Re: Chicago's Educational Tuskegee Syphllis Experiment

[Csubstance@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/18/07 10:27:37 AM, gbracey1@verizon.net writes:

<< George, I don't think you're going to get very far comparing CASE or NCLB 
to 

Tuskegee.  No one was helped or even could have been helped by the Tuskegee 

experiment.   They were, quite literally, left to die and there was nothing 

to be learned from their deaths that would help in the future. >>

7/19/07

Jerry:

I'll think the analogy over very carefully as I develop it, but I'm not 
convinced that it isn't appropriate in the following way:

By the time "standards and accountability" was launched here in Chicago (and 
the "bubble" matrix for school triaging pushed by both Riverside Publishing 
and Paul Vallas), we knew pretty much how to help kids at all "levels" to 
improve on school work. The mixture of art and "science" that could have been inner 
city teaching could have helped (to use the medical metaphor, "cured") many of 
those children.

Once the bubble impacts were in place, those children were, like their 
counterparts in Tuskegee, left to "die" (an intellectual death). No further serious 
supports were given to them.

Now in the context of Chicago, that became even more pronounced. Entire 
schools consisted primarily of children who were so far beneath the "bubble" that 
they were completely written off, with the ultimate sanction (closing the 
school) waiting to be used against the school itself, and everyone in it. The 
system as a whole was triaged socially, economically, and ultimately pedagogically 
(the magnet schools skimmed off most of the highest scoring kids, leaving 
those below the "bubble" filling up more than 100 schools).

By 2002, Chicago was ready to take the next step, and school closings began. 
Since then, more than 40 elementary and high schools have been closed for 
"underperformance" (and a host of other reasons) here in Chicago. Virtually every 
one of those schools served populations that were 100 percent minority (almost 
all of them 100 percent black) and 100 percent very very very poor. 
Qualification for free and reduced lunch doesn't begin to demonstrate the depth of 
poverty of the kids attending, say, Daniel Hale Williams Elementary School, which 
was one of the first three schools closed under the current "Renaissance" 
program in Chicago. Williams serves (and always served) children from the Dearborn 
Homes public housing project (and some from the nearby Ickes public housing 
project). 

So, while I appreciate your challenge to the Tuskegee analogy, I'm not sure I 
can drop it. When we're finally talking about (a) isolating the poorest and 
lowest scoring children in about 100 completely segregated schools and then (b) 
closing their schools and dispersing them, instead of upgrading the schools 
and helping them, then

(c) we may well have a much better analogy, despite the discomfort it will 
engender.

In Chicago, the children who were destroyed by this experiment were black and 
very very very poor. 

It's one of the reasons we knew long ago that segregation had to be broken. 
When these children (and their families) are isolated in ghettos that "nobody" 
pays attention to, just about anything can be done to them (and their 
families) by social engineers. 

This isn't limited to social experiments like Chicago's Tuskegee "education 
reform". 

It also includes (in my opinion) the reign of terror from Chicago's drug 
gangs in those communities. The shocking data now being brought out about the 
murders of children from our public schools (which, by the way, I've been writing 
about for 20 years) by drug gang warfare is part of the same thing. The fact 
that Barack Obama and Bob Herbert are now discussing the issues still doesn't 
get to the roots.

As I've been noting locally on blogs:

Guns aren't killing Chicago's children, guns in the hands of drug gang 
members are (for the most part) committing these murders (and have been since I 
began teaching nearly 40 years ago and had my first "dead kid day" before I had 
completed my first semester of teaching at DuSable Upper Grade Center in the 
Robert Taylor Homes). 

The drug gangs account for most of the murders.

And the person in charge of suppressing the drug gangs for the past 20+ years 
in Chicago has been Richard M. Daley (as Cook County State's Attorney from 
1980 to 1989, and since 1989 as Mayor).

Gun control is an evasion of the issue of who is using the guns in what 
organized subculture for what purpose. And the reason is the underlying gang 
problem is ignored is that by now the drug gangs are integrated into Chicago's 
political and economic structures at the ward levels and above.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance
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