The low achievement of African-Americans in K through 5th grade reflects a number of continuing problems not just in American education but in American society. The black community remains disproportionately poor, uneducated or undereducated, and unemployed. Education is seen as the key to success in America, and every immigrant and ethnic group has eventually come to the conclusion that education for the next generation will give that generation a leg up on the ladder of success in American life. We still believe this today, but blacks seem to have been unable to make this idea work for them as well as some groups have done in the past. Among the reasons for this problem are a poor distribution of tax moneys for education, the perpetuation of poverty, and some cultural conflict, all problems that are at their worst in inner city regions.
The basic problems for blacks in the educational system begin with access--the schools of the inner city regions are not as good as some and are also increasingly more dangerous. However, the problems are deeper than this and extend to the curriculum, the attitudes of teachers, and the institutional structure. Once in school, black students may encounter a form of institutionalized and unintentional racism in terms of the way topics are presented, often in terms understandable to children from the suburbs but coming out of a very different social structure than is understood by inner city youth. These children also may be given history texts that ignore the contributions of their people, sociology texts with distorted perspectives on black life, and other material that does not relate to their experience or their understanding of the world. Once a child has been exposed to such material, he or she may begin to have a crisis of identity and also to withdraw from the learning experience that is creating it. In the long run, society produces a generation that is alienated from the learning ...