|
Sitemap
| Jobs
|
Contact Us
|
Building Smart Education Systems |
Voices in Urban Education
Archives
Small Schools and Race
VUE Number 2, Fall 2003
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Reflections of an African American on the Small Schools Movement
By Theresa Perry, Vice President for
community relations at Wheelock College.
> Complete bio
Recalling her mother's statement – "Small don't have nothing to do with being good" – the author reflects on her own experience and that of young people she has known to express concern about the value of small schools for children of color.
I believe in the power and the possibilities of intentional small school communities. I remain skeptical of the “small schools movement.”
I was born and reared in the Jim Crow South, in Birmingham, Alabama. From first to twelfth grade, I attended a small, historically Black Catholic school. Until recently, I had never focused on the fact that my school was small, just that it was an excellent school. There were thirty-two students in my graduating class. I was class president. That same year we won the state basketball championship for the Black basketball league, and we won five out of the six top prizes in a statewide math contest, competing against all schools — Black, white, public, private, and Catholic. The competition included a written math examination and the submission of a mathematics research paper. We all were excited about the math awards and wondered how was it that they, “the white folk,” would stand for a Black school to walk away with all of these math prizes. I won fifth place. The topic of my paper was “Boolean Algebra.”
My school, Immaculata High School, offered advanced placement classes in math, chemistry, and English. The school had a well-equipped and state-of-the-art science lab, a wonderful auditorium, and a gym that was a magnet for neighborhood children. Parents were attracted to the school and enrolled their children there because it was an excellent school, because it had a great basketball program and a highly touted modern dance program, and because Miss Tidwell and Miss Jewell — African American teachers from the community — worked side by side with the equally stellar and committed nuns from Covington, Kentucky.
The school was successful with all students — top students, average students, and struggling students. My best friends and I, who represented the range of academic records, all graduated from Immaculata and went on to college. So did all of my eleven siblings. I recently asked my mother why she chose this school for us. She replied, matter-of-factly, “Because it was a good school, an excellent school.” She continued, “It wasn't just that it was a Catholic school. If it was a Catholic school and wasn't a good school, you all would not have gone there.” I asked her whether the fact that it was a small school had influenced her decision to send us there. She thought for a minute and, with a look on her face that suggested that she was trying to figure out why I had asked her this question, she replied, “I never thought about it being a small school.” Then she looked up and said, “Small don't have nothing to do with being good.”
Indeed, throughout the Jim Crow South, small didn't have much to do with being good. Of course, we knew of small schools with committed and caring teachers, teachers who knew us and our families intimately, who did the best they could, sometimes in tworoom schoolhouses, with dreadful facilities and few materials. But we also knew of St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, a historically Black allboys school that routinely won many of the top places in the statewide competitions — athletic, academic, and artistic. St. Augustine was not a small school. Neither was the famous Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., or the Caswell County Training School in North Carolina.
Archives
Small Schools and Race
VUE Number 2, Fall 2003
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Reflections of an African American on the Small Schools Movement
By Theresa Perry, Vice President for
community relations at Wheelock College.
> Complete bio
Recalling her mother's statement – "Small don't have nothing to do with being good" – the author reflects on her own experience and that of young people she has known to express concern about the value of small schools for children of color.
I believe in the power and the possibilities of intentional small school communities. I remain skeptical of the “small schools movement.”
I was born and reared in the Jim Crow South, in Birmingham, Alabama. From first to twelfth grade, I attended a small, historically Black Catholic school. Until recently, I had never focused on the fact that my school was small, just that it was an excellent school. There were thirty-two students in my graduating class. I was class president. That same year we won the state basketball championship for the Black basketball league, and we won five out of the six top prizes in a statewide math contest, competing against all schools — Black, white, public, private, and Catholic. The competition included a written math examination and the submission of a mathematics research paper. We all were excited about the math awards and wondered how was it that they, “the white folk,” would stand for a Black school to walk away with all of these math prizes. I won fifth place. The topic of my paper was “Boolean Algebra.”
My school, Immaculata High School, offered advanced placement classes in math, chemistry, and English. The school had a well-equipped and state-of-the-art science lab, a wonderful auditorium, and a gym that was a magnet for neighborhood children. Parents were attracted to the school and enrolled their children there because it was an excellent school, because it had a great basketball program and a highly touted modern dance program, and because Miss Tidwell and Miss Jewell — African American teachers from the community — worked side by side with the equally stellar and committed nuns from Covington, Kentucky.
The school was successful with all students — top students, average students, and struggling students. My best friends and I, who represented the range of academic records, all graduated from Immaculata and went on to college. So did all of my eleven siblings. I recently asked my mother why she chose this school for us. She replied, matter-of-factly, “Because it was a good school, an excellent school.” She continued, “It wasn't just that it was a Catholic school. If it was a Catholic school and wasn't a good school, you all would not have gone there.” I asked her whether the fact that it was a small school had influenced her decision to send us there. She thought for a minute and, with a look on her face that suggested that she was trying to figure out why I had asked her this question, she replied, “I never thought about it being a small school.” Then she looked up and said, “Small don't have nothing to do with being good.”
Indeed, throughout the Jim Crow South, small didn't have much to do with being good. Of course, we knew of small schools with committed and caring teachers, teachers who knew us and our families intimately, who did the best they could, sometimes in tworoom schoolhouses, with dreadful facilities and few materials. But we also knew of St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, a historically Black allboys school that routinely won many of the top places in the statewide competitions — athletic, academic, and artistic. St. Augustine was not a small school. Neither was the famous Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., or the Caswell County Training School in North Carolina.
|
Annenberg Institute for School Reform Brown University, Box 1985 Providence, RI 02912 |
Telephone: 401.863.7790 Fax: 401.863.1290 |
AISR_info@brown.edu
|
© all material AISR