A Reflection of the Dicersity Speaker Event

I am very passionate about the education of Black and Brown children in the United States and it is my aspiration to work with a predominantly Black, urban population. That being said, when I saw that there was going to be a Diversity Series presentation about public education in urban schools at my university, I was excited to attend the event. I thought this would be a great way for me to get an insider’s look at an urban public school from a teacher’s perspective. I enjoyed the presentation from Dr. Kozol and then the dialogue with the panel. This discussion sparked a lot of my interests and made me think a lot of the public school system.

 Dr. Kozol spoke about his experience working in urban public schools. While he was telling his personal story, I was not shocked to hear that he had been fired from an elementary school for reading the poem A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes to his students. The school made the claim that they did not want him to read Langston Hughes because Hughes did not have more than a sixth-grade education. Dr. Kozol mentioned that he believed the true reason the school did not want him to read the poem is because Hughes is a Black poet. The school’s reaction to Dr. Kozol reading this work can be very detrimental to the poor, Black children at the school because not only did the school reject the notion that a Black person can be a noted poet who is taught in school, but they also implanted the idea that a poor person could not be a phenomenal poet. The blatant rejection of the work of Langston Hughes, feeds into the notion that you cannot be successful if you are poor and Black.

By rejecting the reading of Hughes’ poetry, the school also took away the incorporation of Black writing and Black words in the school setting. There is research now that supports the claim that Black history needs to be taught in schools, especially in Black schools. Neglecting Black history fails to admit to the students and to the country that the United States of America was built by the hands of Black men and women and also from the blood of the indigenous people that had their land stolen from the early settlers. When Black children are being taught Black history, then they have the opportunity to learn that people who look like them have made significant contributions to society and that they have the tools to fight against their oppressions. Even historically, it has been consistently difficult for a Black person to receive an education and there is still systematic racism in place (i.e. predominantly Black schools that are underfunded) that limits a Black child’s ability to receive an adequate education by modern societal standards.

Following the discussion, I followed some friend’s downstairs to attend the reception. At the reception, I heard a lot of the White, Towson faculty members talk about how “inspiring” and “motivational” the discussion was because of the work he had done in public education. Hearing them speak of him like this really irritated me because there was nothing that he said that I had not already learned from Black teachers, professors, school counselors, and school psychologist. I did not get irritated solely because he was a White, wealthy male. It irritated me that Black people have been speaking out about the systematic oppression of the public school system for several years, but a lot of times people do not listen to minority issues until a person of privilege speaks out about them. When Black people speak about the problems and oppressions no one is around to listen and some even say that we are just “complaining” and we just need to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps”. All in all, I am glad that Dr. Kozol is an ally to children who attend these urban public schools because at the end of the day the only important thing is that these children are given opportunities for success.

Education is the first step to being relieved from the oppression of poverty and when that access to a quality education is denied to Black and Brown children, then it promotes the cycle of poverty and it teaches these children to get used to failure. Dr. Kozol is a strong proponent of equal-opportunity education for all students. His advocacy and experience inspired me to also be an advocate for Black and Brown students that are not given equal opportunity to education.