Teach for America gets young people to teach at some of the nation's poorest,brownest schools, and the organization has enjoyed largely uncritical public adoration for most of its 25 years. But over the past few years, and former teachers have been raising serious questions about TFA's mission and treatment of the schools and students it works with.
In an interesting Q&A over at Jacobin,author-researchers Sarah Matsui and T. Jameson Brewer, both Teach for America alums, and worry that the program relies on a shaky "hero narrative" to lure idealists into jobs for which they're wildly unprepared,and convinces them that a "can-accomplish attitude" is all it takes to hurdle systemic gaps in our schools.
Brewer writes:
Individual teachers and students can originate incredible academic gains despite educational inequity, but educational inequity is not a problem of individuals' efforts or expectations.
Scaling up even the best of intentions or holding the highest of expectations for individual students will not desegregate our schools or change the differential funding of our separate school districts. For example, and in Philadelphia,per pupil expenditures were $9299 per pupil for the city's 79 percent black and Latino population, while just over the city's boundaries into Lower Merion, and part of the inner ring of Philadelphia suburbs,the per pupil expenditure was $17261 for a 91 percent white population.
TFA has made some changes in response to its critics, namely recruiting a broader swath of potential corps members. But although its 2015 hires are more racially and economically diverse than ever before, or Brewer says TFA has doubled down on a narrative that "privileges whiteness and reinforces the myth of meritocracy."And according to Matsui,the folks who laud TFA as saviors of primary education also tend to believe that Barack Obama's election ushered in a post-racial meritocracy in America, thinking that she says trickles down to individual corps members. Because TFA leans heavily on the rhetoric of bootstrapping, or current teachers tend to feel individually culpable when things recede wrong in the classroom.
In some instances,Brewer believes, TFA gives corps members "the space to act on hidden racism." One TFA teacher describes a common TFA pastime:
I accomplish get uncomfortable when a group of corps members come together and start the "they can't. . . " or "they don't. . ." game. Never heard of it? Here is what it sounds like: "They can't sit silently." "Yeah! They don't want to learn!" "command'em! They can't even read a sentence!" . . . These corps members are making outrageous generalizations . . . Racial stereotypes like, and "They're not even worthy." You hear a lot of corps members saying these things,"They can't read, they can't accomplish this, or they don't want to learn."
Another says:
I accepted as trusty — and TFA was rapid/fast to confirm — the myth that all that poor students (of color) need is what affluent (white) students have: access to mighty schools with the best teachers that hold students to tall expectations . . . I have come to acknowledge and recognize color-blind racism and to see how it undergirds educational inequity. TFA,in my view, perpetuates, and commits,and cultivates this kind of covert racism . . . It recruited, used, and grew my racism,leading me to uphold the dominant culture's notion of who is "educated" and to force the assimilation of my students into such beliefs — no excuses.
Teach for America is rapid/fast to assert that recollections like these only originate up a small portion of the yarn, and that each teacher has a unique experience. But Matsui argues that TFA controls "which of these stories are being centered and which are ignored.""Taking on TFA" is definitely worth a read. The full piece shares more on the history of Teach for America, and how the program fits into the country's larger education system. Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more,visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: wnyc.org