BENEATH THE SKYLINE

More Than One Kind of Expert

Deborah Good

I work in the world of urban public education—not as a teacher nor as a principal but as a researcher, advocate, and occasional activist. I get into a variety of schools, interview folks, and analyze data. I discuss, read, write, present, and generally try to keep up with the "discourse." This has recently caused two somewhat incompatible thoughts to chase one another around my head.

Thought number one: Receiving a formal education is hugely important to one’s chances at success and, in some cases, survival as an adult. We should therefore make every possible effort to increase high school graduation and college-going rates nationwide. Dropout prevention programs and reform of our failing educational systems must be a priority, particularly in our most beaten down, disadvantaged communities.

And thought number two: The prestige and merit consistently doled out for a formal education over other forms of expertise is, as my dad would say, a big pile of manure.

Let me explain.

Statistically, the benefits of a formal education are inarguable. Research has shown that students who do not graduate from high school are more likely than others to face joblessness, single motherhood, and incarceration. According to a recent U.S. Census report, the income differences are also significant. Those with (just) a high school diploma or equivalent make, on average, 35 percent more than those without. Add an Associate degree, a Bachelor’s degree, etcetera, etcetera, and the average income climbs with each additional piece of paper. 

Moreover, the disparity between the paychecks of society’s "educated" and "uneducated" has grown increasingly large in the past twenty years. (The difference has more than doubled since 1980.)

In Philadelphia, where I live, the mayor often raises alarm over the fact that only about 60 percent of public high school students graduate within six years of entering as freshmen—a problem often referred to as the "dropout crisis." A group of young people I have been working with prefer to call it a "pushout crisis."

While the word dropout implies that the roots of the problem lie with students, pushout places responsibility on our schools and school districts, pointing to the ways that they have failed to meet our students’ needs. School systems push students out directly through punitive disciplinary policies and indirectly through their failure to provide adequate supports and a safe learning environment.

Carla (names changed), for example, warm, enthusiastic, and capable of discussing social inequities and the politics of Malcolm X, left school because she did not have adults standing up for her when she was regularly picked on by other kids.

And Brian, with his emotional resilience and sense of humor, says he has often felt stereotyped by school staff for how he looks and dresses. He has been in and out of schools and programs ever since he was young, often getting in trouble—and sometimes kicked out—for behavior issues.

Brian, Carla, and the other young people I have been working with are all Philadelphia school district "dropouts." Many have re-engaged in alternative schools and GED programs. They are also members of a youth organizing group in Philadelphia called Youth United for Change or YUC (www.youthunitedforchange.org). Together they form YUC’s Pushout Chapter.

With training and guidance from an adult organizer and two researchers—including myself—the Pushout Chapter has been conducting original research on the causes of Philadelphia’s pushout crisis. This is a participatory action research (look that up!) project. While none of them succeeded in the traditional high schools they attended and left, the young people in the chapter have brought a real-life expertise to our project that I, and my recently acquired Master’s degree, could not.

Our definition of expertise needs broadening.

I do not mean, of course, that we should no longer require a medical school education to become a doctor. I mean only that there is more than one way to be educated. My grandpa—Dad’s dad—was a Lancaster County dairy farmer with an eighth-grade education who understood that wisdom and expertise can come with living. My grandpa survived tough economic times, farmed long days, and raised seven boys—all of whom, unlike their father, later pursued formal degrees.

I am convinced that most of what got me through elementary, middle, and high school with good grades and honors was my willingness to sit quietly and follow the rules, my test-taking skills, and my desire to please the adults in my life, consistently reinforced by their affirmation when I did so.

Because of all the adult support in my life, because I did well on tests, and because I learned to do what teachers wanted of me, I was assumed to be bright, graduated with a strong GPA, and was offered a nice scholarship when I went on to college. I had climbed to the top of a "good student" hierarchy that had more to do with conformity than intelligence.

Unfortunately, the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 further narrows definitions of smarts and success. NCLB’s emphasis on greater accountability—for teachers, schools, and school districts—is a good thing. The over-reliance on test scores as a measure of student achievement, however, severely limits the way we think about teaching, learning, and intelligence. It has ultimately changed what happens in classrooms and not always for the best.

My adeptness at conforming to the structures and expectations of a traditional public school education allowed me to cultivate skills that have served me well in my job life as an adult: putting in hours on my work, maintaining an even temper, and making quick appraisals of what must be done to please those in authority.

It is worth asking, however, why it is these skills that are so often privileged by our educational systems over a plethora of other skills that working people and active citizens put to use every day. I’m thinking here of the ability to relate to people of all stripes, artistic creativity, physical strength and dexterity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and even the courage to disrupt societal norms in the name of greater justice. These competencies are not what state standardized tests are asking of our students.

I wish two things at once. I wish desperately for the kids whose lives seem dead-ended in some of Philly’s roughest neighborhoods to find a way out. And achieving a formal education is one of the surest ways out. But at the same time, I want to turn the world upside down. I want a world where we recognize that our eighth-grade-educated farmers and high school "pushouts" have intelligence and expertise unrecognized by formal degrees. I want a flattening of constructed hierarchies and a celebration of our diverse intelligences and skills.

Sometimes what I want is so simple, it is hard to even say: space enough for everyone to bring to the table their assorted bundles of gifts and quirks, share what they’ve got, and be esteemed highly for it.
—Deborah Good, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a senior research assistant at Research for Action (www.researchforaction.org) and author, with Nelson Good, of Long After I’m Gone: A Father-Daughter Memoir (DreamSeeker Books/Cascadia, 2009). She can be reached at deborahagood@gmail.com. Pushed Out: Youth Voices on the Droupout Crisis in Philadelphia, a report released by YUC earlier this year, can be found at youthunitedforchange.org.