Too Cool For School
By: Detroit Democratic Socialists Of America
Tags: Socialism, Detroit Public Schools, Dsa, Detroit, Education

by Ken Jackson

This article is one-half of a two-part series on the American education system.

Art by the author

Almost every citizen of the United States remembers, as a child, putting their right hand over their heart, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in front of a flag, led by someone who had braved the twists and terms of a capitalist system to become a teacher.

This teacher, for some, was a willing participant in our indoctrination. We were taught to be obedient, pay attention in class, do our work and accept whatever information the teacher provided us as fact. Some of us were better than others at navigating our way through the school system, whether it was public, private or both.

All of this happened while teachers campaigned for higher wages, better working conditions, better learning conditions, more supplies and a more accessible education for the students they taught. However, it should be noted that there were some teachers who only wanted certain students to succeed and had no problem looking the other way while their least favorite students went down a path that would lead them to even further disenfranchisement.

As a child in a single-parent household, school for me started out with daycare at a private school on Warren and St. Antoine, known as Plymouth. Plymouth was run by Nicholas Hood, who either was or would later become a city councilman in Detroit. Every morning, we would sit down for the breakfast our parent’s hard-earned money provided for us. You don’t think about these things as a kid, who gets to eat breakfast before school or who doesn’t. You either eat, or turn your nose up at it until someone takes your food and throws it away.

After breakfast came class. If you were of age, at least 4 years old, you went up to be with the Care Bears. For me, this took a while, since my birthday was in the fall, about a month after school started. Nothing could keep me out of the Care Bears classroom, where all of my friends were. Fortunately, I was smart enough to pull my own weight and well liked enough to be allowed to sit in the classroom, despite being too young to officially be in pre-school. Through the roller coaster that is childhood, I managed to stay in private school, eventually growing out of Plymouth and spending 2nd grade at Peace Lutheran.

The thing about Plymouth was that none of my teachers were European-American males. African-American history was worked into our curriculum to teach the mostly African-American students about their cultural heritage. The only European-American teacher we had was Ms. Driscol, who did an amazing job.

This reality changed for me once I arrived at Peace Lutheran and had a European-American male as my 2nd grade teacher. At 6, going on 7 years old, I was very defiant. I always thought of ways to get out of class and get sent home, always fighting or throwing some sort of tantrum in latchkey. I didn’t notice all the resources we had at our disposal. Being a private school, Peace Lutheran was more than well equipped to provide its mostly African-American students with a quality education, including quality learning conditions. Somehow, I rejected my privilege often enough to get kicked out of private school.

Much like Lucifer who defied YHWH, as a 3rd grade student at Duffield Elementary I was cast down from upper-class learning institutions and into the public school system. For the first time in my life, I would walk into a bathroom with no doors on the stalls and most of the time no toilet paper to wipe myself with. The textbooks were raggedy, making a new one a high commodity amongst the students.

But let’s back-track a little so we can explore the situation I eventually found myself in. By the time my family arrived in Detroit, between 1966 and 1971, “white flight” from the city had already begun. Those who left Detroit took with them the tax dollars the schools, and the city itself, desperately needed. White flight also decreased state funding for Detroit schools, which are given a fixed dollar amount per student enrolled, costing the district thousands of dollars. This trend would continue well into the years that I would inherit the legacy of a Detroit Public Schools student.

Since 1950, 1.5 Million People Have Left Detroit.

This resulted in an 84% decrease in Detroit Public Schools student enrollment.

A total of 213 Detroit Public Schools have closed. Graphs and statistics provided by “A Report by Loveland Technologies” by John Grover and Yvette van der Velde

Detroit Public Schools teachers were among the lowest paid in the state, as the schools struggled with maintaining funding just to operate with the ebb and flow of population and business. This led to an endless series of walkouts, starting in 1967 and again in 1973, 1979, 1982, 1987 and 1992 (during my last year of private school). These walkouts and strikes tended to last up to a week. The famous ’92 strike would last for four weeks as educators defied the judge’s orders to return.

By the time I entered public school in fall 1994, the state of Michigan would authorize the creation of “Public School Academies,” aka charter schools. As I sat on the toilet of a doorless stall, my school was being forced to compete for funding against these privately run schools.

Since 1995 an average of seven of these charter schools have opened every year. The year I finished 9th grade, at Cass Technical High School, there were over 19,000 students enrolled in the charter schools. Meanwhile, the plumbing system at Cass Tech could not provide the student body with safe drinking water. As each public school closed, these charter schools would sweep in with their extensive budgets and genius marketing, eventually growing their ranks to over 51,000 by 2013, eclipsing the number of Detroit Public Schools students, which had fallen below 50,000.

But back to my unholy marriage with DPS… the passing of the “Schools of Choice” Act (1996) allowed Detroit parents to send their students to suburban public and charter schools. However, I did the reverse. Although my mother and I would relocate to Grosse Pointe, giving me access to that highly prized suburban education, I would choose to remain in Detroit Public Schools, as a student at Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School.

Any student knows that there are few things that can get you excited about going to school. The girls, the boys, the kids with the hook-up, just getting away from your parent(s)… not much, but for a teenager, that’s enough. In high school, for me it was the teachers. I like to think I was radicalized at an early age, around 10, but I didn’t really grasp the concept until my junior year in Ms. Presnell’s class, when she introduced us to “Transcendentalism” via Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau… or maybe it was in Ms. Higginbottom’s Earth Science class, where we learned exactly where we fit in our ecosystem and what goes on underneath our feet, or it could have been B-Dub’s Journalism class, which lacked the funding for an official school paper or the tech required to print one… then again, maybe it was Ms. Poku who assured me that racism was real…

With our limited resources, the best of Detroit Public Schools teachers gave us an education. We found ways to overcome. The average student is oblivious to what the teacher has to go through to bring them a lesson every day, grade their work, or run their extracurricular programs. Detroit Public Schools students are not told what to believe in. What we were taught were critical thinking skills. This is how you get a population that is competent enough to put forth legislation that will create a sustainable system, accessible to all.