By CS Fletcher
 

As hard as I try not to, I sometimes cannot help but think of that deflating moment when pain, fear, and a desperate scramble for words choked away any chance at a response as my 8-year-old son asked me, "Mommy, okay, so what do I do if I’m in that situation?" 

That "situation” was being in George Floyd’s shoes, neck sandwiched between concrete and a rogue cop’s knee. As we sit on sentencing day for convicted murderer and former officer Derek Chauvin, this dreaded memory comes back to mind.  KJ, an endlessly curious child, asked the question innocently and excitedly, proud that he, his younger brother, and dad had just watched the George Floyd memorial service and stood 8 minutes and 46 seconds in silence along with those on the TV. Mommy always had an answer. Instead, stammering came forth; within was sadness, anger, guilt, and shame for many reasons -- among them the fact that as a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leader, I readily give answers to questions relating to race and power (what the Floyd case was all about), yet I had no answer for him.

For years, I’ve done DEI work, so much so that it earned me a spot as an Equity and Inclusion Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, from which I graduated just weeks ago. It was there that I was struck by an article containing assessments about the U.S. education system and violence against Black people at the hands of white folks. Decades ago, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, considered the father of Black history, remarked that as educators, we may have a bigger role in this line of mayhem than we realize because there is a connection between schooling and what is happening outside of it.  Harvard scholar Jarvis Givens explores Woodson’s thoughts, including how the ideology that shaped mainstream school content and practices at the time was offering moral justification for “daily terrors of anti-Blackness” and “physical acts of violence” on Black people. Givens echoes Woodson's criticism, highlighting the inextricable link between anti-Black ideas in school knowledge and the violence Black people faced in the material world.

During and after last summer, my mind drifted from Floyd and his killer to Breonna Taylor and her killers to Ahmaud Arbery and his. Violence, in each case, was committed by people who showed a seemingly unflinching entitlement to do so, with little or no remorse. Why is this still happening, centuries after such a thing would have been disgustingly commonplace? My educator lens led me to a common thread: Of the aforementioned people and countless others, the majority, if not all, were educated in the U.S. public school system. 
How are we really being educated? How much of it is playing into how we’re viewing each other? Ourselves? Our power in relation to others? Was Dr. Woodson on to something then that is still relevant now?

Research on implicit bias in adults shows how it leads to stereotyping and prejudging that can have dangerous and dire consequences. After 11 years in the classroom and in teacher-training roles, it is clear to me that the education system plays a role in reinforcing this way of thinking: annually churning out young adults with racist mindsets. Students of different racial backgrounds in grade school are sitting in the same classes but appear to be receiving different messages and levels of education. Students are leaving schools, seeing the world, themselves, and one another in vastly different ways.

According to the National Center on Education and the Economy, students in the U.S. spend 1,224 hours in school each year. From kindergarten through high school, those hours add up to 15,912. That does not account for extracurricular activities. Factor those in, and we’re at nearly 17,000 hours of life spent in school.  For his upcoming book, Teaching White Supremacy: The Battle Over Race in American History Textbooks, Harvard historian Donald Yacovone researched several dozen history textbooks from centuries ago through the 20th century and discovered countless examples of history that taught that whites are superior and the Black race is inferior, going as far as to mention Black people only as ignorant, problematic nuisances to those of European descent. Yacovone likens white supremacy to a toxin that history books, as syringes, have been injecting in the minds of people in this country for generations -- so much so that the consequences are seen on a daily basis.

Something needs to change.

Thinking about how inaccurate and unjust history has been presented, combined with anti-Black teaching and its link to violence outside the classroom, I’m even more convinced there needs to be a fundamental shift in the way our students are taught. Nearly 17,000 hours? Seventeen thousand! With such a significant portion of people's lives dedicated to school, it's inevitable that opinions will form. If these opinions are not discussed openly, if teachers -- intentionally or inadvertently -- sway minds due to their biases, if textbook information is not being disputed, opinions become solidified and assumptions begin, which can lead to a sort of tug-of-war of the mind as young people begin internally wrestling with who’s inferior and who’s not, who’s a threat and who is not. 

Our education system plays a significant role in establishing and strengthening these cognitive patterns while also contributing minimally to dismantling these harmful mindsets. Beyond the traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic, a newer buzzword around schools is SEL, an acronym for social-emotional learning. Schools are now encouraging or pushing educators to incorporate this empathy- and emotional-based process for students.  And while I am glad to see this concept included, I am a parent of two Black sons, and I can’t help but think of Gloria Ladson-Billings’ culturally responsive pedagogy or Geneva Gay’s culturally responsive teaching, approaches that have been around for decades now but are slow to make their way into a majority of classrooms across the country. These styles are intentional about including all students and cultures in the learning process and take into account some explicit, intentional, positive incorporation of race and racial literacy. The culturally responsive methods are a type of teaching that aims to eliminate or prevent biases, as well as the numerous, often unnamed approaches that result in negative assumptions, views, and treatment of certain groups.

What if there was a shift in teaching, one that paid attention to the way different races were viewing each other in schools, followed by conversations to ensure healthy senses of viewing were happening outside of school? How might things be different long-term in our society? Might schools -- restructured and reimagined -- be the answer to a society absent of expectations of self or others as superiors, inferiors, or threats, where Black lives actually matter? We owe it to our students—to our children— to begin to try. That brings a much more comforting, pleasant image to my mind. I can’t help but think it.

CS Fletcher is a DEI administrator in K-12 and a research associate at Harvard Kennedy School whose work focuses on justice, policy, curriculum, and leveraging technology to enhance equitable schooling. An award-winning journalist prior to education, Fletcher is the host/producer of the Daily Border Crossings podcast and founder of TIE DIE, a think-tank program preparing teens to thrive in tech/STEM spaces after high school. She’s a proud wife and boy mom originally from SC.