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Please share your thoughts about the HBO Documentary Films production LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER.
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4/12/05
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(70 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 28, 2007 2:26 PM
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Hi HBO fans!
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Here is our latest effort.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE6WhWx4NCg
--
"Some things I know & some things I don't"
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Posts:
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10/18/07
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(69 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 27, 2007 10:42 PM
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blu, I think you have it right -- high school is too late to intervene. Formative years are key -- starting with stimulating the infant and then reading daily to toddlers while keeping up lively conversation with them in order to develope verbal skills to the fullest. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to do this (or that they should be doing it), so this is where parenting classes come in. I remember that before my children were even born (about 9 years), I actually attended an information session on Montessori. When my two reached three years of age, they went into Montessori programs. Interestingly enough, Maria Montessori had her best results with impoverished Italian children; consequently people took notice. While in Montessori, my children began Suzuki violin by kindergarden. Now this is a dream approach, but funding and encouragement in our society can make this process available to others. The educational bureaucracy that you cite as stiffling has to change its approach. The very disturbing fact as seen in the documentary is that thirteen year olds who have children who have children are going to have tougher times educating themselves, let alone their little ones. There has to be some kind of public help to head off early pregnancies. I think the availability of contraceptives to middle schoolers makes sense, but that it would have to be paired along with education that encourages abstinence (to head off STDs and emotional commitments that people aged 13 to 19 are way too young to make). I happen to have a family member who became impregnated at age 15 and went on to raise daughters who both graduated from good junior colleges. Of course, this woman had support and help from a second husband (after the first died by the time she was 16). Glad you are with me on the vo-tech matter. I know that in Germany and Italy vocational schools also teach history and literature to students. There's no reason why young people who enter fields like food service can't find their way into good reading with help from teachers. And nothing beats good history.
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Posts:
6
Registered:
10/13/07
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(68 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 26, 2007 12:09 AM
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7LOVE4,
While I will agree that black kids are sabotaging themselves in many cases, I believe there are a multitude of factors that have created this unfortunate status of second class citizenship in the classroom, and I still keep getting back to the what do we do question. So we just resign our children to underperforming and relying on assistance to right a wrong and help them compete at the top colleges? That is not a future I am willing to accept.
It?s been proven that the formative years are critical to the ability to develop the curiosity and thirst for knowledge that is required to excel in top schools. Ironically, our schools are sabotaging that curiosity with an approach to education that focuses on discipline and rewarding of status rather than rewarding of curiosity and creativity. And this is not solely a color problem, this is an American educational system problem.
High school frankly is kind of late to be intervening, so let's take the topic back to nurturing the learning environment in grade school and in the home. I believe this is where we will make the difference if we can stop throwing up our hands in the belief that we can do nothing.
Fan Fandorin, your observation about vocational/technical schools is right on point. What a wasted resource.
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Posts:
1
Registered:
10/23/07
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(67 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 23, 2007 12:40 PM
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I watched this documentary last night and i have to say that it didnt surprise me in any way shape or form to see what i see on a daily basis. Regardless of what you might think or say, the documentary shows what is in fact a problem. For the most part, the black kids are lazy and dont put in the work ethic to graduate. They just blame the white folk. And those who live their lives trying to be politicly correct only make this problem worse.
The only color that brings them down is themselves. This documentary should be shown everywhere because its so accurate in every way. It made me laugh. Its like, there are black people who do work hard and strife for a better future, however they are overshadowed by the majority who would rather piss and moan and have a defeatist attitude. When that girl said that white people have everything handed to them, i wanted to smack her into next week. who does she think that she is? That ignorance right there shows how far the community has to come. I was so excited to see that there are black people who feel the same way. The majoridy needs to stop the blame game and start facing up and correcting their problems.
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Posts:
4
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10/18/07
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(66 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 19, 2007 5:11 PM
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Hi, blu987,
I think your approach was fantastic -- your brought in materials tailored to the group and engaged them in discussion. One thing about the classroom scene involving _Romeo and Juliet_ and the discussioon seeking to explore the use of "irony": employing a movie example first would be one way for a teacher to engage students in analysis of dramatic terms, and this could be related back to the theatrical drama being studied. When students start talking about movies they watch, they do so with enthusiasm and insight into why a particular flick works or doesn't. Going at it from this direction is not "dumbing down" the material, considering that dramatic writing is basically the same for both genres, except that films are not as confined as to time and place and tend to derive from visual writing, rather than emphasis on dialogue. No doubt there are more creative ways to engage students while enabling them to act appropriately in team settings.
I would, though, think that a return to required memorization would be a good idea to strengthen the mind and implant verbal skills. Memorization of simple poems, Latin vocabulary, and lines of Shakespeare do a mind good. We're always exercising our bodies, but brain cells need some activity, too. Again, approaches to what is asked of students are affected by contemporary teaching "philosophy" which has strayed too far from what works well or tends to be so rigidly in tune with non-workable new notions that content is never conveyed.
In terms of students who do not go on to pursue strictly academic studies after high school, what is wrong with the solution of about three decades ago: the traditional vo-tech school? These wonderful institutions were destroyed when they could have been enhanced.
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Posts:
6
Registered:
10/13/07
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(65 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 19, 2007 11:49 AM
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And let me just say I don't place all of the blame just on teachers. I realize so many teachers are doing so much with so few resources today and it just gets more and more acute in poorer areas. There's no excuse for the way we undermine our teachers in this manner. But I put it back into the context of Central High School-- sometimes we need to get a little creative in our approach when we are resource-challenged. We need to open up the door for new solutions when the ones we are using aren't working. I believe one of the black teachers made this comment to her students who were failing to improve their grades--if what you're doing isn't working you need to try another strategy. Indeed we do.
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Posts:
6
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10/13/07
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(64 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 19, 2007 10:25 AM
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Fan Fandorin,
No, I definitely agree. The onus has to be on some level on the students themselves to care about their futures. I don?t deny that is a significant part of the equation?students have to find some motivation within. And I realize that this particular teacher may have been at the end of her rope with this particular class. But as you state, so little seems to be getting done in this class that the teacher needs to reevaluate how she is managing the class. It?s a waste of her time, and it?s a waste of the students? time.
Let?s look at this way?if these are kids who are never going to love reading, the least we can do is spend their time teaching them something they will use, like developing good relations with classmates (in the similar way that they will need to be able to develop good relations with co-workers and bosses someday) and managing people in a resistant environment (her leadership is not teaching them much about how to incentivize and motivate people). Again, stop treating them as if their futures consist of nothing more than drug dealing and welfare payments.
I admit I?m not an expert on education, and I?m not a teacher. But I have experience with ?troubled? kids in an educational context that helped me to understand and form opinions about getting through to them. As a college student, I worked with a youth program that took kids who?d dropped out of high school and provided them with free instruction to get their GEDs, and in return, the kids built low-income housing for modest weekly wage. I was asked to teach a couple of seminars in the classes, one was during the unit on history, to give some expertise on African American history to the students, who were a mix of Latino and African American students.
I could have gone in an droned on about everything from the Middle Passage to Marcus Garvey to Martin Luther King, but I knew first and foremost, I needed them to both get excited about it and also understand it in a context that was relevant to their lives. I twisted things around a bit?I showed clips from popular movies, I asked questions that allowed the students to look at things from perspectives different from their own and from mainstream society. I asked them?what does this mean to you??and took it from there.
I won?t pretend that I got through to every student and I won?t pretend I armed them with knowledge that changed their paths in life, but I?d like to think I helped them to think critically, think about things from different perspectives, and relate historical events to present-day issues. Again, I?m not an expert on education, but I learned that people process information differently and that sometimes you have to step outside of a traditional education model to reach some students. And I believe that is the job of a teacher?to at least attempt to reach all of their students, no matter how hopeless they maybe. And if some are so hopeless that they are dragging the rest of the class down, you deal with them, not treat the whole class as if they were equally hopeless.
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Posts:
4
Registered:
10/18/07
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(63 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 18, 2007 11:53 PM
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Hi, blue987. I agree that things seemed disorganized in the remedial English class. The teacher spent so much time admonishing each child for particular reasons so that little got done in terms of subject matter. Maybe she should start by placing pencils in a cache-pot in the center of each table along with paper. Yes, it is important to have an expectation that students come prepared, both materially and mentally, to learn. But starting off, initially, with materials might be a solution for the first month. Then incentives could be introduced for those who do come prepared.
However, there is a part of me that finds lack of preparation unacceptable. This harkens back to the manner in which I was raised by my parents and the schools in which I was enrolled. I have no doubt the same expectation was made of you. Anyone not sitting up straight, having appropriate materials, or any attitude short of attention was liable for trouble at school and at home. Until the expectation is made the same for everyone, those not meeting expectations will be short-changed.
The woman addressing the class at the end of the documentary, Minnie Jean Brown, certainly gave an excellent example for all educators by refusing to speak down to the students in the room. She spoke to them on her level (sounding like a professor of social work or public policy, and even employing the word "ideology" -- which I suspect the students could understand in context). But in addition to respecting her audience's intelligence, she demanded respectful attentive behavior, even asking the boy with his head down on the desk if he were sick and saying to listen to her when she was talking. Somehow I think that particular incident could be considered more shameful than the self-imposed segregation of people sitting only with their friends which turned out to be by race. (One solution in this school might be for teachers to assign seating in the classroom so that people are made to mix and mingle, at least for the class period (good preparation for the "real" world)). I do not think any of the Arkansas Nine arrived in the midst of that hostile crowd with anything less than preparation and willingness to learn. Anyone not living up to their model of proper student demeanor brings shame upon themselves.
Lastly, I would like to make a comment with regard to another poster who criticized the "Republican golf teacher". In this case, "Republican" was used in a pejorative fashion and the attack was an "ad hominem" one (now here's a good excuse for exposing remedial students to introductory Latin -- and no one can convince me that any of those students is not capable of this subject that requires nothing more than common sense). That poster will probably have to tell me that my belief that Obama is the most intelligent candidate of either party is delusional because I am a Republican (question to everyone: if you were to hire a CEO to run your company, who would you want in the board room? I would have more faith in Obama than any of the others, and this, of course, would be a matter of economic self-preservation, a matter dear to Republicans.  )
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Registered:
10/13/07
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(62 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 18, 2007 3:35 PM
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Fan Fandorin,
you are so right. notice how poorly run the remedial reading class was? how can you expect to get a group of kids excited about reading and learning when you herd them like cattle and shout orders at them like they were misbehaving house pets? goes back to the stigma issue. this teacher doesn't see that these kids have any need or interest or even right to get excited about reading and learning. and i don't see this limited to black students either--it can be found in many high schools that apply tracking with a lopsided, uninformed hand. until we stop making non-college prep education nothing more than a glorified babysitting service in this country, nothing is going to change.
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Posts:
4
Registered:
10/18/07
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(61 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 18, 2007 1:03 AM
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I noted one of the teachers (or the principal) saying that a number of students enter this high school at a 4th grade reading level. What percentage would this be? One thing strikes me: people have to stop making others feel bad for being born one race or the other, or being born rich or poor, priveleged or deprived. The fact is, also, that, as another poster has noted, trouble in adolescence is not limited to one particular race, class, or social group. In the matter of holding up one economic group and labelling it as snobbish (on one hand) or lazy (on the other hand), this has to stop, and the first place to stop it is in classroom discussions where teachers allow students to "vent" these opinions without challenge. I fail to understand how these kinds of discussions are productive, other than creating resentment and a hostile learning environment. The best kind of learning is done through CONTENT -- and this involves reading material, absorbing needed knowledge, acquiring a level of expertise in the subject matter, and learning how to think critically (the last is quite a different matter from all kinds of "opining" to one's peers who probably are equally ignorant until the content is learned and needed tools can be applied). Sorry to say this, but one of the problems has been teacher education where "methodology" and "ideology" (the current one stressing victimology and psycho-babble) have replaced content. Unfortunately, for many, the content-rich classes are the advanced, honors, and AP, which brings up the matter of how students qualify for these classes (common sense tells us that those with a lower than ninth grade reading level and minimal motivation are poor candidates, not to mention those whose home life is not conducive to intense applied study -- again these are not factors limited to one particular race or socio-economic group). The young woman living in the house with broken plumbing has managed to surmount tremondous obstacles because of her motivation and application. Is there an Urban League or some kind of group in Little Rock that can help this family? Surely educated and concerned citizens there might be willing to take on landlords who leave their renters without proper plumbing or other amenities. Can't the city or state government step in and demand the landlords be accountable?
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Posts:
1
Registered:
10/17/07
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(60 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 17, 2007 5:30 AM
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I have lived in Little Rock for 40 years. I never knew the impact that the Central High integration had on the world. What I have realized is the shame that many white Arkansans feel about it. It is downplayed by many of them. Some say that it was not that bad, obviously they did not consider what Elizebeth Pickford went through significant. In all of that crowd of white people not one raised a hand to help her. I have seen a dog treated better. That is something to be ashamed of and Elizebeth deserves a apology from every white person that was out there and you know who are because you are still living in Little Rock and holding prominent positions in Little Rock.
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Posts:
1
Registered:
10/16/07
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(59 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 16, 2007 12:18 AM
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This documentary shocked me into reality. I live on the East Coast and throughout history the area I live in has been a forfront for equal oppurtunity. More and more everyday I am seeing how difficult it is for other blacks throughout the country. I am so hurt at the mental state of the impoverished communities that are not being properly educated. How can these individuals be expected to learn and grow when the educators themselves are "so" ignorant to world around them and can only teach ignorance. This is unreal to me but the individuals that did the documentary obviously did it biasly, but definately the facts speak for themselves. I am afraid for the future of my race in America!!!!!
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Posts:
10
Registered:
9/27/07
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(58 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 15, 2007 7:25 PM
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I give up. I've delineated the inaccuracies of this documentary numerous times on this board already. Yet, I check back a couple of weeks later, and the list of people who see what they want to see just keep getting longer.
The documentary is a distortion of reality in Little Rock. You can't compare the wealthiest students in the city with the poorest and expect to get anywhere near the truth. Th film is insulting to the Black community. It's insulting to the city, in general. The filmmakers may have attended Central, but their perception of the school and their city is warped.
They couldn't show you ordinary middle class folks, white or Black, because their world consists of Little Rock's white elite...and when that segment of the population looks at the unwashed masses all they see is a bunch of poor people.
For goodness sake, they filmed a boarded up neighborhood that has been bought by the city for airport expansion...and had the nerve to pass it off as the "Black" neighborhood!
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Edited by aardvarmario at 10/15/2007 4:26 PM
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Posts:
6
Registered:
10/13/07
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(57 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 13, 2007 10:30 AM
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As far as Ms. Ellender?s pleas to reconsider her dedication to her black students?
Ms. Ellender, one way the failing student who wants to become a boxer can be helped immensely is for some adult to tell him he can?t box until he gets his grades up. I would hope that?s why his parent has stopped supporting him, but I won?t assume that to be the case. But you and especially his coach would help a lot if you would do this. You don?t seem to see the mixed message you send.
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Posts:
6
Registered:
10/13/07
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(56 of 70)
Re: LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL: 50 YEARS LATER
Oct 13, 2007 10:28 AM
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This documentary was a little too biased and too skewed by the Central High School administration for my taste. Sorry, I saw right through it and many others did too.
What is the take home message here? Black kids are lazy, white kids are not. White teachers try to help, but black students and parents can?t be reached. The greatest legacy of school integration is that black students entered a world for which they weren?t up to par to perform alongside white students, and as a result, they?ll never catch up.
How convenient this message is for the Central High School administration and incompetent white teachers, who are absolved of their own responsibility for how things turned out in Little Rock, 50 years later.
My experience as an African American woman brings me to view this documentary in a different perspective. I am the daughter of professional parents who attended schools that were 98% white my entire life. So I know, I lived, the unpleasant reality that black children?even those from well off families?statistically underperform in school across the board. That?s been documented across the country, and it?s nothing new.
But many of us black students excelled in that school. We graduated in the upper echelons of our class academically, we held leadership positions among the student body, and we were virtually all college-bound, many to Ivy League schools. What made the difference for us? No doubt, our parents had the tools they needed to ensure our success, and we worked hard for it, even when it put us at odds with black peers who rejected the importance of education.
But at the same time, the teachers didn?t attempt to segregate us because they wanted their jobs to be easier by teaching only the smart white kids, as they do at Central, and the school administration was kept in check by the community and by black parents so that kids were not tracked by race, as they are at Central. In other words, when all things are really equal, including students ability to believe in themselves and excel without the stigma of being an ?underachieving black student,? (or the stigma of ?trying to be white? among their peers because they do well in school), good things can happen.
But this documentary?s one-sided-ness presents a different picture, one I have a hard time swallowing. Are there really so few black teachers at Little Rock that only one wanted to be filmed? Are there really so few white teachers at Little Rock who aren?t focused on defending federal government failures and their own failures in education who wanted to talk on camera? Do you mean to tell me that there are no problem white kids in the school?they all play golf and lament their black peers as drug selling sociopaths? There are no more than one or two black kids excelling? Give me a break! I don?t buy it!
I had a problem with the way the documentary portrayed the white kids as angels and the black kids as wanting to emulate drug dealers and thugs. These are wealthy white kids, yes? Perhaps my high school in suburban Boston was the exception, but trust me, the white kids were no angels. Drugs (using and selling), alcohol, pregnancy, and crime were just as much as a problem among the white kids at my school?kids whose parents were doctors, lawyers, etc. My point? Let?s stop pretending that black kids are the only ones who fall prey to the sins of adolescence.
If we want to really deal with black underachievement, we need to move beyond the standard mantra of ?black kids are lazy, black parents don?t care? and figure out what we need to do RIGHT NOW. There is more than enough blame to go around, but it?s going to take parents, administrators, students, teachers, and communities working together. And it?s going to take more than scratching the surface with a biased documentary, and really getting to the heart of what in the schools, communities, families and the culture that keeps black kids at the back of the class.
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