Patrick Welsh, a teacher in our nation capital’s struggling school system came up with a trenchant insight from his own students:
“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”
In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class — and was constantly distracting other students when he did — shot back: “It’s because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study.”
Another student angrily challenged me: “You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us.” When I did, not one hand went up.
I was stunned. These were good kids; I had grown attached to them over the school year. It hit me that these students, at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, understood what I knew too well: The lack of a father in their lives had undermined their education. The young man who spoke up knew that with a father in his house he probably wouldn’t be ending 12 years of school in the bottom 10 percent of his class with a D average. His classmate, normally a sweet young woman with a great sense of humor, must have long harbored resentment at her father’s absence to speak out as she did. Both had hit upon an essential difference between the kids who make it in school and those who don’t: parents.
My students knew intuitively that the reason they were lagging academically had nothing to do with race, which is the too-handy explanation for the achievement gap in Alexandria. And it wasn’t because the school system had failed them. They knew that excuses about a lack of resources and access just didn’t wash at the new, state-of-the-art, $100 million T.C. Williams, where every student is given a laptop and where there is open enrollment in Advanced Placement and honors courses. Rather, it was because their parents just weren’t there for them — at least not in the same way that parents of kids who were doing well tended to be.
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As much as I agree that a “whole home” with both parents will bring a greater degree of success here, I can’t help but think (especially since I just preached a sermon on Ephesians 6.4 yesterday directed at the fathers) that the father is still going to be the key issue. Note the specific reference by the students to “father” in their comments. They have a mother and no doubt, in some cases, she’s kicking some backside in order to get her kids to survive. Yet studies have shown that the absent father will do more to harm a child’s improvement in more than just academics than almost any other factor.
If President Obama wants to make a significant change in our cultural mindset, he’ll find a way to exhort dads to stay at home and stand up to their responsibility.
wow. “TC Williams.” Isn´t that the High School where they made the film “Remember the Trojans”??!!
That was a film about highschool integration between blacks and whites in the 1970´s. And the writer states that now his class is ALL black students!!!
This is my first observation, related to a second one that follows. Yes I know that the point is supposed to be a different one…
So I know that is not the point of the post, but yes, if I am right, there might just be something beyond being fatherless that might be going on here….
Could it be that the effects of slavery that happened, what, 4-5 generations ago is still messing with us americans? If this seems far-fetched or “victimizing”, then consider if your family had a background where your female ancestors were raped or forced to breed, husbands (aka fathers) were sold off at the owner´s whim, after having their teeth and breeding potential examined on an auction block (so much for male pride and self esteem). heck marriage ceremonies consisted, literally, of jumping together over a broom then, and until 1970 it was illegal for mom to marry dad if dad was black in Virginia.
And we are surprised that there is a tradition of the strong black woman with kids and dad is nowhere to be found. and even black folk can´t really bring themselves to discuss this openly for a host of reasons.
and besides, what happened to all the white students that were supposed to be integrated with the blacks at tc williams, especially considering that everything is state of the art there??!! what is the story there?
I think I’ll give my kids a good whuppin’ when I get home from work today!
Interesting thoughts, Frank.
Many thanks to government for paying young women to have babies out of wedlock for the past 45 years…..
I have to wonder if these kids are not using this as an excuse, to a certain degree. Well, I don’t have a father so I guess I won’t work hard and get good grades. I agree that they would be much better off with fathers, but if they know that a father would make them study and work harder (as the students said) then they should work harder and study. I am not suggesting that they could do it all without a father (perhaps many of these kids have to hold jobs or have to baby-sit siblings – and a father is a special thing), but if you know what a father would tell you to do (study and work hard), what stops you from doing it?
And thanks to women’s lib for saying that just moms are enough.
Going through childbirthing classes right now makes me realize how horrible labor, delivery, and post-partum experiences would all be without my husband to stand beside us. I can’t imagine any child and mother being perpetually father/husband-less.
It comes back to the fact that sex is increasingly becoming separated from procreation and therefore parenting is increasingly viewed as either a conscientious choice (we were trying) or an accident (we weren’t using protection). I suspect that the trend of dadless students will be on the increase for a while across all categories.
‘It’s someone else’s fault.’ Yeah, that’s the ticket.
In his June 16, 2009, blog, Marty Nemko posted an essay “What is it Like to Teach Black Students?”, written by Christopher Jackson. Below the essay on Nemko’s site, there are over 470 comments.
While there were the usual comments accusing Jackson being a “racist” or a “failure as a teacher,” there were many comments from other teachers and students, white and black, who confirmed that the same observations, particularly the cultural attitudes, could be seen in their predominately black schools where they are or were.
In the comments there is a link to a May 20, 2007, Tampa Bay News article, “A dream lay dying” (http://www.sptimes.com/2007/05/20/Opinion/A_dream_lay_dying.shtml), by Bill Maxwell (http://www.tampabay.com/writers/bill-maxwell), a St. Petersburg Times journalist who describes what he witnessed when he volunteered to teach at a historically black college until he quit after the 2nd year spring semester.
In the past Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell have condemned that subculture and its denigration of education and family values witnessed in Jackson’s article, and for their efforts Cosby and Sowell have been labeled by many blacks with the epithet, “Uncle Tom.”
Gut-wrenchingly sad.
Be it remembered that a father who comes home from work and watches 6 straight hours of big screen TV every single weeknight is absent in his own way. Yet, I suppose, at least he’s working, and at least he comes home.
@Joe –
Maybe it is a sort of excuse, but we are born sinful, and that includes selfish and lazy. This is one of the main purposes of parental discipline – disciplining our child now so they can self-discipline later. You know, one of the reasons I love my Dad is that he beat my butt. Even then I knew that he was only doing it because he cared. And now I see the fruit in my life in the form of self-discpline.
However, there are other factors toward poor grades, as evidinced by the fact that the majority of African students have no father – and many have no mother either.
John – I don’t disagree with what you have said and I hope my post made clear that my statements were qualified.
here in brasil the pattern is the same, only here 80-85% of the population has some ancestral roots of slaves and slavery.
many men and women struggle mightly against great odds poor and with a single mom. they still suffer mightily in so many ways other than educationally and financially.
Education is not the solution for this, and neither is financial success.
we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. and if there are no shoulders to stand on, the world can be a rather harsh place.
This excuses no one of course. To excuse based on this would be disrespectful and to victimize those one is trying to help. But it is not a worthless exercise to ponder the fact that perhaps the starting line for some is further back than is our own in the race if life eh? The claim of the poor and single moms and half orphans is not lost on St James nor should it be lost on us in our pursuit of true righteousness.
Yes, a father can make a huge difference, and yes, single moms have a tough road, but watch the movie “Gifted Hands.” That mom cared enough to make a difference. Do most of the kids in Africa have both parents?
LAJ: No – absentee fathers / fathers as migrant workers / deceased fathers are very common.
One of the guys who studied with me came from Swaziland. In his case, all the children in the family was encouraged by one aunt, whomade them tell her their marks and who scolded them in front of everybody if they did badly. The scolding was so terrifying, me classmate went on to get a PhD in Geology
#13 the scylding
God bless people who seek to care for the hurts and problems of others like that aunt.
sometimes it does not take so very much to make a huge difference. for her family she was someone who cared about them and made them feel like someone who mattered.
often that is all any of us really needs to make it in the world. even better are those who do this by pointing us to Jesus.
The fourth season of HBO’s series THE WIRE (very graphic language warning) features the challenges of schools inner city Baltimore. What is remarkable about the series is its unflinching willingness to look at the lives of everyone involved in the city: blacks, whites, Irish cops, black detectives, kids, drug dealers, teachers, parents. While the picture is not a pretty one, there is a degree of hope when a former male cop becomes a teacher and starts finding out about his students’ fractured lives, and then begins looking for solutions. It very much reinforces the view that sane, basic education must flow from a secure home life, including having a dad there.
The single-mom-with-son story that I have most witnessed has the boy starting to disrespect and challenge the mom at about age 10-12. That is about the age when kids start moving, intellectually and intuitively, from a grammar stage to a logic stage, in the terms of the Trivium. I’ve told dads for years that when their sons start taking them on, it is a good sign–it means they are starting to put pieces together and make sense of things-the logic stage! Of course, one of the painful things they make sense of is that their dad is not perfect, but so it goes. With a dad there, the son is safe to throw his weight against that male wall, testing it. With no dad, he just tends to learn to disrespect women. With dad there, any disrespect to the mom is answerable to the dad. That’s my take on it, anyway.
While I admit it crossed my mind that the kids in the DC classroom were just using “no dad” as an excuse, I’m inclined to think they are absolutely correct. It isn’t an excuse: we are asking them to do things most of us wouldn’t be able to do under their circumstances.
If you don’t mind an occasional F-bomb, and would like to be entertained as well as instructed, check out THE WIRE.
“There are No Fathers Here” should have been the title of Kotlowitz’ book. Similarly, “Dreams from My Grandmother” would have more accurately credited the bedrock parent of Obama’s success.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, in one of his books, mentions a boy whose father worked double shifts so that he rarey saw him. But the boy said, “I saw how my father worked”. He saw his father’s example. And in the black community there were many examples of these fathers in the first half of the 20th century when discrimination was cruel.