Two professors from UW–Madison’s School of Education discussed how the Black Lives Matter movement is reshaping education with WORT-FM’s “A Public Affair” program.
The segment was titled, “How Black Lives Matter is Changing Education.”
Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor emerita, and Maxine McKinney de Royston, an assistant professor with the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, were interviewed for the program by host Ali Mudrow.
Over the course of the conversation, they took up a variety of topics, including: neoliberal austerity in education; the role of white parents and educators; discipline in schools; the problem with the so-called “achievement gap”; professional opportunities and barriers for Black educators; the carceral logic of schools and why removing school resource officers isn’t enough; and how to get adults to stop punishing, and start teaching. Black kids.
While both Ladson-Billings and McKinney de Royston recognized increased local activity and consciousness about racism in the Madison community, they expressed doubts that it will lead to structural change.
Ladson-Billings noted that social movements tend to operate as a “swinging back and forth.” She said now is an opportunity for us to change, but she is fearful “that we’ll do some superficial things — we’ll color in some faces, we’ll argue that we need more Black teachers,” but we won’t see any formal, structural changes. She expressed, “that’s just not how the system responds.”
McKinney de Royston said that there are more conversations happening about racism in our community, particularly among white people, “that couldn’t have happened a year ago.” But, she said, “we have a lot of white parents who engage in opportunity hoarding, who actively engage in accessing materials and blocking access of materials and opportunities for other kids and families.”
She asked white parents in Madison: “What are they willing to give up and what they are willing to do given their newfound consciousness … what are (they) now willing to do that they weren’t willing to do before?”
Hear the full conversation on WORT-FM’s website, here.