Comments on: Pedro Noguera clarifies his concern: Don’t replace kids’ culture

By: Steven Birkeland

Steven Birkeland — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:14:22 +0000

I was recently at a seminar at Longfellow Hall on the campus of Harvard University and I listened to Mr. Whitman talk about his book. I am impressed with the successes and the respectful treatment of the students throughout the various schools profiled. I worked in one of the buildings noted in the book, although my school is not mentioned. Since the time the data was collected, we have modeled some of our programs after the other school and taken advantage of the NEW PATERNALISM. Longer school day to support the school community and address the specific social/emotional and academic needs of the student population. I hope everyone who reads Mr. Whitman’s book is educated to what can make a difference. I look forward further conversations with students, parents, educators and community leaders to make continued progress in our quest for the best.

By: katherine merseth cambridge, MA

katherine merseth cambridge, MA — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:56:23 +0000

Our recent book on successful charter schools in Boston (all stand alone–not Kipp-like) suggest that the truth lies some whree in the middle here. Several of our schools mirror the more concerning end of paternalism. For example, one of our “highly successful schools” has a student attrition rate between 9th grade and 12 grade that is shocking. The reason according to the founder, is that the students “didn’t fit” and “wanted to eat candy bars rather than spinach.” However, other schools in our study that were equally successful work hard to keep both students and staff. As one principal said “Every time a teacher leaves a bit of the school leaves with them.” So rather than churn through young staff and students, this school works and build incentives to sustain staff and students.
I generally agree with Whitman’s book and characterization. I think he has done a good job. It IS about culture.
Perhaps the most striking thing we found in our book was that the amazing organizational coherence present in these successful schools did not extend to the classroom. In observations of over 70 classes, we found very low and disappointing levels of instruction, mostly about rules and procedures and not about teaching students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate.

The lesson is that we can get students who come in woefully behind able to pass the state standardized tests, but are we truly educating them? Have these new paternalism schools been drawn into a “sucker’s game” chasing relatively low skills and forgetting that the future will depend on those who exhibit agency and the ability to think for themselves. The book is Inside Urban Charter Schools, published by Harvard Ed Press in 2009.

By: Elizabeth Green

Elizabeth Green — Sun, 03 May 2009 15:18:50 +0000

David, I really appreciate your thoughtful comment. Just to distill, for the record and to make sure I have it right, the central point you raise here as in your book is the difference between lifestyles and values. The new paternalistic schools are changing lifestyles by accentuating inherent and shared values. Correct?

I wonder if the missing link – and the reason some will continue to take issue with the schools you chronicled – is culture. Does culture fit in the bin of “lifestyle” or of “values”?

By: David Whitman

David Whitman — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:45:56 +0000

While I am it, I’d add one other comment about the new paternalism. I repeatedly contrast the new paternalism with the old paternalism in my book. I describe the problems created by the old paternalism in considerable detail, writing at length, for example, about the boarding schools established for Native American students a century ago. Those school founders did try to impose their values on Native Americans and sought to eradicate Native American culture. The old paternalism was malevolent; the new paternalism is benevolent.
The new paternalist schools, in short, are not like the paternalistic institutions of the past. They are not harsh or forbidding, nor do they bear any resemblance to glorified juvenile detention centers or teen boot camps. Being highly prescriptive doesn’t work in high-poverty schools unless students know that their teachers and principals also care deeply about their development and learning. That is why these schools are marked by a striking combination. Students and principals ceaselessly monitor student conduct. But at the same time, teachers and principals develop a close, almost family-like connection with students–many of whom describe their schools as a “second home.” All of this, too, is covered, at length, in my book.

By: David Whitman

David Whitman — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:13:07 +0000

Philissa Cramer and Pedro Noguerra roundly misconstrue the message of my book, Sweating the Small Stuff. I never suggest or argue that KIPP and other secondary schools that I describe as examples of the “new paternalism” are imposing alien values on disadvantaged students. In chapter two of my book, I describe the meaning of the new paternalism in schools, rooting it firmly in a 343-page volume from 1997 that was entitled, appropriately, The New Paternalism: Supervisory Approaches to Poverty. This volume documented at length an important trend in social policy and antipoverty strategies–and was published by the Brookings Institution, no bastion of reactionary thought. I didn’t dream up the moniker of the “new paternalism,” which, as I say, was coined at Brookings, a left-leaning think tank. Yet most critics of the new paternalism label have yet to read my book or are largely unfamiliar with the decade-old Brookings volume on the same subject.
On p.35, I address the question head-on of whether the new paternalist schools impose alien “middle-class” values on their students. Here is what I wrote: “Paternalistic programs, including paternalistic schools, survive only because they typically enforce values that ‘clients already believe,’ [Lawrence] Mead [the editor of the 1997 Brookings volume] notes. Rare is the parent who thinks it is a good idea for their child to be disruptive or do poorly in school. But many paternalistic programs remain controversial because they seek to change the lifestyles of the poor, immigrants, and minorities, rather than the lifestyles of middle-class and upper-class families. The paternalistic presumption, implicit in the schools portrayed here, is that the poor lack the family and community support, cultural capital, and personal follow-through to live according to the middle-class values that they, too, espouse.”
KIPP and the other “new paternalist” schools I wrote about are highly-prescriptive schools; they care not only about academics but about building character by cultivating traits like self-discipline, perseverance, the ability to plan ahead, and politeness. Conservatives would say that these schools are cultivating traditional virtues. Liberals–and most of the schools I wrote about are founded by liberals–would argue that the schools are building up the “non-cognitive” skills that will allow students to persist in college and and succeed in the workplace. The latter position has been staked out by liberal luminaries like Christopher Jencks, James Heckman, and Richard Rothstein, a point that I explicitly make in my book. I imagine that Pedro Noguerra agrees that high-performing schools for low-income students do tend to build these “non-cognitive” skills in students. But my book does not contend that educators must treat the culture of poor kids as the problem. I argue that paternalistic programs only work when they are in accordance with people’s values, even if low-income families sometimes lack the resources and support to act upon those values.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:29:16 +0000

Sorry to be snarky, but I’m fascinated by reports that KIPP teaches its students to “walk briskly down the hall.” (This unconfirmed info actually came from an Edison Schools report describing aspects of KIPP that Edison wanted to emulate.) It’s like that song “Walk Like an Egyptian” — walk like a Type A white person?