The soft bigotry of low expectations
“I used to work in the public school system. The pay was higher, but there were so many problem children. It made teaching impossible.”
In what may not be shocking news, the public school system she referred to was majority Black. As I continued my tour of the private school she was now employed at, it was almost exclusively white. No “problem children” here.
I wish I could say that experience was an outlier. However, in the last several years visiting hundreds of schools around the world, I’ve heard a lot of similar descriptions about the challenges of working with poorer, predominantly minority students. It’s been 20 years since George W Bush talked about fighting “the soft bigotry of low expectations” while launching No Child Left Behind, but that bigotry is still well and alive today.
I was recently on a Zoom call with ~15 people, where all had college degrees and all but two lived in very blue cities. As people lamented the shelter-in-place orders and the inadequate federal response, one of the quieter voices spoke up. It was one of the two people who didn’t live in a blue city. He cautiously asked, “Does anyone think maybe we’re going too far? I get New York City and big cities, but in other places? How do people think about the balance between personal freedom and knowing what’s best? Does anyone feel like with good information people can make smart decisions?”
The backlash was immediate.
“You have no idea the number of people I see walking around without masks. I’m ready to punch them in the face!”
“We don’t even have basic testing and contact tracing!”
“You think Trump voters can make good decisions?”
I used to work with private schools seeking to serve low-income students. One business was the SPARK schools, an awesome set of schools in South Africa. From the day Stacey Brewer and Ryan Harrison created SPARK, they refused to accept anything less than high expectations. They started elementary schools with the explicit goal of preparing students to attend university.
They made sure expectations were clear with parents, from their core values, to calling the students Scholars, to their morning assembly. One of their chants at their daily morning assembly is “I’m a SPARK scholar, and I’m going to university!” This culture has been one of the key factors in SPARK’s amazing trajectory to date. SPARK is not alone or unique in confronting this bias. Some of the most successful charter schools in the U.S., from Success Academy to KIPP, have high expectations as a cornerstone to their programs.
If we are committed to setting high expectations for students and providing them the resources and tools to reach them, we know students of all colors and backgrounds can achieve.
Thanks to the governor’s order, North Carolina’s Cary Tennis Park is closed. I tried calling for any information on when it would be opening, but no one picked up. I decided to walk over on Saturday just to see how far I live from it walking.
Much to my surprise, upon showing up, the tennis park was packed. 25 outdoor courts and only 2 open at 830 am! What the heck was going on? Were these all people who were sneaking onto the court? No, there were lessons ongoing, tennis coaches getting baskets of balls from the facility, leagues happening. It was like the tennis park was fully operational?!?!
I asked one of the coaches if the tennis park was open.
“Oh yeah. Can’t you tell?”
“How do you book courts?”
“It’s first-come, first-serve now. We’ve closed down the office and the indoor courts.”
“Any other precautions that you need to take if you play?”
“Well, for any lessons, instead of the kids picking up balls, the coaches are doing that…lucky kids. And if we’re doing any serving, we have the kids bring their own balls. So they aren’t touching anything that others touch. We ask people to mask up when they are off the court and to keep their distance. There’s plenty of space. We’re being extra cautious and following the recommended guidelines.”
On its website, the facility looks closed and in compliance with the governor’s orders. In practice, it is nearly fully operational. The facility has not rejected the governor’s advice in an idiotic fashion. Cary Tennis Park has adapted, incorporated the science, and provided a program that reasonably addresses the risks related to the activity.
If we are committed to setting high expectations for people and providing them the resources and tools to reach them, we know people of all colors and backgrounds can make good decisions.
The analogy may not be perfect, but it sure is thought-provoking. We live in an age where all information is politicized and where there seems to be only one right answer (even if people disagree on the answer itself).
It’s clear that the US response to COVID-19 has been disastrous thus far. We’ve seen the federal government provide inadequate leadership and support, we’ve seen states reopen too soon, and we’ve seen people seemingly ignoring the science and the risks. We’ve all seen the pictures of packed beaches. Heard the inane quotes. It’s easy to draw the conclusion that more government prescription is necessary. That people can’t be left to make these decisions on their own. The soft bigotry of low expectations.
What if, instead, we put the blame on our institutions? What if we asked more of our scientific community and the media so that people could regain trust in the scientific consensus? What if we asked more of our government, not in regulations but in resources to individuals so that they can make decisions based on the science, not the economics? I’m not saying this is easy. It may well be harder. The easiest choice is not always the right one. In this case, let’s not forget what the easy choice says about us. The soft bigotry of low expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.