I write to you as a member of a minority group, actually a double minority since I am also a woman. I think we need to change America’s mindset…and we need to change our nomenclature…we need to stop categorizing people as members of the minority race and the majority race…We need to stop asking people to check off little boxes identifying what color, race or creed they are and then using the answers to generalize and stereotype. Does the majority who design these demeaning demographic devices have a different set of expectations depending on the box I check? We have come a long way, but we need to go further and stop being so afraid of one another! We need to begin thinking about people as members of the human race. The word minority connotes powerlessness and disenfranchisement because minority means there are fewer in number to voice an opinion or exercise change.

Why is it necessary to continue to identify people as being a member of the powerful or the powerless?

Why must our educational research be driven by proving how poor and how uneducated minority groups are compared to the majority, yet we do nothing to bridge the achievement gap? Why do we lower our expectations for minority groups, and surmise that minorities can only relate to other minorities? Why do we assume that most minorities are poor while certain minorities are geniuses? Why can’t we raise the standards for those who are poor and learn from the habits of those geniuses?

Any human being who lives in poverty will not be able to achieve academically, or prosper in other aspects of life for that matter. And guess what, lately we have a lot of poor folks in America who aren’t minorities! Breaking the cycle of poverty requires tenacity, and ambition…a strong work ethic and passion. Talent and ability naturally complement this equation. Throughout our country’s history, many minorities have embodied these traits while others have not; some minorities flourish while others do not, so prosperity or poverty among minority groups in the U.S. requires a complex anthropological examination of so many factors and variables rather than resorting to generalizations and stereotypes that one particular minority group or all minorities share a common idiosyncrasy of being either geniuses or lazy, poor, uneducated seekers of salvation from the great white hope of the majority.

Unfortunately, in my experience and observations, so many members of the majority have this opinion of minorities. I am a minority although I was born in this country. My parents were immigrants, like the parents of so many others who now makeup the majority. I am a first generation American and proud of it. I am white yet the so-called majority does not recognize my shade of Caucasian. I speak and write English perfectly, in my opinion, yet the majority is adept at detecting minute deviations in my standard American English intonation, which the majority uses to categorize me as a minority. At times, I pass as a member of the majority, or at least I think I do, but sometimes the majority can’t quite pigeonhole me into one of their categories. I find it perturbs them when they can’t figure out what I am. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to conceal my true heritage, but sooner or later, I cannot suppress who I am, and I face the backlash of ignorance, and both the subtleties and the blatancy of racism and discrimination. The majority puts up this wall afraid to learn about my culture, my customs, my second language; they fail to realize I am an American like them, and they refuse to accept our similarities because they are blinded with the fear that we may be different, and something different may require them to change or alter their life. It won’t, but they don’t know that. Most people seek consistency and uniformity. Our American culture perpetuates this uniformity through intolerance…we’ve come a long way but racism in the hearts and minds of many who belong to the majority is alive and well.

Why must we be so closed minded in perpetuating this notion that minorities relate better to those who share their race, color or creed?

We are all human…unless we have personality differences preventing us from getting along, we should be able to relate to one another regardless of our race, color or creed because we share common human experiences: we all experience joy and pain. In the end we all want the same things: love and acceptance. I read a post on a blog regarding how students at a predominantly black school related better to a black principal. This is exactly the type of mentality we need to eradicate. It’s that mentality perpetuating the idea that we cannot possibly understand each other if we have different color skin or are of a different race or religion. There are many factors, which may prevent us from being able to relate, but it is a travesty when people fail to make a connection because one person’s skin color is black and another’s is white…or because someone is a Jew and another is a Muslim. Our schools fail to educate our children about tolerance for our differences; we fail to teach children that there are thriving cultures and languages outside of the United States. We encourage racism and denigrate multiculturalism in our schools by limiting the exposure our students receive to other cultures. So many of our own teachers are ignorant to the richness of the cultures of so many of our minorities.

Why do we have few minorities in education? I will give you three main reasons why. First of all, successful minorities seek better paying jobs. Teaching offers no monetary incentive that is why so many minorities pursue careers in medicine, business, technology, and law. Some minorities immigrate to the U.S. to pursue higher education and eventually stable employment with greater financial compensation and opportunities for growth. A teacher’s salary, and the climate of public education do not appeal to a minority seeking professional growth or opportunities to make money. Our educational system also conflicts with the tenets so many minorities believe about the value of an education and the status teachers deserve. The second reason why many minorities do not enter the profession or leave the profession involves racism and discrimination, something I experienced first hand as a teacher who happens to be a minority. Being the only minority in a school or even in a school district can be quite intimidating and dispiriting. I felt many of my colleagues were either afraid to get to know me, or apathetic about learning about another person’s culture. Not that I walked around pushing my culture on anyone, quite the opposite was true. No one was ever blatantly impolite, but there were subtle signs of a lack of acceptance. Few ever asked me where I was from, but it was an unspoken fact that I was not a native. I felt isolated from my peers no matter how hard I tried to gain their acceptance. My administrators were more blatant in their racism…they felt threatened by my expertise. I am not sure if this was racism or just plain insecurity on their part. But I wondered if my being a minority played any part in their aversion for me. There was another minority teacher at my school who in my observation of events, I felt had it much worse than me. She was a foreign exchange teacher from China, working in my district with the goal of teaching Chinese to our native English speaking population. She spoke broken English so had difficulty carrying on a conversation. I made an effort to speak with her and get to know her. We conversed as best we could on several occasions. On other occasions I witnessed the same unfriendly attitude toward her that many of my colleagues displayed toward me. I realized I was not alone. No one bothered to get to know her as a person, but worse than that, no one bothered to create opportunities for her to share her culture with the entire faculty and most importantly with the student body. Instead, people made fun of the way she spoke English.

The third reason there are few minorities in education is, in my opinion, a controversial attitude. I will not be politically correct…it’s fear! Fear from the majority that the minorities will somehow take over the country. This “there goes the neighborhood attitude” prevent the majority from finding competent minority candidates. Employers see a name, or a color or even a religion, and it frightens them. Sometimes, minorities prove they are smarter, faster and more efficient at getting the job done…this threatens the majority. ( In many cases, and in my experience working with other minorities, minorities who have a post graduate education are better prepared because the education they earned in their native countries was far superior to the education they might have acquired in the U.S.) “It’s not easy being green” in both senses of the word, and it’s even more difficult for people to recognize their weaknesses and learn from each other. The majority needs to realize minorities “come in peace” and the majority needs to remember that hundreds of years ago, they were a minority, escaping to this country in search of religious or political tolerance. But we are imperfect beings, and we forget, and we fear what we do not know. The changing face of the United States is frightening to many who belong to the majority. If they are competent leaders, minorities as superintendents, principals or teachers will know how to build relationships with both the majority and the minority. I am not being facetious when I say if Oprah can gain the following of the majority, any talented leader can do the same. Obama had the charisma as well, but I won’t go further with that one, for that’s too long and complex of an issue to discuss why some of the majority disguise their racism behind their so-called partisanship.

But, I say don’t blame “the man”…the minorities have no one to blame, but themselves for not speaking against the social injustices they endure. This is the greatest country in the world and regardless of racism, with hard work, anyone can achieve success whether you are a member of the minority or the majority.

The best way to sabotage someone’s future, minority or majority, is by sabotaging their education. Some minorities rise above this while others perpetuate the stereotypes and do nothing to improve their living conditions and have no one to blame but themselves. Public schools across our country with a majority of minority students have the worst teachers and the fewest resources. The elected leaders of these communities, many of them minorities like their constituents, fail to defend their rights for a quality education. These leaders have other agendas and could careless about the plight of minorities, just like some members of the majority. However, thank goodness for those members of the majority who have common sense, compassion and empathy to stand up for the human rights of both the majority and the minority.

So I say to those of the majority who care about human rights, that the Rooney Rule although well intentioned, is not a good idea for education. It will not work to recruit more minorities. At least it won’t work for me. I want to be hired based on my merits, not to meet a quota…I don’t want others to resent me, which was a natural by product of affirmative action…I want to be respected as a human being …I want to stop checking off the little box identifying me as powerless. Next time I face one of those so called demeaning demographic data collecting devices I will add a write in category and print in big bold letters: I am HUMAN!

Pink Floyd, the consummate rock band, were educational advocates, whether or not they were conscious about it. They understood from experience the oppressiveness and failure of the educational system, and like a true rock band they sang in rebellion about it. 

For their loyal rock fans, what change did this education anthem bring about since the release of their message in 1979? I’m not sure if The Wall prompted any educational reforms in England, so I’ll be true to my egocentric American attitude and ignore the plight of the Brits’ learning to focus solely on asking if our own school of thought on educational reform changed since Pink Floyd warned us we were nothing but bricks in the wall. The answer is: We learned nothing, and we have done nothing but eat our pudding! We have not found recipes to make the meat more appetizing. Nothing has been reformed for over 3 decades; in fact, we have added more bricks to wall, and naturally, the wall has grown bigger, and the meat more rancid.

The disconnected, deviant policy makers and educational stakeholders didn’t listen to Pink Floyd then and don’t listen to Pink Floyd now, or maybe they’re closet rockers with an agenda to sabotage education. In any case, the powers that be, don’t care to read the writing on the wall because they want us to keep adding bricks to the wall.

But hey, we’re not off the hypothetical hook on that wall either. What have we done as a society to heed the rockers’ message? Well, as victims of the educational sabotage, not exactly our fault, since we’ve got bricks for brains, we interpreted the song literally! The song speaks of rebellion, but it also speaks of our conformity; we chose to listen to the conformist message, unfortunately!  Many adopted this rebellious anthem “we don’t need no education” without realizing that Pink Floyd was actually inciting us to demand an education, but one that spared us from the “dark sarcasm in the classroom” and “the thought control”; using double negatives work well poetically when David Gilmore sings the lyrics, but we would fail to impress anyone with this blatant grammatical error in our casual speech. Yet today, so many in our society speak this way, and this is exactly what Pink Floyd was trying to tell us: We need an education, or else not only do we sound ignorant, but we also become mindless drones devoid of original thought and individual expression. 

(Perhaps, Pink Floyd were staunch proponents of the importance of grammar too. I don’t really think so, but the idea would work well to support my argument.)

Despite the writing on the wall, I think few have sung this song in protest in front of school board buildings across the USA demanding we raise the standards in every school. I think that now more than ever the song speaks volumes, with speakers being unnecessary for the message to be heard, and with many people willing to play it so others will hear. The song's power lies in that even though Another Brick in the Wall failed to reform education then, today, if marketed properly, the song can be re-released through our social media to raise consciousness that we must tear down the walls we have built which prevent our students and teachers from being individuals and independent thinkers. 

Our schools whether they are in affluent or impoverished areas have so many remnants of antiquated methods Pink Floyd warned about. Our schools still have silent classrooms where students are never allowed to speak or express an opinion contrary to the teacher’s social, political or religious beliefs. Allowing students to have small and large group discussions is essential to developing critical thinking. Many teachers are afraid of using discussion strategies because of student discipline issues, and the risk of being burned alive by their own students as Pink Floyd cautioned! Teachers need quality inservices where they will gain the skills necessary to be effective leaders in their classrooms. Learning cannot occur if we cannot hold our students’ attention. We should not resort to lowering the standards or appeasing students with lights, colors and games to pique their interest. Teachers need quality inservices where they will learn practical classroom management skills which will then enable them to set high standards and present material to engage students in taking ownership of their learning.  Inservices need to be realistic too in addressing the human fact that teachers will not reach each and every single student.  This notion cannot be misconstrued to mean there are those students who we can give up on.  We must promote education for all, but we need to consider there will be those members who will contribute more and those who will contribute less. School systems need to listen to the song and realize contributing less does not mean the contributions will be insignificant or less valuable; it just means the contributions may not affect as many people in society.  Part of the educational oppressiveness Pink Floyd warns about is the propaganda of lies public education instills on our psyche: that intellectually we are all equals.  Every student regardless of his/her intellectual circumstances takes the same test. Every student does not have to go to college to be a successful, productive citizen, and there is no guarantee that every student who does go to college will become a contributing member of society. An education is relative to the individual’s life circumstances, upbringing, geographic location, ability to learn, the pace at which he/she learns, the response to different stimuli; in short, the number of factors that affect how a person learns are endless as are the possibilities for success or failure once an individual acquires an education. We must insist on equal access of resources so every American can obtain a quality education, but we must reject the idea that we are all the same.  

If you visit any school in the U.S., the landscape is evocative of the sinister agenda Pink Floyd sang about. Too many of our students and teachers have become factory-like drones, mindless and afraid to speak against the injustice occurring in our schools. Those students who have resisted conforming have taken extreme and often tragic measures to stand out as individuals; yet, misunderstood in their desire to be heard and misguided in their search for identity, they have been ostracized, and ridiculed. Our system has been an accomplice in enabling maladjusted students to become even more disturbed; rather than taking time to investigate, we have built a wall to avoid dealing with problems. Our ignorance of the issues, have enabled these lost students to resort to violence, hurting, and at times even killing innocent students and teachers because our system failed to read the writing on the wall that something was terribly wrong. We have more socially maladjusted children in our schools than ever before. School violence and school shootings have become commonplace, and depression and suicide rates among children continue to rise. Pink Floyd forewarned us of this total collapse in education with their shocking images of children using books as pyre to burn their school and their teacher.  Students build these metaphoric funeral pyres for their teachers on a daily basis in so many of country’s classrooms. We focus on who is to blame, rather than on rehabilitating our children’s psyche, rescuing our teachers, and putting out the fire with practical solutions.

Schools are social institutions; obviously, schools cannot be held responsible for curing all our social ills, or for the actions of the mentally ill; however, our schools have a responsibility to ensure the safety of all our children. When we build walls, we are blinded to the fact that bullying goes unpunished in our schools.  Our walls overshadow the fact that the system is broken, and there are teachers, counselors and principals who ignore our students’ welfare to pursue their own agendas.

An education does not solve all our problems, but it can alleviate and prevent many of our social problems. Our schools should no longer be called institutions because of what the word connotes; instead our schools need to be centers for inspiration, innovation and improvement. Humans have an innate desire to learn. Even prison inmates seek learning over idleness. How many of our schools are architecturally designed to look like prisons? How much longer will the spirit and minds of our teachers and students remain imprisoned behind the walls educational policymakers have built? As teachers, the wall we allow the educational leaders to build does not serve to protect us and ensure our survival; instead our own sanity and prosperity hang in the balance if we do not speak against the injustice we witness in our schools. We must not be afraid to replay the song for all to hear.

As raucous and rebellious as Pink Floyd’s song was, we put up a wall, and did not listen. At our next inservice we need to replay Another Brick in the Wall for our teachers, for our counselors, for our principals; we need to replay it for our superintendents, at our school board meetings and at all the meetings where educational stakeholders convene. We need to share recipes that reconcile the necessity to eat one’s meat before one’s pudding; the meat we serve needs to be so appetizing and filling that our students won’t crave the pudding. The meat will be satisfaction enough; it’s only the meat that will strengthen their minds and their bodies enabling them to tear down the walls brick by brick, releasing them of all thought control!