What is usually called " the culture" in the context here is really a systemic confluence of problems that are unmanageable and overwhelming for most classroom teachers and students alike. Given the option not to work or to work less than their best, most kids will take advantage of disorder to do exactly that, with the exception of the intrinsically-driven.

It is not necessary to fix the world to educate poor, at-risk kids ( I won't say " Black" because these problems exist everywhere, if to a lesser degree than in the inner city) but it is necessary for the school to systematically disaggregate the problems until classrooms are physically safe and psychologically secure environments under the control of adults with a school-wide culture that views educational acheivment as a positive value. This requires more money but less than most people believe provided it is spent strategically on needs, rather than scattershot on favored personalities. Mostly it requires time, consistency of consequences and promotion of adult-child connections and a common understanding of goals. Leadership and vision are indispensible, as is political will to see these things through over the opposition of vested interests, including those of parents whose children are the catalysts for chaos or staff members who have " retired" on the job.

Hard to do. Not impossible.

All of which means it's beyond the ability of "personal responsibility" to address. An individual can overcome the problem, but the problem remains.

This is all serious collective territory, ZP. And actually a topic I'd rather pursue...Oliver was writing bad shit about Black folks like that's his mission.

There's a problem with the black American culture in America, and I'm going to continue to talk about them,

A Freudian slip that speaks worlds. 

"There's a problem with the black American culture in America, and I'm going to continue to talk about them, no matter how much people want to close their ears and cover their eyes."

One of the problems may be that those who are offering critiques and prescriptions from Wills' side of the fence fail to appreciate the fact that within the context and dynamics of American popular culture and the entertainment business people with Oprah's wealth are not seen, and certainly not by children, as providers of intangible goods and services like an education but as suppliers of gifts and luxury items. Oprah makes the news and precipitates a minor international event because she was not allowed to enter a luxury goods store in Paris after closing hours to purchase a purse for Diana Ross as a gift because the two of them were having lunch the next day. Or, Oprah gives away a fleet of cars to a group of women who are struggling to stay off welfare and become independent. And so on and so on.

It is absurd for anyone to suppose that these gestures on the part of Oprah have escaped the notice of these children and their parents because our culture is simply saturated 24/7 with so-called news of this sort. Tom Cruise, for example, reportedly spent more than two million dollars on his and Katie Holmes' wedding. If Cruise were to visit a school in a poor black neighborhood why would any thinking adult suppose that the children would ask Cruise to pay their way through Harvard. They would want to know what the money he spent on his wedding bought and could they get some of it too.

"They are the kind of people who are embarrassed by money; a dead middle-class giveaway. Poor people are not embarrassed by money and are contemptuous of those who are."

                                                                    Rosellen Brown
 

The "them" is in reference to the problems.

Read your own quote. You talk about "a" problem, "the" problem. Even on your own site you haven't raised more than one.

Now, when are you going to clean up your strawman, where you accused me of saying there is no problem because "some" Back people succeed? It sounds more like your own thought patterns...that some Black people get past racism so racism can be ignored.

This is all serious collective territory, ZP. And actually a topic I'd rather pursue"

The personal and the collective responsibility are interdependent in education.If I designed a public education system from scratch for kids who will be retiring in 2076, it probably wouldn't  look like what we have now. But that's another issue.

You know my libertarian leanings but I think it is a simple empirical fact that in nearly every city school system you have examples of schools that are good or  outstanding despite being in "bad" neighborhoods. There's a reason for it - attention to first principles in doing things the right way the first time, most every time. Prioritizing engagement in learning. And swiftly remediating problems before they gain any momentum.

prioritizing engagement in learning.

how is this done?  how many resources are devoted to this issue?

Hi kspence,

Students really only can learn something ( calculus, karate, sonnets, hitting a curveball, whatever) in the sense of retention if their attention has been secured in the first place when new ideas are being introduced, if they have understood and (frequently) if they have been given sufficient opportunity to practice and experience success.

It boils down to minimizing distractions in the environment, skillful presentation and allowance of time.

Some of these are variables under the control of the instructor. some are shared collectively by the students with the teacher and others are in the hands of the administration alone.

Unfortunately, the moments that should be prioritized -instruction in core subjects - are generally regarded as "routine" and trivial activities are regarded as " exceptional" because they have bearing on the work and convenience of the administration, which generally has most of the decision-making power in a school building. So interruptions are extreme in a way that probably would not be tolerated in most other workplaces. Or would not matter because the 8-hour work day isn't sliced into 10-12 short units of time that abruptly begin and stop with the ringing of a bell.

Block scheduling (80+ minute periods) helps a great deal because it increases the ratio of instructional time vs. the normal period by period interruptions, which is why schools that adopt that schedule generally see at least marginal improvement in academic acheivment. More time on task, normal interruptions matter less, time for feedback to be meaningful, time for real adult-child interaction.

However block schedules are not suitable for younger children. Too long for their attention spans, need to move around etc.

It exists, and it's debilitating, but the answer isn't to throw up hands and accept a lower station because of it.

Who has ever suggested that?

No one here...NO ONE...just goes for the rhetorical statement. You can't just throw something out there and expect us to argue for a position you'd like to argue against.

We burn strawmen up in here.

You know my libertarian leanings

You and Abiola Lapite are the major reasons I haven't given up on libertarians (but note the state of the initial there...)

On the topic, though, I recently saw a rerun of Tony Brown's Journal that I wish I had recorded. It was an interview with the principal of an inner city school in Maryland. It wasn't a magnet school, it was just a school where the principal was given the freedom to hire who he wished (the hire then fell under normal union rules) and set the schedules etc. He picked folks with a sense of mission (including his mother, made sure HE would be on point as well...). The effect was transformational.

Now whether you mean the PEOPLE who are somehow responsible for the culture, or the cultural behaviors THEMSELVES doesn't much matter to me--though it may matter to Earl.

It makes no difference to me until it's clear the speaker intends a difference between the two. Again, "the culture" generally means "the naygurs." You can tell because folks are saying "culture" in the exact same place in the sentence that they used to say "people."

"It wasn't a magnet school, it was just a school where the principal was given the freedom to hire who he wished (the hire then fell under normal union rules) and set the schedules etc. He picked folks with a sense of mission (including his mother, made sure HE would be on point as well...). The effect was transformational"

I'm sure it was. Seemingly a simple thing but the opportunity to hire a staff from scratch is an opportunity to build an institutional culture from square one. It's pretty rare for a principal to be able to do that and all too often that prize goes to some fool based on seniority rather than ability.

But in the hands of somebody who understands how children actually learn and cares more about that than bureaucratic administrivia, the results can be wonderful.

It's a sad day when a black conservative makes more sense on the Oprah "uniforms vs ipods" quote than a purported black liberal. 

 It wasn't a magnet school, it was just a school where the principal was given the freedom to hire who he wished (the hire then fell under normal union rules) and set the schedules etc. He picked folks with a sense of mission (including his mother, made sure HE would be on point as well...). The effect was transformational.

 I'm amazed he was allowed to do this, especially in these days of the NCLB mess (if it wasn't done before that). I wonder how the school and the students are doing now, and if it's been replicated at all, if it was a  continued success. We seem to lose a lot of kids in the current school system, even if they do actually graduate out of the system.  

Aha... give it a few years then, and hopefully it'll bear fruit. If it's not destroyed first.

I see various innovative schools and their successful methods highlighted from time to time - mostly in the efforts to help at risk children, but then never from them again. Which is, no doubt, more due to the lack of media followup than to the schools not doing well, but still.

 Tony Brown has some good stuff on there sometimes, when I remember to catch the show.