Education: Powerful But Too Often Neglected

Reading with my Book Club

I’m in two book clubs. One is called Baker’s Dozen; I’ve probably mentioned it before. Three women have just joined and all are white friends from church. I invited two of them and another member invited the third.

Our meeting on Wednesday night was the second time the newcomers joined us. We had read and were discussing Reading with Patrick, a memoir by Michelle Kuo. We all were glad we had chosen this book. Several women said they loved it, others of us were also enthusiastic but a little less so.

The description on Amazon is better than what I could write.

“Recently graduated from Harvard University, Michelle Kuo arrived in the rural town of Helena, Arkansas, as a Teach for America volunteer, bursting with optimism and drive. But she soon encountered the jarring realities of life in one of the poorest counties in America, still disabled by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. In this stirring memoir, Kuo, the child of Taiwanese immigrants, shares the story of her complicated but rewarding mentorship of one student, Patrick Browning, and his remarkable literary and personal awakening.”

At one point our discussion turned on how white people can so easily ignore the deplorable circumstances that limit lives like Patrick’s. We spoke about the need for education of white people who want to help but have no idea how.

Then we talked about the daily indignities faced by people of color in our own towns.

Juneteenth Summer Service

I spoke about our service last Sunday at The Unitarian Church in Westport. It was the first lay-led service of the summer. Shanonda Nelson, one of our very few Black members, focused her service on Juneteenth. Toward the end of her sermon she said, “I’d like to have just a little white privilege. I’d like not to be stopped when driving in Fairfield and asked by the police officer, ‘What brings you to Fairfield?’ I’d like not to have neighbors call the police when I’m dancing on my lawn, with my children.”

Our new member Beth had also heard Shanonda speak. At the book club discussion, she said, “I had no idea these things happen here.”

A few of us responded with disbelief. How can you not know? was the tenor of our comments. The daily news tells us. People of color face discrimination all the time.

Beth said she felt we were blaming her for her lack of knowledge. “How would I know if I haven’t been told?” she said. She also asked, both about the circumstances in poverty-stricken Arkansas and in our own communities, “What can we do?” 

I was grateful that she spoke up. I said so in an email the next morning. “You called us out last night for blaming you for not knowing how pervasive racism is. Blaming and shaming accomplishes nothing, which I know in theory! I need practice on this: how to tell, how to educate, without blaming or shaming. I hope you will help me learn!”

Beth, who is helping our church get its communications in better order, came to our capital campaign team meeting the next day. After we’d finished our discussion on campaign planning, I asked her if we could tell the group about our conversation of the prior evening. She agreed.

When we’d finished, she said she hoped to learn more about what to do. I recalled the anti-racism book group I’d held at the church some years ago. “I’ll lead a conversation on race and racism and our possible responses in the fall,” I said. Maybe I’ll suggest we read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. Or maybe we’ll just talk. Then I can practice educating without blaming!

Removing a Barrier to Education

Many children in Nigeria face barriers not completely dissimilar from those faced by Patrick in Reading with Patrick. Parents who are subsistence farmers in rural areas did not necessarily get an education. They cannot help their children with lessons. They often recognize the importance of education, but the schools are as bad as or worse than the schools Patrick attended, and dropped out of, in Arkansas.

The governor of Rivers State, one of Nigeria’s 36 states, has decided to act. “On June 24, he announced, ‘From today, no child either in primary and secondary schools should pay fees and levies in any school across the state,’ ” according to Ambassador Campbell’s blog post on June 27.

He charged all those in charge of monitoring the schools with seeing that his directive is enforced, and promised state funding to replace the lost fees. According to the article, “The governor also appears to have acknowledged the ‘elephant in the living room;’ too often school administrators have pocketed the fees they collected.”

Federal Support for Education

President Buhari has also promised to improve the failing education system in the country during his second term.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if these pronouncements take effect? Like the children in Arkansas, so much brilliance is left untapped in Nigeria’s children.

We were fortunate that each of our children had a great education in Nigeria.

I received this photo from my friend Kathy yesterday. She’d held onto it and just re-discovered it!