the
house on weekday nights so that they are booking it and not
soaking up the TV nonsense of BET or that MTN madness that,
when said and done, added nothing to their brain cells other
than a lot of visual sludge.
Kinda of like eating a bag of chips and
cheese curls
and wondering why an hour later you are
hungry You did not
dine on the right food groups and your body
is in a protest stage for better nourishment.
Well, that is what education is about.
Unless and until you choose to dine on the proper food
groups of math and science and English and art and music and
logic and
composition, as opposed to the history of the
ping pong ball or the science of paper folding, you are
“starving” your brain and killing your future.
I say all of the above to make my
introduction into
what I want to say and that is the black
family and the ever-present black church had better pair up
fast and save their own kids and reverse their seemingly
downward negative educational plight because the institution
known as the public school is beginning to topple into
obscurity.
Take Toledo for an example. The real
estate base for more levies to support fewer and fewer
students in large high schools is ever shrinking.
John Q. Public is not happy with either
the educational process or the end product that is being
pumped out.
For too long the public schools have been
in academic
trouble and the social fabric in some of
those schools leaves much to be desired. The fact that so
many thousands of students over the years have jettisoned
the public schools for the few openings in both parochial
and charter schools indicates that we have a Gordian Knot
that no one seemingly knows how to untangle.
The Catholic school system in not
inexhaustible in the number of students that they can
accept. They will either have to raise the tuition or their
academic standards in order to keep from being flooded by
anxious parents wanting a life raft out of the near drowning
public school system.
When I first came to Toledo back in the
70’s, every school teacher I met had their precious Johnny
or Suzie in either private or parochial schools. If that
does not tell you volumes about how they felt about the
system from which they drew their sustenance, nothing will.
My wife and I followed suit. Our three
kids all went to
parochial schools during their educational
years and I do not regret it in the least. That is one
reason why I could not in good conscience run for the school
board because
I could not govern over someone else’s child
when my own
did not attend public schools.
That is why I do not believe any teacher,
principal,
administrator, school board member or staff
worker who works in or for TPS should be required to place
their kids in no any other system than TPS.
It is rank hypocrisy to do otherwise. It
makes no sense to have teachers living in Perrysburg,
Rossford, Sylvania or Ottawa Hills commuting to Toledo to
teach but yet their own kids go to private schools or
religious schools or schools in their bedroom communities.
Now for the gist of this article. Black
people and the dozens and dozens of black churches that
populate the so-called inner or central city of Toledo have
better wake up and read the chalkboard.
The public school system is in its death
throes and the
infrastructure to support it (property
taxes), is groaning under the financial weight to keep it
propped up.
What to do? Simple, but still missed for
decades by black people and that is: unite and form your own
quality oases of educational systems. It will take some
time, but the effort needs to be started now. We have lost
enough kids to a system that seemingly does not take their
education seriously and which in turns jeopardizes
everyone’s future.
Until the black churches start assessing
themselves (translation: coughing up bucks on a systemic and
meaningful basis) and forming alliances with parent groups
and start buying land and/or rehabbing buildings to educate
black kids, we are at the whim and mercy of tax levies and
capricious school policies that are temperamental about the
education of Shauntae and DeMarcus.
This is not an indictment of excellent
teachers who make a difference every day they walk into a
classroom and
impart life and hope to attentive students
but it is an
indictment of any black person who does not
see the value of owning and possessing the educational
apparatus and future of your own kids. For too long we have
depended upon the largesse and goodwill of “others” to do
for us.
That is childish and retrogressive. You
will never grow up into adulthood if you think that if all
goes bad, someone wearing a cape and a mask will swoop in
and bail you out…again.
The answer is not in more levies and mega
schools but
in parental commitment and financial
disciplines to stave off a pending educational meltdown
(unless the State of
Ohio devises a different method by which to
funds public
education).
The parents who can, will bail out of the
public system and support a system of their own choosing but
those who are impoverished and subsequently left behind have
got to band together, rethink the process and do for self.
I have given this spiel for decades but
you never know…maybe someday, someone will take up the chant
and run the ball into the end zone and we will win.
Email comments for Lafe Tolliver
to:
Tolliver@Juno.com
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