It’s unlikely that Crossroads can progress significantly without someone in the school district working for it on a daily basis. “Jim’s leadership has been most significant in terms of setting up the project,” said Barbara Nielsen. Nielsen was in charge of training the 35 teachers who took part in the infusion process. “I think the commitment is there. We’ve had such a positive response from teachers. We’re asking teachers to add on to their day, come to workshops from 4:00—7:00 and give up a Saturday. The logistics of keeping it alive are difficult. But now that we’ve touched base with real, honest-to-goodness living teachers, that will help carry the project, particularly under the guidance of Dr. Alice Houston. Dr. Houston is Assistant Superintendent of Education Support Services. “We have to be careful of this process becoming an add-on again,” said Nielsen. “The district is supposed to pick up where the Rockefeller grant left off,” says Wayne Williams. “The administration is going to have to be very assertive to see that resources are there for teacher release time and monies to purchase materials.” Another goal of Crossroads is to build a Multicultural Education Center, a field trip destination for students to see exhibitions of art and artifacts from museum collections and Seattle’s Sister Cities around the world. It would also provide a location for musical, dance and other performance groups. DISPROPORTIONALITY usan de Elkorn, Minority Program Specialist for the Seattle Public Schools, points out that Crossroads k»Z is only one of the ways the district is Research showed that many teachers used different behavior patterns toward white males. “We are not saying that teachers are racist or sexist to be malicious. We’re trying to even up the patterns of behavior between teacher and student.” addressing disproportionality. A disproportionate number of minority students fall within at-risk categories, which are measured in terms of grades, test scores, suspensions from school, expulsions and dropping out. The disproportionality data that received the greatest amount of community attention had to do with grades and test scores. In 1986-87, black and Native American high school students had the lowest mean GPA, which was slightly below 2.0. Latinos had a mean GPA just above 2.0, while whites and Asians exceeded 2.5. The greatest spread was within the Asian group. This pattern has been continuous over the last several years. The state has recently allocated $800,000 for a drop-out retention grant to fund seven programs. One of these is the Outreach Intake Unit that directly tracks students who drop out with the goal of helping them get back in school or some other program for graduation, such as a G.E.D., de Elkorn says. “Another dropout retention program at the middle school level should have a definite impact on minorities, particularly Afro-American students. “The problem with our curriculum is our children have been miseducated,” says de Elkorn, referring to Dr. Asa Hilliard’s speech at the conference entitled The Root Causes of ‘Miseducation Dominance and Oppression in the Curriculum. “People of color have known for a long time what’s needed to educate their children. When the public schools don’t address the needs of certain groups, then there should be ethnic schools. Independent ethnic schools can provide more of the history and self-esteem needed to counterbalance some of the risks. But I think multi-cultural education should be Teachers and administrators at the Northwest Black Studies Conference In Seattle. happening in the district as well.” Ethnic schools have provided resources and models for the public school districts. Project Challenge, the Afro- American Male Project, has been piloted in three Seattle high schools: Chief Sea- Ith, South Shore, and Indian Heritage. The District’s Office of Equity and Compliance is one of the program contacts. Project Challenge is taught by Afro- American male adults to Afro-American male students. It includes combining an awareness of self and culture with effective interpersonal performance and selfempowerment. Proyecto Saber is an ethnically-oriented bilingual program for Latinos which includes several West Seattle elementary schools, a middle school and a high school. The district is working on establishing a satellite of Proyecto Saber in the north end. “The educational system is focused on the sensibility of the white male. He has his culture reinforced everyday by the public school system. Proyecto Saber and Project Challenge provide cultural information and cultural anchoring. This has a lot to do with self- esteem, with students being strong within themselves.” THE SITUATION IN PORTLAND everal people at the Black Studies Conference referred to the progress made by the Portland School Dis- L J trict in terms of developing relevant curriculum materials. “We still have a lot of people who believe that blacks began with slavery, a very Euro-American view of the world,” said Barbara Nielsen. “Expanding that viewpoint is what we’re all about. Portland hired experts who actually gave testimony about African history. The African civilization was deliberately wiped out. History of ancient civilizations were rewritten. When you start looking at the re-writing of history, well, it’s mind- boggling.” Dr. Asa Hilliard, Professor of Education at Georgia State University, one of the experts hired by Portland, explained, “The institution that had the leadership in the rewriting of African history was Gottingen University in Germany, which was like a Harvard in its time. In its heyday, Lurene Shamsud-DIn of the Sabin Demonstration Project In Portland. from the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s, African history was revised to rationalize slavery, colonization and segregation. That is where the theory of race came from.” Hilliard helped compile baseline essays about Africa to be used by the school district. “What we tried to do in Portland was to cover science, math, language arts, history, music and art,” he said. “The idea is that you have a comprehensive thematic picture of a people and that this is correct and truthful. You need more than one subject area to be comprehensive and provide continuity.” The curriculum material created included baseline essays, lesson plans, and video tapes. “There is a clear, truthful story that needs to be told. It’s liberating to find out the truth,” Hilliard said. Carolyn Leonard, Coordinator for Multicultural and Multiethnic Education in the Portland School District, said that teachers from two of the eight district clusters have had direct contact with the baseline essays and strategies for teaching them. Jefferson and Grant were the first clusters to go through the training. In the fall, teachers from all schools will be introduced to the materials at a formal inservice training session. Native Americans and Hispanics have come forward with lesson plans and sophisticated materials, Leonard says. It will be easier for other groups to develop curriculum materials once the black essays are in place. “The dilemma that we face is how do we get it out there quickly. The community has waited a long time. They’re still at our backs and that’s good.” Bringing in experts from outside the Portland School District was a result of action by the Black United Front (BUF). In the early’70s, people began to question why white people were fleeing from one of the high schools. Several agencies were upset. When the BUF investigated, they learned that black children from one elementary school were being bussed to 44 different schools. The Black United Front was concerned with the breakdown of neighborhoods as well as other factors: that the quality of education should be more significant than the fact of bussing, that black students were being expelled at a higher rate than other groups, and that opportunities for parental involvement were lacking. Dr. Hilliard was recommended by both Ron Herndon of the BUF and Portland School District administrators. Currently the Black United Front has representation in a district committee set up to monitor the desegregation plan in Portland. The Sabin Demonstration Project is a pilot project in the Portland School District which has addressed disproportionality by offering students new ways to become involved in learning. Students choose many of their own research topics and use computers to monitor their progress. Each student is paired with a community mentor who helps motivate the student and develop his or her ideas. “Portland put together a body of knowledge, but they do not have a [teaching] process in place yet,” said Dr. Wayne Williams. “We hope Seattle will get hold of the baseline essays, the core of material. There could be a very nice wedding of those two districts to sit down and actually pool their resources. The big job cannot be done by one district alone.” Williams pointed out that this last conference provided opportunities for teachers from these and other districts to meet and get to know one another. The benefits of growing up in a multicultural system could be awesome. For those who have been nurtured primarily by the culture of the western white male, to view other ethnic groups outside of the context of conquest and power relationships is revealing. The systematic distortion of African history is sufficient cause to read available books which attempt to report history accurately. Accepting a twisted view of that history can lead to an inaccurate view of the history and evolution of all cultures. Since we trace our origin as a species to Africa, we must come to terms with it, and move from that knowledge to a clearer understanding of people around the world. The benefits of growing up in a multi-cultural system could be awesome. For those who have been nurtured primarily by the culture of the western white male, to view other ethnic groups outside of the context of conquest and power relationships is revealing. Writer Melissa Laird lives in Seattle. A frequent contributor to CSQ, her most recent story was “Return of the Skunk.” BOOKS ABOUT AFRICAN HISTORY George G.M. James, Stolen Legacy (Julian Richardson Assoc., Publishers) Maulana Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies (Kawaida) Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (Random House) Chancellor Williams, Destruction of Black Civilization (Third World Press) Carter G. Woodson, Mis-education of the Negro (A.M.S. Press) 36 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988
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