From the acquittal of four police officers who beat Rodney King, a small yet powerful explosion ignited Balboa High School. King's ordeal was a catalyst for the students of Balboa to act on their own volition, addressing both the immediate problems within their school and the overarching inequity which permeates our society. The power structure, from the President of the United States, all the way down to the Principal of Balboa High School reacted accordingly. This project is intended to document the spirit of student resistance.
The student movement at Balboa High was crushed before it could really make a substantial impact, yet to look at what took place, the inspiration and motivation of the students, and the results which they achieved, both literally and figuratively, can provide an invaluable framework for movements in the future.
It is our hope that the brothers, sisters, cousins and peers can see the triumphs and mistakes using this experience to deal with struggles at both school and within the community. The key question to ask is, if the students can do what they did in two weeks, imagine the possibility and potential of a catalyzed youth with an entire school year to act upon?
It is important to examine the environment of state run schools so we can understand the context within which the actions and reactions of the students occured.
We can begin by looking at schools in the context of enculturating or socializing youth as its main purpose and function. In this light, schools can be seen as a convex mirror of society. What is transmitted, overtly and covertly in this environment is the culmination of U.S. socialization process.
State education, an institution is founded on the whole uncreation of human beings. For a generation of people living in the very midst of complex social problems, homelessness, overcrowding, class and caste, disease and hunger, our schools are not training people to think critically and creatively to address these inequities. The finished "products" are people who are less and less capable of even thinking about the problems that plague us. In this light, schools can be seen as a factory which mass produces behavior;
Schools use rote, routine and discipline to shape functioning cogs for the state. In this light education is not about expanding the mind, it is nothing more than a thinly veiled pretext for social conditioning.
This project is an oral "ourstory" as opposed to a "history". The entomological roots of the word history means, "a continuous systematic narrative of past events." Yet, the focus of the retelling the past has been dominated by great men, great wars, and great wealth reaped from progress. By calling this book an "ourstory", I want to employ a term which challenges the traditional notions of "his-story". As more ourstories are written we will have a chance of getting a fuller picture of the importance of what was, for all people.
The revision based ourstory has been developing, narratives written by slaves, soldiers, workers, women and the oppressed. This book is an attempt to offer credence and credibility to another voiceless segment of our society, the student. Ultimately the intent of this project it to illustrate the potential of youth activism in social change.
Ideally, an ourstory has both men and women sharing an equal part in telling their perspectives. The balance of interviews in this project is not equal, a result of the gender make-up of the students involved in the tutorial program from which this was born.
The majority of the information for this project was obtained through interviews, conducted over the Summer of 1992 I will cite a quote with the person's name. The philosophical critique of the institution is based on Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish, the Birth of the Prison", and John Taylor Gatto's "6 Lessons of a School teacher." And the information about the school district was obtained from the 1992-1993 San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Student handbook and the 1992-1993 Teachers Union Contract.
Balboa High School is named after the Spanish explorer, Vasco Nunez de
Balboa, who was remembered, among other things, for encountering the Pacific
Ocean. Balboa High School itself is located in the Excelsior District of San
Francisco and primarily serves the Outer Mission neighborhoods. The student
population is primarily Latino, Filipino, African-American and Asian-American
in its ethnic make-up. There are 1,270 students, grades 9 through 12,
enrolled at Balboa. 31.8 percent of the student body have been tested as
Limited English Proficient (LEP) or Non English Proficient (NEP), and 81.6
percent of the student body is classified as educationally disadvantaged.
Because of the economic segregation which the San Francisco Unified School
District is founded upon the students who were "fed" into Bal came from
predominantly lower and working class neighborhoods of the city.
In the district hand book it is stated:
"The mission of the San Francisco Unified School District is to provide each student with an equal opportunity to succeed by promoting intellectual growth, creativity, self discipline, cultural and linguistic sensitivity democratic responsibility, economic competence and physical and mental health so that each student can achieve to his or her maximum ability. In order to achieve this mission, the Board of Education has adopted the following goals:
If the goal of the SFUSD is indeed to "provide an equal opportunity to all students", the ratio of Balboa's teacher ethnicity to student population presents a tangible barrier.
STUDENTS CLASSIFIED TEACHERS UNCLASSIFIED TEACHERS
Spanish (sir name) 33.0% 13.4% 30%
Fillipino 29.4% 10.4% 20%
Black 17.3% 10.4% 20%
Chinese 8.7% 4.4% 0%
White 4.4% 59.7% 25%
These statistics were taken from Balboa's 1991-92 School Accountability report card, a yearly abstract issued by the district. This statistical breakdown shows the glaring ratio of white students to white teachers. The question is not whether white teachers are capable of reaching an ethnically diverse student body, rather, it is a question of the values the teachers will be transmitting, both consciously and not.
Realistically, public schools cost the State a large sum of money to operate. It is in the State's best interest to put people in a position where they inadvertently present and enforce the State's agenda. This would in part explain the pervasive petty bourgeois supersturcture of state schools, characterized by its rigid bureaucracy, timid time servitude, and encouraged noveau-riche social climbing. But also, because a majority of the teaching staff at Balboa heralds from "dominant" US culture, coupled with the state defined curriculum, sensitivity to the cultural differences can easily be cast aside. The emphasis of teaching at Balboa is focused upon teaching the English language and transmitting "American" values, (i.e. white anglo-saxon) to the students.
Of course the institution of education is a subtle and complex entity, and it is not without anomalies or exceptions. Fortunately, within it there are individuals who consciously refuse to perpetuate the States' agenda and actually subvert it in reaching the youth. Yet, the very design of the education system is to encode the values of the "dominant" culture upon its youth and this is was the case at Balboa High.
"Most teachers are from one world and most of these kids are not going to experience it. It's implications saying "Look, you are never going to be where we are, you are just here for a little while, and so are we". Teaching becomes an emotionless exchange, the only emotion existing in the classroom being fear, in its most restrictive sense". Kevin Keany
"In every society the body is in the grip of very strict powers which impose constraints, prohibitions or obligations in exercising its subtle coercion, this is the role of the teacher, whose primary responsibilities include 'taking attendance and being a cop'." (Eugene)
From a mother showing her young survival skills, to the dialectic of Dyogenies, the concept of teaching has existed in many forms for centuries. To teach, is to show someone how to do something while providing knowledge and insight. Traditionally, the role of the teacher is to be a guide.
With the dawning of the industrializing, urbanizing and the inital influx of mass immigration to the United States, compulsory state run schools came into existance. Idealists, such as Horace Mann, envisioned state education to be the mechanisim which our society would employ to create a truly classless society. Instead, public education has evolved into a weapon weilded by the state to shape the will and character of it's youth, conditioning them to be docile and obedient.
The role of the teacher shifted from being a guide to being an "agent" of the ruling classes. Through using repetition and rigid instruction, teachers train students to obey, to learn passively and to compete against each other.
Like a soldier, or a policeman, the teacher uses discipline, which manifests in a constant demand for silence and a refusal to allow pupils to dissent, as the tools to shape classroom culture and student behavior.
A system of supervision, which regulates the activity of a whole class, has developed throughout the history of public education. The teacher's roles is defined by two distinct tasks. The first involves material tasks, such as distributing papers, giving out assignments, and lecturing the class. The second involves surveillance:
"the observers must record who left their bench, who was talking, who did not have their books, who committed an impure act, who indulged in impure talk or was unruly in the street" Foucault
For the students who were unruly, or unwilling to submit to the authority of the teacher, a class of 'administrators' developed. Their primary purpose is to deal with discipline problems outside of the class room context.
The control of activity is imposed through several mechanisms. The first is by establishing an artificial sense of time for the day. In state schools the division of time is carefully constructed and rigidly enforced.
All phases of the school day are regulated by a series of bells. Classes are 50 minutes long. A student has 300 seconds to get their books, go to the bathroom and get to the next class. The first portion of the class is devoted to recording who is attending and punishing those who are late.
The control of time in a learning setting transmits to the student that no work is worth finishing. Because when the bell rings the student must drop the work they are doing, no matter if it was intellectually stimulating or woefully incomplete and proceed quickly to the next work station. If nothing is ever completed, why care too deeply about anything?
Most teaching methods are based around presenting the student a succession of simple elements which combine towards increasing complexity. This teaching method is found in the subjects of math, sciences, English and foreign languages. Large concepts are broken down, and are taught so if a student doesn't understand one piece they will not understand the next. This method obscures the larger picture of what is being learned. By focusing on parts of knowledge, much like an assembly line worker, the student is not connected to the larger picture. The tedious repetition overshadows the larger relevance of the task. Also when the student discovers the sum of the parts of knowledge it is not in their words or language further obscuring the larger meanings and relevance.
"If it is going to be French, you cannot teach just the mechanics you have to include the way people are, the culture, the life and breath of the language, the ourstory, the food and literature. The way most language classes are taught are more or less useless because most people cannot speak the language when the get out. So they have taken 4 years of French, and if and when they go to France they are in culture shock. There is nothing that has prepared them for it". Kevin Singleton, Senator
In a larger sense the curriculum is determined solely by the teacher (or rather they enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay them). Of the millions of things of value to learn the teacher decides what will be of interest to the mass. To reach 30 students in 50 minutes curiosity can have no place in the classroom, only conformity.
With the decision of what is to be learned already being made for the students the teacher can determine the "good" kids from the "bad" kids. The good kids do the tasks the teacher appoints with minimal conflict and a decent show of enthusaism. The bad kids fight against this, and try, openly or covertly to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn. Ultimately what teachers are transmitting when they make up the minds for a large group of youth is dependency. The "good" students wait for a teacher, and later in life other state appointed experts, to tell them what to do. We learn that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves to make the meaningful decisions of our lives. Our entire industrial based socitey is based on people doing what they are told becasue we don't know any other way.
Senator, Kevin Keany's classroom experience sums up this condition,"There is no real guidance or mentoring in teaching, just open the sluice and let the students flow through. It is a nice current while they are in your classroom, open the door a let them flood out and the new flood come in. It is the impersonal nature of the structure, reinforced by the rote learning relationships between the teachers and the students in the classrooms I was in".
"I made ditto pads for learning, a sheet of work that I passed out at the beginning of class. It was supposed to be done by the end of the period, then the student gets credit. The teacher doesn't leave the front of the classroom. The kids would sit in their seats, or jump around in the their desks, scream, rant and rave and go copy the work from each other. In the classroom the generation gaps, cultural gaps and socioeconomic gaps that were seemingly unbridgeable".
"I worked with two teachers, two completely different people with different approaches, yet they both had that, consistent hold on self respect and an ability to get it across. There is no secret of mystery to it, you go into a room where a teacher uses a regular voice and shows an interest in the student in the students, or the teacher is a quivering, cackling mass of white jelly, it is two different worlds, either hellish zoo or the other is a slow process of learning with two different people helping each other out".
"It all hinges on a fundamental lack of respect. It really gets back to the atmosphere of of control and intentions. Be it the principal's bullhorn messages over the P.A. system, teachers bursting into the study room to yell at a student to take off their hat, the lack of intelligence in responding to crisis, knee-jerk clamping down on students, never having any leeway or flexibility with the students or the quick exertion of overpowering force on a 16 year old kid. My question is how do they sleep at night?"
To graduate from the San Francisco Public School system a student must complete 220 credits with a host of mandatory classes. English must be taken for 4 years, Laboratory Science for 2 years, World Civilizations and United States History for 3 years.
Predominantly what we learn is to classify the world through measurement and rational categorization of living beings. By arranging the world in such a manner, with a emphasis on traditional Western conceptions of human functioning, the concepts of hierarchy and patriarchy are indellibally encoded into our collective pysche. This rigid classification also serves to reduce individual characteristics, which do not neatly fit the models, into a seemless mass.
This is most apparent in the teaching of science. In learning to separate mammals, reptiles and insects, into the hierarchy that exists in the ordering of species, (remember King Philip Chooses Only French Girl Scouts or Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species). What is impressed upon a student is that the individual living or non living thing is ranked. There is a top and a bottom, grounds for delineation. This theory focuses on differences instead of similarities, creating boundaries, justifying superiority and more specifically , specieism.
Having students learning this year after year only creates the hegemony of such ideas, leaving no room for non"scientific" or non"western" interpretations. Ideas and concepts that are often already part of the students heritage, only being delegitimized within the classroom.
In the teaching of history, these same kinds of ideas are transmitted by the simple fact that the one who won the war gets to tell the story. This conscious process of mythicizing the perceived threats to national interests has enabled the US industrial machine to expand and multiply. Where this retelling has been most effective in the schools is by instiliing the Horatio Algeresque myths of success into the consciousness of poor and working classes. We are trained to be willing participants in fighting imperalist wars abroad and fighting against each other at home as part duty and process of obtaining the American Dream.
Asking the students about how they felt about their classes these
replies were typical:
ML: They are easy for me. I feel they are a waste of time.
WS: It is something you have to do. They say you have to do them. Just
like the subjects they teach. You really don't have to do too much work.
Things that don't relate, they give to you..
Q: Like what?.
WS: My senior year I had to take European Lit. I really don't give a fuck
about literature. Not right now..
Q: What do you give a fuck about?.
WS: Learning a trade in high school. That would have been nice..
ML: They closed down all the auto shops and everything because of the
violence. My first year there they closed auto shop because there was a fight
in it, it hasn't been open since..
WS: They also shut off home economics too..
ML: It was when they tried to close the school last year..
JS: They got money for fucking baseball..
Another way hierarchy is enforced through teaching is through testing. The examination combines the technique of observing and individual and instilling a "normalizing judgement". The "normal" or average is the established form of coercion in standardized education. It is an instrument of power because it blankets cultural, economic and language differences while establishing a numerical means to judge performance of the whole.
The exam is a type of surveillance that makes it possible to quantify, to classify, and to punish individual students. It establishes a numerical visibility within an institution, and can be the basis for making distinctions among students. The examination, graded on the curve is the foundation for competition between individuals. The subsequent grades and the Grade Point Average become the motivating force for students to fiercely compete amongst each other, for only one can be the top of the class. It also teaches that a student's self respect should depend on an observer's abstract measure of individual worth. To reinforce the fact they are constantly evaluated and judged, a monthly report is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark, exactly down to the percentage point, how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Self evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that has ever appeared on this planet is never a factor in these decisions.
The state defines the aptitude of each individual and situates their
learning level and other abilities which also transmutes into an articulated
form of surveilance. In California this is determined by the Comprehensive
Test of Basic Skills (CTBS). It is given twice a year, and is used as the
foundation for subject level placement. The CTBS tests are a larger
reflection of a curriculum which teaches students things that are not relevant
to their lives.
WS: A lot of students at Balboa are really not prepared to take those
tests. They make you take them, it is almost like a joke. Because it is. We
don't even have some of the subjects that are on the test..
JS: And that is not your fault. It is the schools fault for not preparing
you. It is there duty to do that..
Q: Did you know that is how the funding is determined, for the California
Education system is based on CTBS test results. The scores are indicative of
who gets what.
JS: So the ones with the highest get the most? I think the lowest need
the most. For better teachers, facilities and supplies.
For individuals, the scores of the tests determine class placement and the curriculum a student is eligible to take. Those who do well on the test get placed in "college track" classes. The fundamental fault of the CTBS, and other "standardized test given in the realm of public education lies is in its inherent cultural and class bias" (Radical Teacher, June 1986 #31, pg 3 ).
The questions on the CTBS are primarily geared towards comprehension and vocabulary. This presupposes that the student is trained in reading skills and overlooks the fact that a majority of students who attend Balboa do not speak English as a first language or take into account the different emphasis of cultural communication between an oral tradition versus a written tradition. A majority of students are going to be at a disadvantage when being judged by the average established by this broad based test.
The concept of surveilance also extends into the home through assigned "homework". As if 6 hours of rote and routine in at school aren't enough? So extra work is assigned to be finished in the home. It would be a grave threat to the state if the students might otherwise use the time to learn something unauthorized, perhaps from a father or mother, or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood. The larger lesson of constant surveilance is that no one can be trusted, and that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient urgency among certain influential thinkers; it was a central prescription set down by Calvin in the Institiutes, by Plato in the Republic, by Hobbes, by Comte, by Francis Bacon. All these childless men discovered the same thing: Children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under central control.
Discipline in the schools is directly linked to the distribution of individuals in space. To achieve this end, the architecture of schools employs several techniques.
The structure of schools is founded on an isolated location, a standardized class set up. From kindergarten to college, the design of the school is founded upon an enclosed space.
"The origins of school design harkens back to military barracks, where the vagabond mass had to be held in place, looting and violence must be prevented, the fears of the local inhabitants, who do not care the 'troops' passing through their towns must be calmed; conflicts with civil authorities must be avoided, desertion must be stopped, expenditures controlled. The whole structure must be enclosed by an outer wall ten feet high from all the sides" Foucault
This idea survives at Balboa in the form of a chain link fence that surrounds the campus.
The aim of this architecture is to derive the maximum advantages and to neutralize the inconveniences, i.e. thefts, interruptions of work, and other 'cabals'. The school design concentrated the forces of production to become more integrated, while to protecting materials and mastering the labor force.
"Within the classroom setting each individual has their own place and each place has its individual. This avoids distributions in groups; breaks up collective dispositions and allows the teacher to analyze confused, massive or transient bodies of student. Disciplinary space tends to be divided in as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed" Foucault.
At Balboa, a student is assigned a desk in each class, and a locker for the duration of the year. More importantly there is no private spaces, nor private time allowed to students.
"The organization of serial space was one of the great technical mutations of elementary education. This innovation made it possible to supersede the traditional system. By a pupil working, for a few minutes with the master, the rest of the heterogeneous group remained idle and unattended. This problem of idleness and unsupervision was transformed into a system where assigned individual places made it possible for simultaneous supervision of each individual and the work of all in the classroom" Foucault.
By arranging students to sit in rows, facing the teachers desk, organized a new economy of time and of apprenticeship. It made the educational space function like a learning machine, but also a machine for supervising, creating hierarchy, rewarding. In learning classroom management techniques a teacher must eliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, i.e keep "problem" students apart, and eliminate the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals. These aims are most feasable to obtain with a linear set up of the classroom.
Within the architecture of the classroom the teachers duty is to: "take role, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits" Foucault. With these expectations, the opportunity for the teacher to actually teach is severely hindered.
Drawing from an old architectural and religious method, the monastic cell, the disciplinary space of the school is always cellular. From this idea the layout of schools is divided into a series of workshops. Each room is specified according to its broad type of operation, be it teaching science, math or English.
By walking up and down the central aisle of the workshop, it is possible for a teacher to carry out a supervision that was both general and individual. They can observe the students presence and application, the quality of their work while comparing students with each other, and classify them according to skill and speed within the successive stages of the production process. All these steps formed a permanent grid or curriculum.
In schools, individual bodies are centralized by the location, yet the individual is not given any sense of permanence. Schools distribute and circulate students in a network of relations. The student has 6 scheduled classes of 50 minute periods, with 6 different teachers. Each teacher has their own standards for respect, communication and grading. Because school years are only nine months long, with a three month break, it is common that once a student/teacher relationship is developed the year is almost over. When the student returns the next year they have to re-establish a whole new set of teacher/student relations.
"Schools are mixed spaces: "real because they govern the disposition of buildings, rooms, furniture, but also ideal, because they are projected over this arrangement of characterizations, assessments, hierarchies. The first great operation of the discipline, which is the main function of schools is to transform the confused, useless or dangerous (youth has the potential to be any of the three) multitudes into ordered multiplicities" Foucault
Asking the students what they think of the school environment some
reply:
ML: A Prison..
WS: First of all you should see our quad. That is where everyone was
supposed to go for lunch. The school is built on three levels around the
square. You can see the quad throughout the school. There are security
guards throughout the quad and on the stairs. It is just like if you have
ever seen a prison..
Q: Did they have guns? Pointed down?.
WS: They don't have guns. They have walkie talkies. And they walk around
the top level looking down at you..
Q: Do they have sticks?.
WS: They bring in professional security guards. They don't have sticks
but they wear badges..
Q: They have walkie talkies so they can call someone quick. Do you call
them rent-a-cops?.
WS: We teased them.
Prison, as defined by Stepen Wollett, is "an institution used to warehouse a population of people who have broken the law or gone against the government. Life in prision is structured through controlling movement, speech and correspondance. If a person breaks a rule they are punished through extra work or confined to a segregation unit. Security is placed as the highest priority with guards in every living unit. Most inmates are uneducated and ignorant to their rights and what the government is about. We are given propaganda through the news, and the library is very limited".Prisons also act as a mechanism to keep people without political power. Prisons are designed to hold people down, to keep them down and give them nothing. In prison the incarcerated becomes a producer, whose free labor creates a commodity to be sold. It is the same thing with public schools except the commodity of the incarcerated is the energy and creativity of youth, being honed and shaped to become wage slaves, competing in the job market when they get out. Mr.Wollet compares the two:
Prison Public Schools
1) Structured time X X
2) Controlled Movement X X
3) Security Guards X X
4) Violence and Drugs X X
5) Controlled Information X X
But we must examine the training and options the students are receiving from state run education. As San Francisco shifts into the 21st century, the options for students to find employment in limited, especially if the student is not on the "college track" (i.e. being trained for entry level white collar employment). The demise of the manufacturing sector in the city is evidenced by the closing of John O' Connell High, SFSUD's vo-tech school. The district said it was closed due to lack of funds, more importantly there is no demand for skilled, unionized labor in the Bay Area. For the majority of students at Balboa carreer choices are limited at best. The service sector, which provides low paying, high pressure, ununionized work readily welcomes youth with a high school diploma. Another option for a student is to become a "player" and sell drugs. The option with the highest visibility at Balboa was to join ROTC. Whenever uniformed students marched in the quad at school I could only see the cannon fodder for the "new world order" (and why wasn't ROTC a visible option for the students at the middle class, suburban high school I attended? Because college was the way to leave home for the middle class, and for the inner city youth who come from working classes and the poor, the Army is the only way out.)
The San Francisco Senators is a non-profit organization which provides a number of community services for youth in the Bayview/Hunter's point area. One of their programs which the offer an on-site tutoring program for "at risk" high school students.
Traditionally, the scope and purpose of a tutor in a pedagogical role was to teach the pupils reading, writing and math skills in small groups. This expectation was similar for the Senators at Balboa.
When I started working in the "one on one and small group tutorial program", it was a skeleton structure. There was one Senator working with four students one day a week in room 112, our home base for our program. Howard Blonsky, a vice principal and coordinator of special programs, introduced the program to Balboa only a month earlier. The core group of tutors hired by the Senators consisted of Kevin Singleton and Kevin Keany and myself.
The purpose of the program was to work with "at risk" students, meaning individuals who were in danger of not graduating. The program was most effective for the student who was attending school regularly and was attempting to do the work. Because the tutor only worked with a student for an hour a week, this period could be most effectively used to answer questions about key concepts that were not being understood. The students that would benefit most were "C" or "average students" who were "adequately" completing the task, but needed extra attention. Unfortunately, most of the teachers felt this category of student was passing their class and didn't need the extra attention.
The students that were also eligible for the program were pulled from the "D,F and Incomplete" list, a compendium of the students who received at least one of those marks during the last grading period. I estimated that it had well over 1000 names on it for the previous semester.
The students that were approved to our programs were the "discipline problems", the students that the teachers didn't want to deal with. How a student becomes a "discipline problem" is varied, anything from acting out for attention, boredom, to legitimate learning disabilities.
We based our initial impressions of the individual student not on personal contact, but on their CTBS scores. When we first started going through the permanent school files of the students, we found portraits of negativity. Each folder stored an individuals punishable actions dating back to the beginning of their school career. The referrals were loaded with words like "aggressive", "confrontational" and "uncooperative", these descriptions left an indelible mark on us, tainting our initial impressions of the students.
"Permanent school records, surrounded by all its documentary techniques, makes each individual a 'case'. For a long time ordinary individuality remained below the threshold of description. To be looked at, observed, described in detail, followed from day to day by an uninterrupted writing was a privilege. Permanent school records are no longer a monument for the future memory but a document for possible use" Foucault.
Initially our expectations were all completely unrealistic. With 20/20 hindsight, Kevin Keany explains, "I was kind of groping for reference points before the experience began. I realized how isolated I had been from teenagers, for such a long time. Like being a teenager, I remember that as being a really intense part of my life. That is why I say I didn't see anything in my head as far as when I got in there. I had seen kids before, and I had grown up with the kids more or less the same archetypes. My expectations were so vague".
We attempted to set a program that was founded upon the ideals of independence, equality and the autonomy of the individuals involved. We very quickly learned not to look at a student as a statistic or a test score. The Senators set up their own schedules and researched the students they wanted to work with. When a student decided to participate in our class we stressed the individuals choice to participate or not to. We attempted to make our expectations very clear and address the students wants and needs.
The ultimate goals of Kevin, Kevin and myself were very similar. In our environment we attempted to erase the hierarchy and distance between adult and youth. Our attitude was founded upon a fundamental respect for these individuals, but our sense of respect was not based upon the fact that we are in a position of authority but because the individual, with their emotions, wants, needs and fears, matters just because they are alive. We attempted to teach by opening up our hearts. Our main emphasis was to shift teaching by using rote, memorization and repetition, to using tangible examples and life experience.
As Kevin Keany puts it, "the whole thing is that you express your ideals or believe in them, or tell yourself that you believe in them. Is that you bring your ideals down and they become secondary to your interaction, a tool instead trying to make an interaction. The challenge in a school like Balboa, between the put downs and the barbaric attitudes the adults have towards the kids, is your attempt to get across to students that you don't feel that way. You don't think it is going to be that way. It doesn't have to be that way, and get them to believe that. That becomes the daily work in the life at school. You have got to bring that into the kids needs".We turned the Senetors tutorial program and Room 112 into a laboratory. From the onset, we started asking the students why they were getting "D's" and "F's". We found that it was not because the student couldn't comprehend the subject matter it was because the presentation of the subject had no relevance to their lives. If a student is not compelled to learn, forcing them to study will ultimately have negative repercussions.
Every Senator had their own individual method and approach.while trying to consistently connect the relevance to the subject. The purpose of our approach to teaching a subject wasn't to twist a student around but to pull the subject apart and allow the students to rename each part and reassmble the whole on thier terms and language.
We took the basic approach in our program of combining a fundamental respect towards human beings while transmitting life knowledge. What we talked about was bullshit unless we made a connection to reality of the world the students came from.
It became clear very early on that we were working with a disproportionate number of males who lacked basic math or reading skills. I found one of the most effective techniques to be the ones that maintained relevance and one of the most appropriate tools was the sports page. There, students applied division, multiplication addition and subtraction skills without realizing they were doing math. They were figuring out how many points Michael Jordan averaged last season, and how well their favorite team was doing, but not math.
Another effective way of reaching the students was to make the connections between their interests in the present and see the similarities from the past. One of the most memorable sessions was when a group of students were complaining about how stupid poetry was. It was subtly ironic because almost every student I worked with was into rap music, which in itself is an appropriated form of lyric poetry. What I did was to have the students pound out a beat on the table and have students take a turn at telling their own rap to the beat. I broke out the English textbook and read Shelly, Keats and Dickenson to the beat. It was energetic exchange and showed the traditional poets in a whole new light to the students.
In high school, students are on the verge of adulthood but are not encouraged to embrace or develop to their potential. In our class room settings we encountered points where our questions lead the student towards a decision or direction. But more importantly we found because students are individuals, a teacher cannot be an enforcer, but more of a facilitator. Individual attention is next to impossible when one person must cater to the needs of thirty individuals in 50 minutes.
Kevin Keany reflects, "besides being tutors, what we took out of this experience is the youth spirit. Being around the youth taught me about being myself, and being an adult. These kids, who are caught in the ebb and flow of our societies cultural influence, challenged every ideal I hold. For the first few months they were so cool and accepting, you could make mistakes and be all right with that, most of them. It was just a sense of acceptance, a casual acceptance of other people is something I had lost. I realize that they would flip right back into cappin' on you and never admit to being gentile people, but they really are. They would hate to be labeled that for the most part. I got this gentleness from then, almost this heartbreaking vulnerability from them. It is hard, because it was almost a spiritual experience, a rekindling of a spirit, something that was lost a long time ago living in a city."
"The students who are engaged in the socialization process that our schools offer are inevitability contaminated. They are teenagers, they are crazy, fucked up in a lot of ways, they are not pure people. But they got a lot going for them, more going for them than Balboa High school was ready to acknowledge. I guess that is one of my biggest sources of anger. The whole design of school and curriculum is to consciously stifling the life source of youth. Young people are one of the most positive aspects of our society. Teenage perspective, teenage maturity, it is the beginning of adulthood, each individual has capacities that are maturing and they are trying to express them. There is a hell of a lot, as in all aspects of aging, of really unique, honest truth in what the youth say and what they see. High school could be the place that fosters that. Balboa is a place that stifles it. At its least malignant form it stifles it and tries to squeeze as much conformity into the hallways and shut out the vision and the creativity and the honesty out from the kids, or at least push as much back in as they can."
Kevin Keany encapsulates the ultimate success of the program by saying, "We reached kids because they are out there reaching too. The are out there, with hands extended. Whenever a kids light bulb went on. When they understood something it was like a door had opened up and there was a light going on around them illuminating everything, and understanding, it was beautiful."
Started by Dr. Bruce Collins, the Black Brothers Coming Together (BBCT), was initally a "retention" program ran in conjunction with San Francisco City College to help black males to graduate from high school. The BBCT intended to develop positive role models by assisiting students in graduating from high school. The way they did this was to enroll BBCT students at city college, which would give them a head start on receiving college credits and eventually have them come back to Balboa High School to help younger students.
Senator Kevin Singleton, who worked with the program felt, "the BBCT had a positive effect on the students. They attended class, developed a sence of untiy amongst themselves, built a community with a strong group dynamic which constantly went on."
Singleton sites the methods and leadership of Dr. Collins as the main ingreident of success for the BBCT program. "I remember one time he came in to class and talked about his mother. She was sick. In my high school, in all my schooling I never encountered something like that. He was totally levelling with them, totally human. He went into this long dialouge about her, and how she had always been there for him. I was just blown away. Some of the kids were crying, others were looking away, trying not to let it hit them."
From a base of emotional honesty among peers, the BBCT became the foundation for an awakening and articulation of political conscientousness. What was intended to be a class for students to catch up on homework, became an arena for organizing.
Earlier in the year the NAACP filed a suit against the SFSUD for choosing a Hispanic from outside the district, rather than a person of color from within the district to become the next Superintendent. The BBCT staged a series of walkouts at Balboa. This is when the administration, who was roughly indifferent to this program began to engage in a more virulent form of harassment.
Will Smith, president of the BBCT retells his experience,"They didn't want to give the program to us because they felt it was just going to be a bunch of niggers upstairs, makin' noise. They didn't want to give us a room. They said if they did, it would cut back on another teacher. She (Principal Montevirgin) played us up front, but she played us closely. It wasn't a trust issue, to me she really didn't care if we succeeded or not."
Kevin Singelton posits why the BBCT got the reaction it did by saying, "the administration really didn't care about the kids, and they didn't think the program was going to do much, positive or negative. There are probally tons of programs in the school system and the way the system is set up is like, 'we will put a little money here and a little money there', without really caring if things improve for the students, as long as we have a report at the end of the year which allows us to get more money."
To squelch the political radical is the fundamental purpose of the state run school. A political radical in a school is a person who disrupts, questions or challenges the authority of the teacher and larger power structure. A student who sabotages the classroom is singled out and punished. More often than not, they will be made an example of to keep the multitude in line. As the BBCT became stronger as a student group, individuals or even the entire group was blamed when a disruption occurred on campus.
As Marcus Lewis says,"They frontin' themselves."
For what was never made entirely clear, on March 3, 1991 Rodney King was traveling over 100 mph to evaide 10 police cars who were in pursuit. When he was pulled over 20 miles North of San Fernando, he was ordered to get out of the car and lay face down. An officer used a Taser to shock him into submission. The officers proceeded to beat him for more than a minute.
George Holiday videotaped the event from his apartment which was located accross the street. According to Holiday, "before they started hitting him King was cooperative."
He was hospitalized for 2 days than, taken to jail where he was eventually booked for evading police officers and for investigation of parole violation. King was held for three days before being released from county jail.
King, an unemployed construction worker, relates his experience. "I am glad I'm not dead, that's all, I'm lucky they didn't kill me. When I stepped out of the car they handcuffed me, shocked me and struck me across the face. After they shocked me they paused then struck me across the face with a billy club and shocked me again. After that they continued to pound on me and beat me all over my body".
He sustained a broken right ankle, a boot mark in his chest, a cut on his right cheek, a black eye and bruised arms and legs. He received between 53 to 56 nightstick blows and 7 kicks.
What made this beating unique was not its intensity but the fact that it was caught on video tape. It showed the Untied States police brutality in its rawest form. Although a commonplace occurance for the poor of the urban infrastructure, to the rest of the country it became symbolic of the chasm between police officers and the communities they are supposed to protect.
Lawrence Powell -29 years old- "I acted as if I was being attacked by a man on drugs. I was completely in fear of my life, scared to death".
Theodore Brissaro -39 years old- "I thought the whole thing was out of control".
Daryl Gates, LAPD Chief of Police: "I think we have a system of justice, we just witnessed that system work. . . we may not like it . . but we must not prejudge the system. We must not prejudge the administrative systems of justice.
King's Defense Lawyer: "The verdict says it is OK to beat somebody on the ground, beat the crap out of them." The jury chose to ignore and disregard the fundamental issues: the issues of brutal, vicious, felonious assault. There is nothing Rodney King did to deserve this fate, and the defendants are walking out as heroes. The fact is twelve middle class suburban jurors are not going to convict 4 white cops. The King video shows police brutality in its rawest form, it is only unusual because it was filmed. It is symbolic of the chasm between police officers and the communities they are supposed to protect.
4/30/92- The rebellion starts in Los Angeles, the city is soon on fire. In San Francisco peaceful demonstrations become riots which invite looting. Why were people looting? Because we associate commodities with what is inaccessible in our society, prestige and being part of the power elite.
*It is interesting to note that the Beating of Rodney King never made it to the front page of the SF chronicle until the riot/reaction/rebellion, and then, coverage only focused on the lawlessness of the inner city inhabitants, not the issue of the verdict.
*The ACLU surveyed the residential zip codes of the 7,568 personnel of the LAPD and found that 83.1% of the personnel live in the suburbs. (SF Examiner 3/30/94)
PC: I used to live in Ventura and Simi Valley has the highest proportion
retired LAPD in Southern California. It is where they live.
KC: That is similar to New York. Most of the police live in the city,
they live in Long Island and other suburban periphery. They drive into the
"jungle".
JG: That is a fundamental respect issue, if you don't live there you can
never share the same commonalties and build up a rapport with the people you
work with. It is like being ruled by an invader.
KC: When the police bring home stories of the animals in the city to the
suburbs the people become scared. The mayor of New York tried to pass a law
that made the police live in the city. If it was enforced most of the force
would be gone.
Is there Justice?
-money rules this country.
-we are out of Justice.
-If it was white man and black cops there would be an automatic death penalty
for the officers.
-The anger should be directed downtown, at the cops.
-A lot of places they was down in their own neighborhoods.
-In their own neighborhood how out of all them stores how many do you think
is owned by blacks? None. The are owned by A-rabs, white people.
-It ain't going to be changed.
-We gotta buy in black shops, that's all.
-There is going to be a big change coming.
-There has always been racism in this country.
-That means if they can get away with that they can get away with a lot a
more stuff.
-The police are going to beatin people up if they know it is going to be
allowed, and they don't care about how bad that person get beat up. I seen it
already.
-They will just say Not Guilty.
-That is uncalled for.
-It is the same thing how they did like Mike Tyson.
-I don't understand how they put all white people on his jury. It supposed
to be a jury of your peers. White people from high jobs, they don't
understand what he do. And why (King) kept driving.
-I am not racist or nothin, but why did they pick an all white jury? That
makes no sense to me.
-They will say say he provoked them he spit on them or something.
-They have it on tape, it is all there
-They said he got up and said something and tried to charge one of them.
-He got a fuckin electric chain on him, in a choke hold.
-They pullin him while they beatin him.
-How he going to do somethin with all those force people up? They got guns
and sticks and stuff. I don't think so. Ain't nobody going to take on that.
-That is like saying he caused it all (this reminds me of the televised cop
chases that end in a shootout- live on tape- nobody questions wether the
officers have a right to shoot and kill)
-They blame the victim.
-I don't care is he was driving fast, When he did stop is if fair for all of
them to beat on him like that?
-They beat him like a dog.
-I know how Rodney King feels.
-If you get out of line they are supposed to retain you.
-or try to hold your wrists.
-not beat you.
-cuff you or whatever. They didn't do that at all. All they did was beat
him until he couldn't move and then they cuffed him and took him where he had
to go.
-Why didn't he pull out his gun?
-Who the hell is goin' to be billy bad-ass in front of hella guns?
-Not me!
-No one that's who.
-I want to know something. Now, say, they said they was in a little small
town where there was ninety eight percent is all white, where he got beat up
at. What I'm just sayin, Lets say he was in Compton, a cop got caught in
Compton,and four black brothers beat up on him the same way, they would have
Death penalty automatic.
-gas chamber.
-they did this so they goin'.
-That's wrong.
-They would have been made examples.
-Do you know how the Watts Riots of 1965 started? It was two white police
officers were arresting a black person in the middle of Watts. An altercation
broke out, a crowd gathered and it exploded.
Is it going to take something like this to bring everybody together?
-It just might.
-It is going to start a revolution.
-It will end the fighting without reason.
-We are being lazy, not just black people, but all poor people in America.
We got a Constitution and we ain't pushing it to the limit, we are not doing
shit, we are letting all these rich people kick our ass. The Constitution is
not set up for us but for them. What we need, I am serious, people in America
need to revolt.
-All right, what kind? Is it going to be the people taking on the police
force?
-Once they get a badge they thing they are better than everybody, you try to
talk to the police, reason with them, they don't listen.
-They have too much power.
-They have all the guns. And they will win in court.
-Guns ain't shit, anybody can get a gun.
-There is way more artillery on the street than on a police force. What they
got is money.
-They got political backing. They can get away with anything.
Do you think getting stuff makes things equal?
-It is proving a point.
-I don't know what it is.
-It really isn't proving a point it it just giving people like us a chance to
take shit that's all. Everybody, people that have been honest their whole
life were taking stuff. If you get a chance to take free stuff, you are going
to take it.
-I will tell you right now, the President is a crook, the CIA is a crooked,
FBI, IRS and the police is all crooked. If we are going to get something free
we might as well be crooked to.
-I had an opportunity to take something last night. Somebody handed me a
footstool that was looted from Macy's window display. I thought whether I
should take it or not take it
-You should take it because it is free.
-To be honest with you I didn't take it. Do you know why?
-Because you had some leather jackets?
-Is window smashing, and taking going to solve these problems? Is it going
to make people react and the cops more mad?
-I will tell you right now it is madness. You can't stop it no more. You
just can't stop it. The verdict is the straw that broke the camels back.
People were just waiting. There is no way you are going to stop the gangs,
there is no way that they will stop the violence. You didn't see no bloods or
Crips fighting each other, you didn't see no body fighting over San Francisco
turf. They all grouped up and went against the police. Because one way or
another everybody has something against the police.
-When we started marching at 24th street (and Mission) there was people from
HP (Hunter's Point), Sunnydale, Lakeview, Double Rock, Mission, Portero (Hill)
we all marched together to the Fillmo'. When we got down there we started
tearing shit up.
-That is exactly what they are afraid of.
-They don't want us to be together.
-I fucked up I should have taken that chair. Because that is corporate
America. That's the enemy, the system. The Justice system, the corporations
that make money off us. A part of me says "fuck ya I am glad you went to
Radio Shack and pulled the place apart and took everything in sight. They
have been taking stuff from you for years.
-But the other part is that we took innocent stuff.
-We robbed from small businesses, that's not right.
Is there a difference between a small business and a large corporation like
Macy's?
-It doesn't matter. When someplace is busted open and you are tired of
paying $77.00 for a pair of shoes that is not going to your peoples, you are
going to go take something. Forget it, it ain't my peoples store, we don't
own it. So lets go get it, it ain't hurtin' my people.
-The little stores in our community, that are for us, run by us. We fucked
up when we got them. Those big ass places, fuck them I am glad we hit all
those places.
-When Bush says "we should repeal the verdict" ,it is too late, you can't
change nothing. If you put them in jail it still won't change nothing. It is
too late.
Here's a larger question. After the stores are looted, what next?
-Motherfuckers are going to start shooting each other.
-The world will come to an end, motherfuckers will start blowing shit up.
-As soon as the National Guard starts shooting people in LA that's it. The
gang bangers have way more artillery than the average cop. Cops got a 9mm
automatic but these brothers have AK-47's, a 12 gage can't hang with a street
sweeper. The whole thing is going to toe up. It will spread from each city
to each city.
-Do you think it is just going to come down to guns and violence?
-Violence, that's all.
-There is no way you can stop it now. The National Guard is going to get fed
up because one of them will get killed. Once they start that they will have
to bring the Army in.
-OK let's say mayor Frank Jordan declares San Francisco an Emergency zone and
declares a 24 hour curfew. How do you thing people are going to react?
-A 24 hour curfew?
-You can't do that because people have to work.
-People are dying, everything is shut down.
-Ain't nobody going to stay in their house.
-It is going to be a war.
-But then again 'Frisco ain't hard as LA. Those boys in LA ain't stoppin for
nobody. They don't care who you bring. 'Frisco ain't like that yet. If
'Frisco and Oakland get like that there ain't no way the cops, national guard
or the Army are going to be able to stop them. Unless they start blowing up
houses and everything. Shooting ain't going to solve it. Because is you get
shot somebody else is going to get shot.
-Two people are going to get shot.
-We don't want to see people die, but we can't do nothin about it.
-There are too many people. They got black, white, mex, Fillipino, everybody
hooked up against the police.
-I don't think there is no black person in the National Guard who will shoot
another black person.
-During that whole rally there wasn't one black police out there.
-They know better,they know to stay the fuck back. Just because they is
black, they still wearin blue.
(Mr. Walker, vice principal sticks his head in and says "take your cap off")
-close the door.
-They nervous.
-Have you noticed any tension this week?
-Since it started.
-Nobody will stand on the back of the bus. People are terrified. They know
what time it is now.
-They had us weak for all these years, until now.
-Everythang is toe' up. Everybody dis each other. It don't matter now.
-We are at a point right now, the stores are being looted. It will end. And
we will sit here and say,"now what?".
-There will be hella people dying. You watch.
-There will be a lot of stores burning.
-Do you want to see people die?
-No. . . but we can't do nothing about it.
-It is everybody against everybody.
-It turns into a race thing. It's not against the police anymore. I seen
some white people they was with us from the march at 24th street, they was
gettin their ass whupped. They didn't do shit. Like on the news that one guy
in his truck. They pulled him out of his truck and started whuppin his ass,
knocked him unconscious and shit. They killed his shit.
-Was that fair?
-No that ain't fair but you got to think again they shouldn't be out there.
If I knew that there was hella crazy white people running around mad at black
people I would not go out the house. Fuck that. I wouldn't go no where near
where they was at. They brought that shit on themselves, you just don't do
shit like that.
-The things you are talking about what you saw on the news, right?
-No, shit I seen yesterday when I was down there.
-So, people were getting hurt?
-Ya.
-And the police ain't going to do nothing.
-They was scared. the was running from us.
-Like the national Guard in LA, they was just looking white people was
tearing things up. they ain't going to do nothing.
-Cause they know if one of them get hurt it is going to be hella shit.
-So, have you guys have accepted the inevitability of violence? People are
going to get hurt?
-We don't like it, but that is just the way it is going to be.
-If I was the mayor, I would say that we were in a state of emergency.
Everybody outside their house after nine is getting shot.
-There ain't no way in the world that you are going to come down to Sunnydale
and tell them to be in at nine. Because they going to look at you and say
"what? we live here".
-They will shoot the cops.
-That is what I meant by enforcing a curfew. Enforcing it in your
neighborhood.
-They will start getting killed.
-You are going to have to send a couple of patty wagons out there to the
community. If they send two cop cars . . .
-They going to flip those bitches over
-They will blow those cars up and everything.
-Shit will go down.
-Things will get worse before they get any better.
-Will we have to go through this violence to have things get better.
-Hell yes, it is going to have to be like that
-Because it is too late.
-Is there a way to work together so people won't have to die?
-If I was the mayor, I would call a big ass meeting. With people from the
community, community leaders.
-Who are your community leaders? Do you even know who they are?
-Cecil Williams, and shit . . .
-What I am saying. . . It ain't going to stop! It ain't the old people doing
it. It's the young people doing it. People my age that are doing it. You
cannot tell them nothing nowadays. If they momma can't tell them to stop.
How is someone else going to? They will be looking at you like "who the hell
is you, and what the fuck are you doing?".
And they are going to keep doing it. I am telling you you aren't going to
stop them unless a bunch of them get shot. There was a three year old on the
TV, his cousin got shot and he was sayin, "we going to get him, we going to
get him". That the only thing he say.
-It is going to come down to revenge, one big gang war. Except this time
instead of against each other it will be against the police.
-If one of us die, at least two policemen will die.
Are the Police your Enemies?
-YES.
-Or are they just guys doing a job?
-NO. -See that ain't the first time this has happened in LA. This is the
first time the police got busted. This happens every day. It happens up
here. Everywhere.
-Why do the police have the power, where are they coming from?
-They are not supposed to have power like that.
-The only thing I need to say is politics. They got it because they are the
government, and that's the power.
-They got it because we are scared.
-We showed them we weren't scared yesterday when we were whuppin their ass.
-When every body gets together and shows that they aren't scared. They see
they can't stop us. They know, look how quick they brought in the National
Guards.
-Look what they are showing on the TV. It will influence everybody, it will
be nationwide.
-As it gets bigger and bigger who has got more of the power? Who has got the
big guns? Who has the big ships? How many people did they kill in Iraq?
-200,000 people.
-We shouldn't have been over there.
-We were fighting for land and oil.
-When did people start protesting? After the war was already started. After
the soldiers were already fighting. When Exxon spills oil in Alaska, when do
people get up? After the shit has already spilled. When do the riots start?
After the cops kicked his ass. What's up?
-If the cops went to jail that wouldn't have happened.
-Why did the trial get taken out of Los Angeles?
-Why aren't people taking steps right now to take control of their own
neighborhoods, their own lives. And not letting things like this happen to
them, so they have to react.
-You are saying the day he got beat we should have been out there protesting.
-No, like Harvey said, Rodney King is not the first person to be beaten, this
happens every day. Why aren't we at the police station saying "don't beat us,
don't use these tactics".
-People say "it don't happen to me so I don't care".
-It is the same way people look at homeless people. They think they are a
bum. But that might be you one day. The world is messed up. They don't
care.
-To me everybody in the world is crooked you know, if the world is full of
crooked people it ain't ever going to be cool.
-Why are people crooked?
-We got no choice.
-Because it is our society is like that. The only way you are going to come
along, you gotta be a crook. The only way to get up to a higher place you
gotta be a crook. You can't never be nice. I don't understand that. Why you
can't be honest? You gotta make some changes or you gonna stay down on a low
level.
-How are we going to change it within our own little world that we live in?
With our families and our friends. How are we going to start being honest?
And how are we going to live so we don't fuck each other over to survive?
-Man! It's just like you said . . . who is the enemy?
-I don't know who.
-Who are my enemies?
-Are ourselves our enemies?
-I don't have an enemies, really.
-I can't trust him, he might backstab me, I can't trust you, you might
backstab me. You can't go to them they might do something. You can't trust
nobody. The only thing is that you can trust is yourself. That's it. See
you can worry about people, then again you can't worry about nobody. If you
worry about people then you at their level. And when they get you pulled
down, they goes up. They get ahead of you.
Do you want to hear a statistic?
" In 1984, Forbes Magazine, a leading periodical of finance and Big Business
drew up a list of the wealthiest individuals in the United States. The top
400 people had assets totaling 60 billion dollars. At the bottom of the
population there are 60 million people who had no assets at all. Around the
same time the economist, Lester Thurow estimated that 482 very wealthy
individuals controlled without necessarily owning over two trillion dollars."
I don't know if you guys can fathom that, I can't fathom one thousand dollars
myself. But one million dollars, or one hundred million dollars, and one
thousand million. Consider the influence of such a very rich class, with it's
inevitable control of press, radio, television, and education on the thinking
of the nation.
-These are the people that can push a button and say, "the worlds over".
-Things are getting worser and worser every day.
-It is going to have to.
-I don't have to. We can try to stop it. If we stop it one day, than the
next day something is wrong. There is always a right and always a wrong.
-The only reason people was lootin last night because, we was marchin, we was
all pumped up. When we got there it was the only shit left to do. What are
we going to do? Walk away?
-That's what happened, that's what they said on the news too.
-That's true if you are going to march, march and march. There are going to
be stores right there. The police ain't going to do nothin unless it just
turns into violence. They can arrest people, but they will let them out
sooner or later. In LA the jails are already overcrowded.
Do you think more jails are the answer?
-NO.
-Look at all the mother fuckers on death row.
The week before the Simi Valley acquittal was tumultuous at Balboa. Monday, a black student shot an asian student in the neck at Lincoln High School. Although the incident was not gang related, it put the student body of Balboa on edge. CTBS tests were given on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Wednesday, April 29, the acquittal of the officers was announced after the students had gone home for the day. By Thursday, April 30 1992, the insurrection in Los Angeles had erupted. In San Francisco marches turned into riots and looting in the downtown area. The mayor of San Francisco, Frank Jordan, declared a state of emergency and imposed a city wide 9:00 curfew and halted bus operation from the poorer parts of the city.
On Friday, May 1st, the atmosphere at Balboa was charged. Marcus Lewis retells the events of the morning, "The first thing we came to school early. Some students from State came with some pamphlets. They told us about a big rally, that we should go to. That was the plan from right there, as soon as they came. That made me want to fight. That was the only thing on our mind that day, we were going to rally. We were going to have our voices be heard. We didn't want to sit. That just got us pumped up. Nobody went to class."
Around 10:30 a group of students from Jefferson High School, were marching around Balboa trying to get students to join them. The procession was followed by a small phalanx of police on foot and several squad card. Principal Montevirgin addressed the school over the P.A., announcing "If you walk out, you are out of here. It is a closed campus, nobody is leaving." The administrators did not attempt to de-escalate the situation. They shut the doors and said "you are going to stay here".
Marcus and Kevin Keany walked outside to join the demonstration. Marcus recalls, "I walked out the front door, they can't keep me in there. Mr. Walker told the police not to let me back in. I went around the back."
When they returned, the power structure reacted accordingly. The vice principals, Mr. Walker and Mr. Smith were in Room 112, yelling at both of them for violating the rule. The veins on Mr. Walker's neck looked as though they were about to explode.
Throughout the office a feeling of hyper-kinetic energy, driven by panic careened into the hallway. Something was out of control, and the administration was beginning to show it. The synthesis of the early morning discussion was encapsulated by Eugene Lesser, the acting supervisor of Room 112, by saying "this school is a house of cards, it can be brought down in a second, if you (the students) decide to get together and walk out".
Sparked by the concept of having a student strike, the students decided if they couldn't join an external protest they would create one inside. They were started to make signs, with slogans like "Fight The Power" and "Fuck da Police". While others made plans to have a mass meeting on the front steps of the school at lunch.
Just as the students were making signs, Principal Montevirgin came into Room 112 and asked "what were the students doing there?" We replied "the students were talking about the acquittal". She asserted "if the students were talking about there feelings, they were being counseled". Principal Montevirgin proceded to move the whole class to the teen counseling center, where trained school psychologists could deal with the students emotions.
Once the room was cleared out, Montevirgin came back into the room and accused Eugene and I with getting the students riled up. We said we were "constructively talking about the anxiety caused by this event". Her action was too late, because the student's fuse was already lit.
Lunch time came around, and nothing much was happening. Having closed the campus with a promise of treating the student body to a free lunch was problematic for the administration because food services are non existent at Balboa. A majority of the students ignored the imposed martial law and left to get lunch.
When it was time to go back to 5th period students started clumping in the center of the quad and a spontaneous sit in developed and metamorphosized to include over one hundred students. The discussion was mediated by students. The teachers and administrators were delegated to the outside. Lasting over two hours, the sit in produced a long list of grievances and solutions geared towards improving the students school environment.
After the final bell rung most of the students who were assembled dispursed. Except for a group of twenty students who went into Room 112 and started writing the ideas from the sit-in onto paper. One of the student's first solutions to materialize was a student review committee for the teachers, and a formal a grievance process where students could complain about a teacher without fear of suffering repercussions. The meeting had very high energy, yet many incomplete ideas were forced to wait through the weekend.
On the following Monday is when the student movement began to crystalize. Between 12 and 15 students were assembled in room 112 throughout the day and formulated a Student Bill of Rights. It consisted of four main points focusing on an individual students right to have choice and expression within an institutional setting. Each broad ideological point had proposals, ranging from mild to radical, to implement them (see appendix).
The Student movement that developed was spontaneous. It was individual and group energy feeding off itself. There was no leader, everyone was leading each other. Throughout the formulation stages the students opted for having no leader, with the sentiment being that people would just waste time fighting over a title and not get anything done. It proved to be an egalitarian movement with the female students, like Dina, having equal say in all matters. The gender balance leaned towards males, but the women that were there made their voices heard and were equally acknowledged. Since there was no single leader, the administration initially had trouble identifying the students who were organizing and instigating.
By Tuesday copies of the "Student Bill of Rights" were distributed to the students. They also developed a letter, signed by over 200 students and delivered to the Superintendent of the SFUSD.
By Wednesday the students who were showing up to room 112 just messed around. Realizing for this movement to be pure the direction had to come from the students, not me. I threw up my hands and resumed tutoring. On Wednesday, I felt the movement was dead, the sparks had snuffed out.
When I arrived to school on Thursday May 6th, twenty students were in room 112, writing down the Bill of rights on poster paper. The room was buzzing with energy and activity. The students had determined they were going to have a strike, and rally for the whole student body on the next day.
A student named Whitey, prepared a statement and started calling the media to inform them a peaceful gathering was happening at Balboa and requested them to bring their cameras. A reporter who was a friend of Mrs. Montevirgin's called to ask what was going on. She had no idea anything was happening. A lesson for all those who trust the media to be impartial, DO NOT because they are firmly rooted on the side of power! This does not diminish the skill the students displayed at keeping secrets and avoiding the administration. Because the students were so complexly covert, Montevirgin didn't know until the last moment.
When Montevirgin found out about the strike she became enraged. She called Dr. Collins at 9:30 on Thursday night and said "what have you been teaching your black students, they are starting a revolution at my school". She then proceeded to call Blonsky and blame the whole incident on the "skinhead" who worked for him.
On the morning of Friday May 7th, a meeting had assembled with about
10 students, the Senators, Blonsky ,Dr. Augustine, Dr.Goody and
Mrs.Montevirgin. It was apparent form the start that Montevirgin was not
going to allow any dialogue and discussion. From the onset she dictated the
meeting by cutting people off in mid sentence, shouting down any oppositional
points and veering off into moot points when anything remotely resembling the
truth was mentioned. This meeting, coupled with Montevirgin's blocking of
media coverage and locking down the school effectively derailed the Friday
strike.
Q: Do you think the list of grievances and the meeting what was being
said, was there valid things being said?
WS: Very valid things. But I knew nothing would get accomplished. I knew
how they would handle it. They would basically jump on your side to slow it
down. When it is over with you are grinded down. You know how the meetings
were It was a grinding process. Meeting after meeting, then we will have
another meeting. And you talk about the same old issues.
Q: It degenerated into non-issues, Mrs Montevirgin started defending
herself about the hat rule.
WS: It was just . . . why bother?
ML: To me it was like I was five, and my mother comes to school when I am
in trouble. And your mother believes the teacher, and that is all they are
doing. Now they say "you are still students and you have no say, what we say
goes, don't be messin' with it, bottom line."
WS: I don't know it really wasn't nothing surprising. It is just like
another struggle with a different reason. If we sneak out of class, they know
how to react to us. It is no different the way we was protesting, the way
they acted towards us. I see the same connection. How they revolve around
(and use) power.
One positive thing about the meeting was the SFSUD policy on student
rights, outlined in the hand book, magically appeared. They found that under
state law students are allowed to hand out information, use the schools PA to
announce events, pass out flyers as long as it is not printed on school
equipment, wear buttons or other things that are political statements. This
knowledge in itself was a small victory because students could wear their
Malcom X hats as a political statement. Yet, all these "rights" were subject
to interpretation by administrators.A reporter from the Chronicle showed up
and was escorted around the campus by a group of students. What was printed
in the paper was a picture of students standing in front of a graffiti covered
wall in a boys bathroom.
Q: How did you feel about the way the reporter handled the story?
WS: Nothing. It was like she just came and felt like she had to do
something because she was there.
ML: I thought the media was going to talk about the teachers. But when
you see the picture in the paper. You see them standing in the bathroom
looking at the graffiti. The graffiti has been going on so long, you see it
everywhere, ride a bus. You don't need to see it in the newspaper. You need
to talk about the real reason they came up here.
Q: Wasn't the reason you called the press was to show your student bill
of rights too?
WS: Yea, at first they kept asking if it was going to be a riot. And we
kept telling them no, we were having a sit-in. We came up with a Student bill
of rights.
Q: Do you think if you said yes they would have all came?
WS: Hell yes. They would have come if we told them we had a teacher with
a gun to his head they would have come running. That's what it is.
ML: The only thing we get media for is trouble. Because every year
everybody is having money problems and it don't mean nothing. But when there
is a fight or somebody got stabbed, there are cameras, we talk about it for
the whole week.
WS: Or if it is something they don't like, like communism. Something so
beneficial, they raise hell about it. They only come when that idiot comes
down from Wells Fargo.
The media's treatment of the students devalued any credibility that the students had because it depicted the students of being incapable of respecting their own environment.
That night a "Fuck the Police" demonstration and march was held at Dolores Park. There were about 500 people sitting in the middle of the park with banners and 10 foot puppets. The perimeter of the park was surrounded with police cars, helicopters buzzed overhead, and motorcycle cops tried to coral onlookers like stray cattle. There was a small PA system through which various speakers talked about police brutality, organization and revenge. The speakers were frequently interruped by a police van, which announced through loud speakers, "the gathering was in violation of the law and when the group set foot onto the street we were going to get arrested".
When I arrived at the demonstration I noticed that several of the students from Balboa were sitting in the front row. Their excitement was reflected by an unmistakable light that glowed in their eyes, it was unbridled newly discovered feeling of empowerment. When the march actually started, the students were in the front, leading the charge.
It was evident from the start that the power structure of San Francisco was not going to allow a repeat performance of the events of the previous week. When the demonstration crossed Market Street there was a line of riot police blocking both sides. They were not going to let the demonstration go up Market street to team up with the more militant elements of the gay community and potentially loot or destroy the property of the Castro Street merchants, or head down market street to the stores and office buildings of downtown. The only way for the group to head was North.
On DuBoce and Church the Muni Street cars were halted, a line of cops blocked the passage to the North. They were not going to let the demonstration go over the hill to the housing projects in the Western Addition then potentially towards Pacific Heights. The Police effectively cordoned off all possibilities. There was no way out. After a brief conflict the police started isolating groups and arresting protestors.
The day after I got fired, 40 students staged a walkout/demonstration in front of the school in protest over my termination. The protest was moved to the large auditorium where 80 to 100 students had an open mike discussion with the superintendent of the SFSUD. While this meeting was going on I met with Mrs. Montevirgin and Tim Gabutero, manager of the Senators. I didn't get my job back, but some of the issues were put on the table in our conference
JM-A student and an unnamed teacher have brought to my attention that you
are in fact the ringleader of the whole student movement
JG-Who were they?
JM-I am not going to share the name of the student who shared with me the
information
JG-Unnamed sources?
JM-They said that you were telling the students what to do, go on strike,
walk out
JG-Yes, some kids came up to me yesterday with some pretty drastic stuff- my
position was, "look you have to have a clear idea of what how and when- you
have to have an idea what you want before you jump into this abyss, because
that is not necessarily your first step, that is a last resort to doing what
you are talking about."
JM-Yes, that really frustrates me about the whole thing is all of a sudden I
hear a student say "but we have been to you many many times, honest to god,
honest to god". Nobody has come to me many many times. Or even one time.
JG-They are afraid of you Mrs. Montevirgin
JM-See but why would they say publicly they have come to me many many times
when in fact they have not come to me. If they are afraid of me, why don't
they have an adult they trust be the mediator and come to me?
JG-And that is what we were doing until you fired me yesterday Mrs.
Montevirgin
JM-No see that again was wrong. Because then after lunch the whole room of
112 was full of students. I walked in them to tell them to get to class.
Lets clarify my role here, at this school, my role is to get those kids to
those class rooms for education. OK? That is my main role. OK? I cannot
allow students to stay in one room two periods, and this is since the Friday
after Rodney King. Almost on a daily basis to be there and cutting their
classes. I am responsible for them to be in classroom. And then I walk in
there, all of them jumped on me. And said "why did you fire Justin?" I think
the word fired Justin is inaccurate.
JG-Well what was I than yesterday?
JM-I did not employ Justin at Balboa.
JG-OK Tim fired me. But your influence got Tim to fire me.
JM-NOW,What I wanted from this meeting is to clarify the role of a San
Francisco Senators in the school. I need to know exactly what is their job
description?
TG-Let me tell you what it is, basically the job description
JM-Now, uh. . .are we supposed to be taping this meeting
JG-This is for me because. . .
JM-I, I do not like a meeting with a tape recorder
JG-I am sorry I don't like being fired without due process. This is my
version of making some for myself.
JM-I requested this meeting it is not due process
JG-No I requested this meeting yesterday Mrs. Montevirgin, I came up and
asked you for this meeting initially.
JM-Now I want some specific questions answered. What is the role of the San
Francisco Senators in the school site? Very specific.
TG-To assist students who are struggling with their academics.
JM-OK, assist. OK, the students with their academics. OK, now what did we
employ Justin to do at Balboa?
TG-To assist students
JM-In what particular subject area?
TG-There wasn't just one, he comes very well educated. Justin can work with
Math, English and Reading. He is very highly educated. But that was specific
subjects.
JM-OK, how can we explain the fact that Justin is involved with the students
who are trying to uh . . .have open meetings and explore their complaints and
frustrations. What would be the role of a San Francisco Senator? Is that
academic?
TG-Let me say this?
JG-But they are talking about their academics, they are talking about school,
about what they like about school, what they don't like about school. Their
whole goal is they want to make this place the best place they can make it.
JM,TG-Now Justin (in unison)
JG-OK, I have overstepped my bounds obviously and clearly by your narrow
definitions.
TG-Exactly, and that's what they are, they are clear, it's in black and white.
JG-I agree they are clear, but we are talking about academics though.
TG-And that is what we are all here for Justin. I am not going to take sides
with Mrs. Montevirgin, I am not going to take sides with you. I am only
trying to tell you what the roles of the San Francisco Senators program is.
We don't commit, we are not counselors. If you look at your scope of
responsibilities, we are there to help . . . Again I have to reiterate to help
students who are having problems academically. This situation with Rodney
King is not something the Senators should not be involved in.
JG-Rodney King was the catalyst, it was a mirror that made the questions
arise it was a reflection of this campus-
JM-Regardless of what King was you can't . . .
JG-You can't ignore an event of this magnitude because it effected everybody
here.
TG,JM-Justin (in condescending unison)
JM-It is our role
TG-Justin, it is our role not the Senators. And I am telling you, not on
behalf of anybody but the Senators, the people who I am employed by, who I
work for, who I will always work for. I employed you not to come in and do
anything that was going to ah . . .to start any type of rebellion against them
JG-Wait . . . w-wait rebellion? Wait a sec, we were having dialogue and
discussion about how we can make our academics better.
TG-Yes you see but that's not our job.
JG-Isn't our job to educate? Is our job to make this school better?
TG-No, your job is to help assist students with academic problems.
JM-We know that and you know that.
JG-Finding our what is wrong with academics is assisting them in a larger
goal.
JM-But that is not what your role is. That's not your role. This makes it
very clear.
TG-If a student is having problems with Algebra one concepts . . .
JM-Exactly!
TG-A student is having problems with understanding reading . . .
JG-And that ties into the fact there are real problems here, 10th graders
can't do their times tables . . .
TG-That is why you are coming in to help them
JM-That is why you are tutors. Now if you have problems with that, Justin, I
would have appreciated if you came to me. I said , "you now, all those
students are really having problems - but they are talking about the problems
with teachers, but you have not" . . .
JG-To be honest with you Mrs. Montevirgin I have got nothing but negative
feelings from you. I have tried to say Hi to you in the hallways but you are
too busy being the police hat monitor. You haven't come into our program. I
have said "good morning", and you just go (gesture of a scowl), and it makes
me have bad feelings and not want to communicate with you. And the only
contact we have from administrators, Dr. Smith and Mr. Walker, is when they
come in and look around and say "is this a tutoring room or a hangout room?"
JM-I am not going to justify what I am doing in this school Justin.
JG-If you want me to come to you, you have to establish communication
JM-No. Common sense, if you work with a system, unfortunately it seems
though you are not working with the system, it will be very hard to have
anybody in a system and people who will not work with you. Now we are not
perfect people here.
JG-Nor am I.
JM-Do you know why I am policing the halls. Because their safety is number
one.
JG-The hats.
JM-Wrong, their safety is number one, Justin. If I am not out there, if I am
not controlling the crowd those kids without any reason only by mistake hit
the shoulder of another student and then they will punch each other. Not hats
Justin. Hats is a district policy and I am just implementing what the
district tells me to implement. OK? It really frustrates me when an adult
who is being looked up, at by a very vulnerable, you know, age group like high
school, cannot really see that. If you think I am in the halls because of
hats you are wrong.
JG-I am just saying what I hear every morning.
JM-Now, anything that you cannot correct it's your approving it. You as the
adult have the responsibility to make a statement that will try those kids.
JG-There are real problems here and hats aren't one of them.
JM-Unfortunately you wear your hat in that room, you put your walkman on in
that room.
JG-I do not own a walkman
JM-yesterday you were wearing an earphone walkman in that room,
JG-I was listening to this tape recorder, I have been interviewing the
students and was listening to a conversation I just recorded.
JM-And you put your feet on the table.
JG-It was passing time there was nobody in the room. I was relaxing.
JM-It does not matter if it was passing time or not.
JG-I think this is a non issue.
JM-It is an issue to me because I would like to model proper demeanor, proper
behavior, decent appearance, and that's why I wanted these kids when they go
to the classroom and when they go to school they take off their hats. Because
when you go to you business or employment out there you don't wear a baseball
hat. And that's my job.
JG-If that is your job that means you are focusing on dress, appearance and
external actions but academics is the mind, academics is exploring . . .
JM-Justin that is my main focus
JG-You just said that's what your job on campus is, obviously your priorities
are unfocused.
JM-My job is to educate the students, my job is to be an instructional
leader, my job is to visit those classrooms and find out wether the teachers
are doing their job or not, unfortunately some of those teachers that get
complaints from the students receive outstanding evaluations last year from
other administrators. This is my first year as a principle of this school and
the board knows and the superintendent knows and the names of these students,
teachers that are not being mentioned by students and I have told them that I
don't mind putting my job on the line and I am going to someday consolidate
teachers, and I don't care what seniority means. Because I am here for the
students, I care for the students.
JG-We all care for the students
JM-My job is to make sure we really do our job, because if you let them
hanging on these things explode in their heads and they get really excited and
misdirected sometimes.
JG-And what we were trying to do was direct and communicate and then take
action.
JM-No you see what all these groups, you see I had so many students, about
thirty or forty hanging out there (in front of the school) they did not want
to come to school, you know the very first thing they told me? It is because
I fired Justin. OK. They refused to come in.
JG-You made your own martyr
TG-My question is how did they find out?
JG-I told two kids.
JM-You see.
JG-I was pissed off as I walked out of school.
JM-So how can I work with a person like that, you know who is almost working
against me.
JG-And I also told my other employer, and I told my family. . .
JM-I am trying to make this place. A peaceful environment for education. I
do not need any disruption. I do not need any protest where there no issue,
but one. It is not right, it is not accurate.
JG-There are plenty of issues here.
JM-I know there are a lot of issues Justin, I heard them. And we are doing
something about them. I cannot just snap my fingers and make miracles, I told
the group, and make them disappear.
JG-They are not expecting you to do it by yourself.
JM-Yes they are.
JG-They want to take responsibility and they want to do it together.
JM-Justin, I think you are not hearing them. But you are not doing anything.
And I told them that.
After my termination the movement was effectively halted. I didn't want to press to get my job back for several reasons. The first being that the Senators were trying to work to change the schools, if I continued to press the organization would be in jeopardy of losing its contract with the school district. Also if my job was turned into the focal point it would be a distraction from the true issues at hand and give Montevirgin fuel to further discredit the students because it would look like the needed their leader to continue.
Q: So, did the movement continue. Or did it fall apart? Why did it stop?
Kevin Singleton relates how the event wrapped itself up. "Room 112 was no longer sacred ground for the revolution. I don't know if people were let down. Everyone was like, 'ya, Right-Said-Fred ain't here', even the people who didn't know you were like, 'I can't believe they did that to him'. They didn't know who the hell you were. That really kind of blew away the hope that the students had. Because they saw that you were behind it, and instrument of it and you were chopped off. Decapitated. I think that really got them thinking. It is actions like that by the power structure keeps minorities and the poor down. They begin to see if anyone takes the lead, they are chopped off. And they start thinking, 'I don't want to be chopped off'. They are young kids, this is an impressionable age for them".
While the students saw how the power structure reacts, in its naked exacting force when individuals act out against the system, another side was also uncovered. The students got a taste of organization, a taste of getting together and actually doing something, the feelings of empowerment. What frightened the administration most was the fact that the students were acting on their own. The administration knew that I wasn't telling them what to do.
To be successful, a group needs an idea of their demands before they engage in a strike. The students never clearly articulated their position, this was a shortcoming of the movement. In fact the students never even collectively decided if they wanted to work within the system or tear the whole thing down. When a loose conscensus of means had been achieved the students could have made flyers articulating their demands, and distributed their message to fellow students. From there a student strike could have been implemented, or at least more widely discussed as an option amongst the students. If the students distributed the information to all the schools, a district wide strike, or a boycott of homeroom, or a fire party could have been implemented and shut down the school systemfor at least a day, a week, a month?
The students in this inner city setting are militant and pissed off because school and the society which it represents isn't offering them anything and it is high time that they reappropriate what is rightfully theirs.
After the movement was over the students involved started getting hassled. Will Smith relates the degree of harassment he and other BBCT members received, "Hassle? I also got, well almost got used by a lot of teacher.
They would come up to me, like Mr. Smith, the vice principal, and tried to play a mind game. He said, "I don't get it, why are you doing this with this white boy? What you doing having these protests? He just wants to keep you out of class." He thought you was a skinhead. I got a lot of that from different staff. They had tried to transfer to different students, and interrupt that. They seen a lot of people looking on. They were trying to push that the only thing we was doing was causin' trouble.
Marcus Lewis adds,"I couldn't believe I wasn't down there. I was
short two credits. That crackdown knocked me out. I will get my diploma.
They can have there's, but they took the easy way out."
Q: Would you call it a crackdown? Besides suspensions, do you think they
were singling out your group?
ML: If there was a fight they would say "you shouldn't of let them have
that class".
CC: Just be proud of yourselves for getting out of that and seeing there
really is a value to education. High school can be a good place if you are
treated like a human being. Imagine if you had a shop class that actually
prepared you for a job, or had a history class that inspired you to know
yourself, where you came from, your culture, your community, your own history
(ourstory). It seems so absurd to me that people are so afraid of that. They
want to just beat that down.
ML: That is why they got so mad during the sit out. They chained the
doors, they told us don't leave. The treat us like animals, they wanted us to
act like we did. We calmed down, they laughed it off, we sat down and wrote a
constitution. And then they talked. There was no fights, no breaking
windows. That is why she got so mad, she wasn't used to us acting like that
(or giving you the credit to be capable of!). She was the one running around
the school yelling for no reason.
JG: I feel the students were far more civilized than she, and the
administration was.
The reason the Student of Balboa got in trouble is because they started asking why. Overall the movement was stopped before it could realize its goals. Yet even in the face of failure there are many victories, ranging from personal to group empowerment. The same conditions of inequality will still exist until the system we live under is destroyed.
Schools function as a vital, well funded enforcer in our society. Their main job is to keep the power of youth from ever being realized or organized. It is up to the younger brothers, sisters and cousins of the students involved in this uprising, and the youth who read this account to take heed and find inspiration in the acts captured in this book. It will be up to you, with a full school year to organize yourselves. To band together and fight the power of the system. Build strength from your community of peers so you won't have to react to the injustice of our society, but are the catalyst in finding a remedy.
Remodeling students be involved in rebuilding and maintaining the school so
they can take respect in it.
1. Fund Raisers-to make money
2. Donations- business proposals-Wells Fargo sponsor
3. Student Coalition What are we going to do with the money? Fix up the
school
SOLUTIONS:
Student Bill Of Rights:
1. The Right to Choose- choose our own classes.
TEACHER REVIEW BOARD
The board will consist of three students and three teachers with a para or other neutral party in the middle who can act as mediator and tie breaker. The purpose of the board is to hear both sides of an argument, facilitate conversation and have participants come up with an agreement. The board is to hear grievances in writing both from the students side and teachers side. The purpose is to reach a compromise that both sides can live with. The board makes a decision only when the participants cannot come up with an agreement by themselves. The people who sit on the board are on a rotating basis. The board has the power to write decisions down and issue demerit points that will be brought to the district if the problem persists- i.e. a teacher keeps on receiving many complaints that can lead to their transfer or dismissal.
STUDENT REVIEW BOARDIs the students defense in cases where a student expulsion or suspension is about to happen. The board will act as intermediaries. The teacher and administrators will have to let the students into the meetings. The review board also critiques teachers/administrators performance- how they are teaching what they are teaching. Teachers should be people who want to be here and those who don't shouldn't be here. The review can be positive or negative and also act as a reward to the teachers and administrators that do well!
PROBLEMSI started this book when I was reading Studs Terkel's "The Great Divide". I realized that I could do something very similar, ask the students questions around a central theme. I asked what they thought about school, how they could make it better and what they thought of living in the city. Two weeks into this project the King verdict exploded, that is how I caught the reactions of the students, I was armed with blank tapes, batteries, and a tape recorder at the right time. Here are some of the interviews that really didn't fit into the scope of the book yet I feel are an important glimpse of the attitudes and environment of the schools.
Frank Knighten - Student 4-15-92
How do you feel about school?
I think things is messed up. They are more worried about the hats than the
drugs. There are a lot of drugs in this school. There is a lot of booze here
too. There are a lot of guns here, lot of guns. We got kids coming from
Bayview/Hunter's Point, Valencia Gardens, Fillmo'. They are going to have to.
They are going to get hyped one day and they might have to jump somebody.
They will come down here and shoot up the whole place. Especially in Summer
school, everybody has one.
Jose M. - student
What's wrong with the school?
Students, nobody cares. Because they prefer hanging around with friends-
you get to talk, do stuff. In class all you do is listen to the teacher, sit
there and be told. I don't like people telling me what to do. I don't like
bullies in classes, the kids who sit in the back and pick on you. I like US
History, I don't like math, too many numbers, who is going to use all those
stupid numbers? All that you are going to use is adding, dividing ,
subtracting and multiplying. I want to be an undercover cop. So I can get
back to all those bullies in class! (Laughs) What would you do to make
school better? Get rid of the security guards. They should be more strict,
they don't know what they are doing. I think they should put a metal detector
in the door I see guns, knives, all kinds of weapons on campus the teachers
don't know about it. A lot of people get hurt, and the kids show you what
they are carrying and say "after school". There are a lot of problems after
school. There are too many gangs, Filipinos, Samoans, Latins, blacks and a
few Chinese. The same guys that are in the gangs are the ones who make the
trouble in the classes, you can tell who they are by the way they dress, the
colors they wear, red or blue.
Leonardo Iglesias- student
Do you like school?
Not really. its boring.
The work?
I like some work like Spanish because I can relate to it, I speak it at home.
I like math, but it gets me frustrated when I don't know how to do the
problems. That makes me mad. I don't like history, it is too complicated, too
many dates and things that occurred, very complicated. I like English, it's,
you know, in homeroom at Denman (Jr. High School), I used to memorize the
definitions. Other kids think school is boring.
What would you do to change it?
I would have half days once a week, on Friday. People aren't thinking much about school anyway, they want to party. I would make school start at nine I still want to get out at 2:50. I think we should extend our lunch, but the time you get your food the bell rings. There should be a snack bar at school, with everything. They have one at the Jr. High, they call it the beanary. The students can work it, run it and get paid for it. We should have a food fair, carnival, games. I like Mr. Jessup, he is calm, he doesn't pressure people. When people get in my face, pressure me, I say 'fuck you' to get them mad . I do it at my own pace. Mrs. Kehoe, she pressures people ,she wants work done at the end of the period, she is too strict. It is OK to be strict, like on being tardy, excusing absences with notes. I went from a 3.68 to straight "F's". I was cutting, I didn't like school. I would change the teachers, to be more flexible to give the students more room, more time. I would have assignments that we make up. I would base part of the grade on participation and improvement, judging me for the effort I do. It is rare for teachers to care about students, there are so many they cant care for everybody they can help some not all. I don't blame them it's not there job not to care. Teaching are to help the student learn, learn what they teach. Math applies, I don't know how US history applies to your life.
Ammer Nasrawi