I care about school. Does that make me an Oreo?

Apparently I am an Oreo. According to the past few generations' terminology, an Oreo is not a cookie made by Nabisco but a person who is black on the outside and white on the inside. Now, I admit that I could switch places with any member of *NSync, a late-'90s boy band, and perform a concert, and the fans wouldn't notice. But that doesn't make me an Oreo. And, if *NSync's fan base is mostly white, that doesn't mean I'm not black anymore. I'll be black forever.

The words black and white don't just mean color anymore. They describe actions, behavior and intelligence. Black symbolizes guns, violence, "ghetto fabulous" behavior, a job at McDonald's, overall failure in life. And white is a Harvard graduate, CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a house in the Hamptons, success.

These stereotypes let all of the air out of a little black kid's balloon. And if the stereotypes don't do it, some other black people will, starting with your education.

It is dangerous for a young black female like me to be surrounded by other young blacks who don't value their education. 'Cause I'll tell you, the feeling can be contagious, especially in middle and high school, when fitting in is in and standing out is way out.

At my middle school, I stuck out immediately. On my first day, I quivered with my *NSync notebook in hand, as I felt my way around school. I was ready to learn and very surprised to find the majority of my fellow black students were not.

"I've never met black kids like this," I told my mom over my afternoon snack. In my reading class their eyes slit my throat as I raised my hand to answer questions. During social studies, I was the only black student who didn't get into trouble with Ms. Burch. She actually liked me; we shared a love of *NSync. Even though I found a connection with Ms. Burch, one that we still share, I couldn't seem to find that basic connection with people who looked like me.

The difficulty of coping with the ridicule became a lot to bear at a time when having and making friends was the issue of the day. Being called an "Oreo" or "Miss Smarty-Pants" and "brainy" became normal, but I was never completely numb to the implications of these words. When the people who should be complimenting and congratulating you on your accomplishments are treating you as if you sell drugs, it doesn't feel as if you are doing the right thing.

This feeling has continued into high school and probably will continue throughout my entire life. But I am tired of being surrounded by those who don't apply themselves because they are afraid of what other people will think.

What will people think when they see you working at McDonald's? Will they think about you or the black race as a whole? I'm looking for a place — a school, a university, a community — where being "young, gifted and black" works for me and not against me. Where I can display my intelligence the way I display my clothes, and speak the way I was raised to speak. And that's not white, black, yellow, green or blue — it's simply the proper way to speak.

I was raised to respect my education and the fact that I am blessed to have an opportunity that others before me didn't have. And I will not waste my opportunities. I will continue to take advantage of them so I won't have to settle for flipping burgers and salting fries.

I will be successful, have an impact and continue to flourish as a young black woman. And for all those who are curious, the only Oreos I'll see will be the ones in my dorm room. But what does it matter — I only eat the cream anyway.

webstersII said: "You may see this as noble but life requires balance."

This "balance" is the reward for success. Much of the world still lives hand to mouth and working steadily and hard is the road to survival for some and success for others.

Many of the "workaholics" that I observed in the work place were Asian immigrants or the children of such immigrants. They were determined to succeed at whatever they set their hands to. Co-workers who thought they needed more balance were typically resentful of the fact that they had to compete against such determination.

I spent many of my early years working just as smart, hard, and long as those I have described. As a near-middle aged graduate student I pitied my competition. Many of them were as or more intelligent than I but there were none who could put in more time. That was the price I decided to pay for what I defined as "success".

I wish public schools could be cleaned out with a fire hose and good teachers (those not indoctrinated in schools of education and who hold degrees in their subject matter, not educrat theory and LIBERAL-speak) walked back in after they dried out.

I hate to break it to you, but after said purge, the situation would shortly go back to being as bad as it previously was. While incompetent teachers are a problem, they are only one part of a three part dilemma.

Have you ever read Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions? While a little dry, it is perhaps one of the most brilliant books written in the 20th Century. Basically, the book investigates how the structure of a social system can direct the outcome of that system, regardless of the components in the system. He describes how different methods of decision-making (like legislation, which is an all-or-nothing process, or the free market, which is an incremental process) lead identical systems to very different products.

The reason I describe that book is that, as a teacher, I see the negative effects of the educational system’s structure as a huge part of the problem. Simply stated, the modern public school system is structured in such a way that it forces good teachers to make bad decisions. When faced with a choice between doing what they think would be most effective and losing their job, and doing something that they know won’t work and keeping their job, most rational people will do the latter, especially if they know that the same decision will be forced on them through the entire profession (it’s not just a matter of finding a better public school, as they are all run in the same ways). So the rational person finds himself faced with an irrational choice.

The educational bureaucracy and the prevailing educational theory followed by those in power within that bureaucracy are a tremendous problem. If we were able to halve or quarter the number of middle-manager-style bureaucrats within the educational system, were teachers and principals allowed more decision-making authority (because both the teachers and parents are far closer to the parents than the Assistant Language Arts Curriculum Specialist), you would see a dramatic change in the quality of teaching, even with the same teachers in place as now.

At my own school, we have a core group of a dozen or so really good teachers, most of whom are highly successful despite the edicts of the Central Office (mainly because we ignore them). What this means, however, is that whenever Central or an administrator is looking for a fall guy, they have a ready-made target in their good teachers, because we haven’t been following “proper procedure” (regardless of the fact that we have been highly successful with the kids). The mediocre teachers, who follow imperial doctrine to the letter, get a pass, despite the fact that they produce mediocre results, because what is important to said middle-managers in Central is that nothing happens at the school level that can endanger their jobs. So, faced with a problem, they immediately assume the Nuremberg defense (“I was just following orders”), and those successful teachers who pushed the envelope get stomped on. How many times can you expect someone to get punished for being successful before they either stop caring or quit? That’s one of the dirty little secrets in education, the teacher turnover rate. The good ones get chased out pretty quick.

So, instead of the ideas and strategies of the successful teachers being used as models for behavior, those ideas and strategies have to be hidden to avoid the office politics of the middle-managers. How sad is that? I agree that the overall quality of teachers could be improved, but you could fire every teacher in the schools today, replace them all with PhDs and teachers-of-the-year, and you would still have the same situation back in a year that we have now.

Oh, I mentioned that I thought that there were three big problems. Teacher quality and the bureaucracy are two, but the third is partially addressed in the root article of this thread. It is culture. The kids don’t care about learning (both black and white). This comes from the media, low parental expectations, peers, etc. Then there is the litigious nature of our culture. Many of the idiotic rules promulgated in schools today come from the middle-managers’ fears of lawsuits. The fact of the matter is that Americans no longer value education as much as they used to, and I think that has a lot to do with the Liberal attack on hard work and excellence. But that’s another essay…

Our mistake as a society is that we attempt to educate all of our children.

Let me revise your statement to what I think is a better approach: Our mistake as a society is that we attempt to educate all of our children to the same level. Some kids are not going to be interested in or capable of college-level work, and therefore alternative education (apprenticeships, vocational and technical ed., etc.) should be available. Did you know that the technical education center in many school systems (including mine) have stringent grade requirements and a long waiting list, and mostly focus on high-tech fields like CCNA, A+, and Dbase certifications? Sure, a few curricula like culinary arts and automotive tech still survive, but because of the money spent on the high-tech courses, they have few spaces and high requirements. So the kids who need trade skills most (those who are generally unsucessful in academic classes) are most frequently prohibited from attending. What sense does that make?

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