Best Of: Who Gets To Decide What School Means For Students?

0:07What's your strongest memory of school? Do you remember it as a time of exploration? Was it a place where you could figure out who you were and what you wanted to become? Or did it feel like it wasn't made for you? Did it feel constricting, like a place with lots of rules about how you had to act and what you couldn't do? Your experience of school is likely dependent on the administrators who ran your school, who the teachers were, how your city or state set up the curriculum, and the resources your school received. And as writer Eve L. Ewing argues, that experience could also be shaped by who you are.

0:40What has school meant for students and who influenced how schools function the way they do? And what are alternatives for how school could work for students? Eve joins us after the break. We discuss her latest book, Original Sins, The Miseducation of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism. She's a writer and professor of race and education at the University of Chicago. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. We'll be back with more in a moment. Stay with us.

1:13Joining us now from Chicago is Eve Ewing. Eve, welcome back. Jen, it's wonderful to talk with you. Eve, in your introduction, you write that Original Sins is not a prescriptive how-to guide to fix our schools. But what questions or ideas did you want to explore? You know, this is really a book that is about the role that schools have played in making the United States what it is. And I think that because so many of us have just our own memories of school and we don't always talk about those with other people, we assume that those experiences are universal and they're not. And basically what I want to argue is that schools haven't just sort of stood by the sidelines reflecting as a mirror a racist society, but actually that schools have been a really important laboratory for honing that racial hierarchy and for maintaining it, for normalizing it, and for telling us that it's just part of the fabric of life.

2:06You're a teacher, you're an educator, you taught in K-12 schools, and you opened the book with a question, what is the purpose of schools? As you were writing this book, did you come up with your answer to that question? Oh, yes, absolutely. It's a question I think about and talk about all the time and with my students and with people in community because I think that when we don't ask that question, we often end up going through the motions and repeating things in schools without asking, what are we trying to accomplish here? Why are we actually doing this? You know, if we ask students to sit a certain way, stand a certain way, take tests a certain way, engage with each other a certain way, even just being inside as opposed to outside, being all segregated by age and as opposed to having elders or intergenerational conversations.

2:51There are so many assumptions that we make all the time in how schools function. And I think it's really important for us periodically to stop and ask ourselves, why are we actually doing this and what are we trying to accomplish here? So what is your answer? What is the purpose of school, do you think? Well, I think that there's the purpose of school as it has been and the purpose as I think it ought to be or still believe it could be. So really, I think that as it has been, school has always reflected the political aims of the powerful in the United States. And so that means that whatever the prevailing anxieties of the moment, the concerns of the moment, but also the need to maintain a kind of social order, that ends up shaping the experiences of countless young people.

3:31And I think that we're in a moment where that is a very frightening image, where we see schools being used as a front line to maintain an authoritarian vision of what this country could be. And at the same time, I still believe in schools as a place where young people can learn to see themselves as worthy of celebration, of love and care, and as leaders in their collective community. I'm just going to acknowledge the fact that you're alluding to the fact that President Trump wants to close the Department of Education. You published a piece in the publication in these times. It says in part, quote, as soon as we cede the territory of the imagination, we've already lost.

4:09How are you thinking about having this conversation in the context of the administration's goal to dismantle the Department of Education? How do you even start that conversation? Well, I think it's important for us to think not only about the dismantling of the Department of Education, but the fear that is being used to control teachers, to control family members, and to make students feel like they can't show up in school as a place where they can be celebrated, nurtured, and understood. We already see this across the country with students of immigrants, students of families that have people that are undocumented, staying home, right?

4:44And the thing about that is it almost doesn't matter if the ice raid happens in that building that day or not. The effect has been carried out. the effect of making them feel like you don't belong. This is not a place for you. This is not a place for your family. Trans students, the same thing is true. Queer students, the same thing is true. Muslim students, the same thing is true. And so it's really something that's beyond the dismantling of the Department of Education or not. It's also about even if it were to stay in place, how is it being used? And how is this broader environment, this atmosphere of fear and intimidation that's being established, how is that trickling down to some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

5:23The goal of what schools should accomplish wasn't a given at the beginning of the U.S. It's remained an active debate across U.S. history, as you say. But what were some of the early ideas people proposed for what schools should accomplish? Well, Thomas Jefferson, in addition to being one of the architects of the way we think about democracy in the United States, and we know all the hypocrisy and contradiction inherent in that of him as a person who said, all men are created equal and also held enslaved people. He was also a shaper of some of our early ideas of what school should be. And so very early on, we've had a vision of schools where this country, which is founded on these two principles, which is the original sins that I'm referring to here.

6:06One is the theft of land from indigenous peoples who were the stewards of this land since time immemorial, and the violent murder and dispossession that accompanied that theft. and the enslavement of black people that were kidnapped from Africa and held here in bondage, held here as property. And so in order for those two things to be normal, in order for those things to be made ideologically okay or acceptable, you need a set of ideas that makes people think that these people are not people like us, right? And so that is really a set of ideas, while sometimes explicitly spoken and sometimes unspoken or implicit, has really shaped the fabric of schools both in the past and into the present.

6:49This idea that Black people and Native people, Black children and Native children are not deserving of love and care like everybody else. When you talk about Black and Native children not being deserving of care like everyone else, what concrete, tangible ways did you find that showing up in early ideas about what the educational system was for? Sure. Well, you know, one of the quotations that really set me on this journey was one that I first encountered many, many years ago. And it came from Carl Schurz, who at the time was the Secretary of Education, pardon me, Secretary of the Interior. So charged with kind of overseeing what they referred to as quote unquote Indian affairs.

7:31And he wrote, we are told that it costs a little less than a million dollars to kill an Indian in war. It costs about$150 a year to educate one at Hampton or Carlisle, which were early schools set aside for the residential education of Native people, forcibly, right, through kidnapping. And when I first encountered that quote, it stopped me in my tracks because he was laying it out plain. He was saying, well, if we want to kill someone in war, if we want to kill an Indian in war, it costs us a million dollars, we can save money and accomplish the same effect, right, winning the war against barbarism through schooling, through education.

8:14And so that was so telling to me and it really set me on this path, on this journey that has taken me into learning so much more about the ways that these journeys for Native kids and for Black kids oftentimes converged and sometimes diverged. One other example that I'll give you is the conversation around what education should look like for black people at the end of slavery. And there were northern observers who wrote specifically, you know, formerly enslaved people, they just want to own a little piece of land. They don't want to come back and work for their former masters on the plantation.

8:48And we need them to do that, right? And so there was this specific idea that we need to have school to teach them that they should accumulate as much capital as possible. There was also a famous abolitionist, Lydia Marie Child, who wrote in a textbook for freed people, she said, whatever happens, however your former masters treat you, it's really important that you never raise your hand in vengeance against them. Even if they abuse your children, never revenge it by any injury to them or their property. And so the idea here being that school was a tool to tell black people, it does not matter how angry you are at having been enslaved.

9:23It doesn't matter how badly your former enslavers treat you. Your job is to be docile. Your job is to be subservient. And that is a very specific state goal that schools were very effective at putting forth. And returning to Thomas Jefferson, what ideas did he offer about what education should be and who would you be for? Well, many of your listeners might be familiar, you know, if you think back to your U.S. history classes, of Notes on the State of Virginia, which is a very long treatise that Thomas Jefferson wrote, in which he laid out not only the history of the state of Virginia, but also some of his fundamental ideas about black people and also about native people.

9:58And he said, you know, that the education of a great country should take the most select, the most talented people and pass them through into positions of leadership, much of how people think about what meritocracy means today. But he also, in that same text, wrote that black people were not capable of sophisticated thought, right? That that was inherent and immovable. and he even cited Phyllis Wheatley, who was the first black published author in the United States, as he said, she's basically doing mimicry, right? But it's not real poetry. And she can write about misery, but it's not real poetry.

10:33And at the same time, he had these ideas that native people were destined to be disappeared, right? And that it was sad, that it was tragic, but that their elimination was an unfortunate step that had to take place in order for the Republic as we know it to come into being. And so he made that very clear in his writing. And I think that that really laid forth a kind of blueprint for how we think about the role of schools in democracy. Again, sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken. LaShawn in Montgomery County emails, I'm a black woman who grew up in Atlanta and moved to the DMV area eight years ago when my eldest was born.

11:08I've always heard about the great school systems in this area, but it's been sobering, although not surprising to realize that once again, this mostly applies to white children. I was optimistic when I moved to the area, but I've been disappointed to realize that my kids' education might be eerily similar to mine, and like my parents, I will likely have to subject them to years of school hopping just to ensure they have a chance at a decent education. I refuse to let my kids internalize hatred or digest the message that they're less than anyone simply because of their race. Well, to Lashana's message there, your book, Eve, focuses on the experience of schooling for white children, black children, and Native children in the U.S.

11:48And broadly speaking, what are some of the values that you see underneath how educators and policymakers treat these three groups of children in school? And let's start with black children. Sure. Well, I think that this conversation for me centered around these three pillars that I see as kind of central to upholding racial hierarchy in the U.S. and that I see as being really reinforced in schools. The first is what I call the gospel of intellectual inferiority, which I think we hear a little bit laced under that listener comment, which is the unspoken assumption that Black and Native children are inherently less intelligent.

12:26And we see this play out in all these different ways. We see this in the way we talk about test scores and gaps. We see it incredibly brazenly in the way people are talking about, quote unquote, DEI right now, right? The assumption that if you are a black person and if you are in a certain school, in a position of power, in a position of authority at your job or in a place of leadership, that you cannot possibly have earned that through your own merits, right? The assumption that you are less intelligent, less capable, less deserving. So that's the first kind of thread. The second thread that I would talk about is discipline and punishment.

12:59So the idea that Black and Native children have bodies that are requiring of more discipline, that we need to be controlled violently if necessary, and that punishment becomes really central to the logic of what happens in schools. And we see really devastating examples of this all over the place from the disproportionate experiences of suspension and expulsion and the ways that young people are criminalized in schools, But also in some of the things, again, that we don't really even think about, right? Detention, having to stand on a certain square in line in the hallway, having to stand with your arms glued to your sides, having to be silent, right?

13:37Things like that. And the third thing I would talk about is the notion of economic subjugation. And so the idea that this is a capitalist country and that some people, us, right? Black people, native people, brown people, people of color in general, are doomed to always be at the bottom of the capitalist hierarchy. And that part of what the job of schools is to reinforce that and to prepare us for that kind of economically subservient role that again, from the outset of this country, made the country as we know it, right? We know that this is a country that was built on the stolen labor of black people, of native people.

14:12And so school has been a place where that idea is reinforced as normal. When we talk about white children and their schooling, we have to acknowledge that the definition of whiteness has changed over time. So how has the education system played a role in defining who counts as white, but also in defining who counts as American? Sure. So I think that there's some really interesting history and some listeners might have heard some of this as it pertains to their own Irish ancestors or Italian ancestors, right? People arriving in the United States and facing sincere discrimination from the kind of prior generation of white people that were here before them.

14:51And historically, we see that playing out in all kinds of conflicts, including the conflict over whether the German language should be taught in schools to German kids and whether Irish kids had to, you know, endure curriculum that critiqued them or critiqued Catholicism in schools. But over time, schools became a really clear tool, especially in the beginning of the 20th century, to have those kids feel like they were part of this assimilated American project and that it was part of their destiny to be able to participate in civic life in the United States. And that includes through some things that listeners might really take for granted or not have thought about in school.

15:30So things like kindergarten, things like playing on the playground and learning certain games, things like eating certain food in the cafeteria, things like saying the Pledge of Allegiance. All of these reforms, when they were brought into schools, the people who created them wrote and said very specifically, very explicitly, we are going to use these things to help these kids forget if they are Jewish or forget if they are Italian and help them understand that you are now an American. The cafeteria lunch example is kind of a funny one because there was this idea that having too much seasoning and too much garlic and flavor that you might expect to have in Italian cooking, right?

16:09And things like that. That that was culturally not what we wanted for this new vision of America. And so the idea was let's feed kids in cafeterias food that is as bland as possible. And they're gonna go home and tell their parents, you know, this is the new processed home economics food that you need to enjoy. All those things were part of this vision of saying, you're an American now and this country is for you. Let's take a quick pause here. So to come, the origins of the boarding school system for Native children and the values that our modern schools teach children. That's just ahead.

16:44Let's get back to our discussion. And Eve, I want to turn to early educators. You mentioned Lydia Maria Child. She was an abolitionist. She helped create textbooks. What did it appear was her goal in teaching people? Well, you know, I think it's really important to acknowledge that, you know, these folks had good intentions, but also to look at the impact of those intentions. So Lydia Maria Child, her goal was to provide these accessible textbooks for formerly enslaved, newly emancipated people. And she wanted to teach them, you know, the things that they needed to survive in the new United States, including how to read and kind of moral instruction, but also to teach them about their place.

17:24And she really, in doing so, emphasized this idea of subservience, docility, never taking revenge. And she said, look, the rest of the world is watching. There are still enslaved people in Brazil. There are still enslaved people in the Spanish colonies. If they see you being hotheaded and angry, then they're going to keep those people in slavery, as though it is the job of black people in the United States to behave well, to inspire white people elsewhere to free enslaved people. And she told what she considered to be inspiring stories that she wanted these newly emancipated people to learn, but she told them through a very specific lens.

18:01So for example, she told them about Toussaint Louverture, who was the leader of the Haitian Revolution. And she said that, you know, he was very mild-mannered. He had a very quiet domestic life. She told them about John Brown, who of course led the famous insurrection at Harper's Ferry. And she said, you know, when he went to the gallows, he looked upon a sweet child that smiled at him and he did exactly what Jesus did when he went to the cross. And she never says why he was going to the gallows. So there's this very specific view of American history that was aimed at keeping newly freed black people as subservient as possible because there was this fear of violent uprising and that they could very rightfully want to take vengeance or be angry at the people that had held them in bondage for years, abused their children, and so on and so forth.

18:46And so that was the kind of moral instruction that she was trying to put forth along with this academic instruction. Another prominent teacher at the time was Charlotte Fortin, and she was a black poet who was born free in Philadelphia to an abolitionist family. How did her teachings compare to Lydia Childs or the other white teachers working during Reconstruction? Yeah, I think it's always important to look at these comparisons because sometimes we say people were a product of their time. And, you know, there are usually they had other peers that were also product at the same time who had different ideologies.

19:16So Charlotte Fortin, who, as you mentioned, was born free, she came to the Sea Islands in South Carolina. And she said she wanted to teach formerly enslaved people courage, ambition of a noble sort, and high purposes. And she also wanted to teach them about Toussaint Louverture, but to have them be inspired at what leadership could look like. And so we see two different teachers coming from very different perspectives at the same time, bringing very different ideologies into the classroom. One of the really powerful things about this book, Eve, is that you grounded in the stories of real people.

19:48This is not just an academic exercise. And you write about the story of Julia Grant. She lived around the turn of the 20th century. Tell us about her and what happened to her. Sure. Julia is a person that I found kind of by accident while going through the archive. I was looking for something else and I found these news reports of a black woman, She was referred to as a black woman who had been horrifically burned while she was incarcerated at a prison farm and a prison camp in Georgia. And as I read into it, I found that this quote unquote woman was actually a teenage girl. She had been arrested when she was 13 years old for shoplifting pants.

20:32and she was sent to this labor farm, which, you know, again, was not only punishment for her as a teen girl, but also these farms were instrumental in the economy of these states at the time. And so she was horrifically burned and she ended up hospitalized and scientists, doctors were looking for somebody to give her a skin graft, I think partially because of their own kind of medical curiosity about the ability to do that. And eventually she died in the hospital. And I became so minorly obsessed with Julia, I think because this story of a teen girl that steals some pants from a shop and ends up horribly incarcerated under terrible circumstances and then dying alone in such a painful way in a state hospital was just devastating to me.

21:24And it was so devastating to me that she wasn't cared for, that she wasn't loved, right? That she was a teen girl who was not treated as such. And how do you connect Julia's story to some of what you've seen, especially in your own time as a teacher in K-12 schools? And the story that's really standing out to me is the trip a school you taught at took to a jail. Yes. I think that, you know, that question of what are schools for, what are we actually trying to do? There is a logic of punishment, a logic of criminality that goes so unspoken and unchallenged in so much of how we think about schooling, especially as it pertains to Black and Native kids.

22:11And as you say, you know, I tell the story of being an eighth grade teacher and finding out partway through the year that some colleagues of mine were organizing a field trip to the jail. And I taught at a school that was almost entirely Black. You know, I could tell you, count on one hand, the other students of color that were in my classes and no white students. And when I think about those kids, I think about them as kids. I think about them as being goofy and funny and silly and thoughtful and creative and innovative. And never in a million years would I have thought the way to give them a good education is to take them to jail, right?

22:51But the unspoken assumption is this will be good for them as a deterrent. And I knew, even though I was much younger and less, I guess, politically savvy than I am now, it just felt wrong to me. And so I organized a different field trip. And I said, look, you and your parents can decide. If you want to go to the jail for some reason, you can do that. And if you want to go see a film at the documentary center downtown with me, we can go do that. And so half of the kids came with me and half of them went to the jail. And I'll just never forget the look on their faces when they came back into the classroom at the end of the day and how devastated, how demoralized so many of them were.

23:34And I think it just shocked me because that basic question of why are we actually doing this and what are the assumptions that are bearing fruit here about these kids, that just seemed to go unasked. We got this email from Hannah who says, I'm a Native descendant, and it breaks my heart to know what my ancestors went through. I can't help but imagine the beautiful present that would exist if Native cultures had been used as teachers opposed to being eliminated or reeducated. Starting in the 1860s, the U.S. government took Native children away from their families, in some cases by force, and kept them in this system of boarding schools.

24:13What was the central reason that drove the government's approach to education for Native children? Well, it was a disturbing matter of dollars and cents. And so again, this is a country that to this day is we are all sitting talking, I'm talking to you right now on the stolen land of indigenous people. And for many, many years, that land was taken by violent war, by violent dispossession, by armies, by soldiers. And eventually the leaders of the Secretary of the Interior and the federal agents that were overseeing what they called the quote unquote Indian problem, they said outright, you know, we can do this more effectively with an army of school teachers.

24:54And that is an exact quote. And so the first of these schools was founded by a man named Richard Henry Pratt, who was a military leader. And he got this idea for boarding school based on his experience with a group of prisoners of war that he was charged with holding at Fort Marion in Florida. And the thing about this is that these were men that were taken because they were seen as especially effective leaders, that they were really effective in maintaining resistance against the US military. And so they were taken kidnapped as prisoners of war. He took them to Fort Marion and he didn't really have specific instructions as to what he was supposed to do with them.

25:30And eventually he had this idea. He said, what if I turned this into a school? And so he taught them that, you know, being white was better to not speak their language and he cut their hair. And eventually he said, wow, I have effectively defeated barbarism here. This is a great model that we could use elsewhere. And then he founded what became the first residential school in the United States, the first of these boarding schools, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where he said, I can do the exact same thing. I can take savages, I can take people's savage children, kidnap them, and I can teach them what it means to be white.