We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

Bait and Switch. Civics Education to Character Education

American schools promote a concept known as “character education.” Starting in the 1980s, public schools adopted programs such as Character Counts! and the Heartwood Program, which emphasize hard work, responsibility, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Funding for character education tripled in the 1990s and early 2000s, allowing it to replace civics education to a large degree. Rather than learning how to become engaged, informed citizens, students are taught that “grit” is the key to advancement. The gap between the rich and powerful and the poor and disenfranchised is growing. The rich have political influence, but without civics education, the poor lack the skills to advocate for themselves. Schools teach students that good character rests on compliance. Social justice, however, demands disobedience, writes Love.

Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin was on the phone with a friend when he first noticed George Zimmerman. He was so uncomfortable that he referred to his killer as a “creepy White cracker” (72). Trayvon’s words suggest that he knew he was being racially profiled and that the encounter was about race. Zimmerman called 911 to report a suspicious Black man with his hand in his waistband. Zimmerman pursued Trayvon, against the 911 operator’s instructions. By the time the police arrived, Trayvon was dead and Zimmerman had a fractured nose. Trayvon fought for his life, but his grit could not save him from white rage.

Hunger Games

The Character Lab, a nonprofit organization founded in 2016, helped popularize the notion of “grit.” One of its cofounders is Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Examples of grit include repeatedly revising an assignment and not quitting a sport. According to Love, grit is ineffective against racism, as evidenced by 400 years of resistance in the form of marches, protests, boycotts, rebellions, and court cases. Focusing on the behavior of Black children without also removing systemic barriers to their advancement is the educational equivalent of The Hunger Games, writes Love. It forces Black children to try to beat the odds. Black children experience prolonged stress due to poverty and racism, which alters their brains and hinders their ability to learn. Schools must address this toxic stress through therapy and stress reduction. Educational staff must be attuned to the challenges Black students face. Black students need better health services, healthy food programs, career planning guidance, paid internships, and courses about social change. Schools must end the school-to-prison pipeline by removing metal detectors and security guards from their buildings, and by focusing on restorative justice and mindfulness. Schools must also provide trained counselors to address the trauma of their students and educators. For teachers, the counseling might focus on interrogating whiteness and white emotions, such as guilt and anger. Teachers of all races must stand in solidarity with their students and communities.

History, Trauma, and Grit

In 2007, KIPP schools introduced character growth cards and character performance assessments to control Black students and turn them into good, compliant workers. According to Love, this approach is of a piece with past attempts to “civilize” children of color such as Native Americans, who were removed from their homes and placed in special schools for cultural assimilation. Telling students of color to pull themselves up is not an enabling pedagogical approach, writes Love. Grit does not consider the myriad factors that prevent Black students from excelling, nor does it consider epigenetic inheritance, the genetic passing down of trauma from one generation to the next. For example, a recent study found that the children of Holocaust survivors are more likely to suffer from stress disorders. Similarly, Dutch women who were pregnant during the famine at the end of World War II had an increased risk of birthing girls with mental disorders, specifically schizophrenia (75). Human genes adapt to the environment with chemical tags that switch them on and off. Toxic stress alters genes in the individuals experiencing the stress and in their offspring.

Protecting Potential

Student success depends on community engagement. Teachers, mentors, coaches, counselors, neighbors, and coworkers can help keep students on track personally and academically. Love’s community protected her potential because she excelled at basketball. In addition to engaged teachers and FIST mentors, she had supportive coaches, coworkers who made sure she got home from work safely, an older brother who looked out for her, and parents who nurtured her independence. Her community protected her, which allowed her to thrive.

Leverage, Intersections, and Lift

Students need consistent and committed protectors who understand them. Protectors must also be willing to have difficult conversations about important issues that impact students’ lives, such as racism. Acknowledging the power imbalance between white protectors and Black students helps form honest, productive relationships. White protectors’ lives may intersect with those of Black students, but race makes their experiences fundamentally different, according to Love. White protectors must use their power and privilege to support students of color. Love adds that solitary saviors do not exist. Only communities can protect students’ potential and make them feel safe, even in neighborhoods plagued by drugs, gangs, and violence.

Intersections of Protection

Love lives in Atlanta, home to several major companies that employ vast numbers of people. Nevertheless, the gap between rich and poor is larger in Atlanta than in any other city in the country. Furthermore, the city lacks good public transportation, strong public schools, and affordable housing. Racism is central to Atlanta’s problems, writes Love. The system dehumanizes people of color by treating them like criminals. It does not protect Black children. Black girls and women are especially vulnerable. In addition to being subjected to sexism and misogyny, Black girls and women are criminalized and sexualized, both in schools and on the streets. Sex traffickers prey on Black girls from poor, toxic homes. Grit cannot protect girls of color, nor are their communities equipped to help them.

Systemic Justification

System justification is a social-psychological theory that explains how people “believe, defend, and rationalize the status quo because they see social, economic, and political systems as fair and legitimate” (86). 91% of Black youths believe in the American Dream. A study from the June 2017 issue of Child Development, for instance, found that Black children from working-class backgrounds who believe in the American Dream (i.e., that grit and hard work led to professional success) are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior and to have low self-esteem (86). Love writes that these youths lack the skills to understand the world, which is built on systems of intersectional oppression. Schools do not help Black students understand racism, sexism, patriarchy, anti-gay prejudice, and other forms of discrimination. Thus, schools help maintain the status quo, which benefits white people and the patriarchy.