FEAR.Politics&Education.pdf

Monty J. Thornburg, Ph.D., Essay for colleagues in Educational Leadership. January 28, 2022. Re: “Milestone” announcement from New Orleans by Dean, Luis Miron, Loyola University. FEAR: Politics and Education. Originally this was a letter to Educational Leaders in New Orleans in response to Dean Luis Miron's comment. He said that CEO Kathy Riedlinger's sudden departure from Lusher Charter schools is a Milestone in the City of New Orleans's educational leadership history. John Dewey's influence still lurks in the background. Dewey wrote: "Society in its unified and structured character is in fact of the case; the non-social individual is an abstraction arrived at by imagining what man/(woman) would be if human qualities were taken away. Society, as a real whole, is the normal order, and the mass as an aggregate of isolated units is the fiction." Dewey, to my knowledge, never wrote about RACE. His philosophy, however, in the context of post (de jure) "Jim Crow" America still lurks in the background of American thought about education. The "milestone" or sudden announcement of Lusher CEO Kathy Riedlinger's retirement highlights a fascination about education and educational leadership as a field of study. It's a field of study that's particularly interesting in the context of New Orleans, Louisiana, given its importance historically and culturally in America and given New Orleans's relationship to politics and education across America. New Orleans' particular geographic importance began in 1803 as America expanded its territory by 2/3 with a signed document in the Cabildo Building (Jackson Square). The Slave Revolt in Haiti that ended in 1791-1804 caused tremendous fear and panic across the South where enslaved Black people labored— labored to build the nation's wealth, first in Sugar and then in Cotton. To put this in context, as a person vitally interested in New Orleans cultural/history and crosscurrents with education, Kathy Riedlinger's name, leadership, personality, accomplishments, and detractors came up for me recently (in the past month) in some critical conversations. Yet, I've never met Kathy Riedlinger nor, to my recollection, ever stepped foot into the Lusher Elementary School, where she initially led the school to great success and even, as she wrote it, "national and international acclaim." Two separate conversations were with African American friends from New Orleans. I discovered that they have from childhood and young adulthood in their lifespan known and lived with the importance of New Orleans Music and Arts culture and its history. Their collective memories and direct knowledge about New Orleans and its public education history and leadership are more than 100 years of experience between the two of them. They both participated in the (short-lived) progressive era of education in New Orleans, from 1967 to 1977 when Free Schools, Magnet Schools, Arts Schools, etc., all began to dot the educational landscape of the city's public education system. Many of the progressive attempts were in response to the massive White Flight to Jefferson Parish, the Northshore, and alternative private, religious, and parochial school options that turned the New Orleans Public schools from a 50/50 White/Black population into a 90/10 predominantly Black school district by the 1990s. The dramatic change came from when I arrived as a young idealistic teacher in the late 1960s until the 1980s. Thus, I conclude that the fundamental reason for the importance of conversations about Kathy and Brian Riedlinger was a universal, foundational, collectivist, social, and political reality in the United Monty J. Thornburg, Ph.D., Essay for colleagues in Educational Leadership. January 28, 2022. Re: “Milestone” announcement from New Orleans by Dean, Luis Miron, Loyola University. States; America's Great Divide about racial equality. No matter how we might try in America to ignore, change, re-construct, or re-direct the conversations, the underlying issue is race and racial progress as it's impacted through public education. It's also about the many attempts, successes, and failures through education to overcome the inherent racism written into our culture beginning in 1619 and written into our Constitution in 1787. Finally, it's about fear for the progeny of White children (I believe). It's not about White Rage (in my opinion) but rather fear. FEAR, in this context, is on a continuum, from anxiety about lost opportunity for White children to fear about their physical and psychological well-being. In all parts of the United States, political demagogues have successfully maintained their political power using fear to win votes by scaring parents. Thus, the vote has become intertwined with America's collectivist political/cultural educational landscape. New Orleans has long been an exemplar. Ruby Bridges first walked into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on Nov. 14, 1960. News sources across the nation watched public education about overcoming or not overcoming the fear of school desegregation. New Orleans educators tried to overcome the fear with innovations that included creativity and cultural adaptation in music and the arts included in the progressive school curriculum. In New Orleans's unique multi-ethnic and African American history and culture, the arts and music abound. They became part of the living, exciting, uplifting experiences as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival moved toward international fame and recognition over the same era. How did those conversations come about? All Informal conversations! While writing a successful grant proposal related to politics and education in the Black Belt of Alabama contacted through my former professor at the University of New Orleans, Joyce E. King, now at Georgia State University. She reached a rising young professor who is now the director of the Alonso Crim Center at GA State University in Atlanta. Joyce wrote to me, "He's from New Orleans!" During my first informal conversation, as the young professor, Dr. Brian Williams, and I got to know each other on the phone, he mentioned that he admired Brian Riedlinger, the principal at Jean Gordon Elementary. It's where he'd attended growing up in New Orleans. The school, Jean Gordon Elementary, is located near the University of New Orleans. He went on to tell me that Dr. Riedlinger remains a friend to this day. I was fascinated! While in all my thirty years in New Orleans, I never met either Brian Riedlinger or Kathy Riedlinger; I knew about them. Their names would come up in conversation from time to time when I was a teacher in the New Orleans public school system. Also, later, when I was a graduate student at the University of New Orleans. They were well known as education leaders. Therefore, I got to know them at a distance through reputation from multiple persons who know and worked with them in professional education. After my work on the grant proposal, I had more informal conversations with the two persons I believed knew Riedlinger's progressive education reputations. I brought up the subject of the Riedlinger's and their leadership influence. Monty J. Thornburg, Ph.D., Essay for colleagues in Educational Leadership. January 28, 2022. Re: “Milestone” announcement from New Orleans by Dean, Luis Miron, Loyola University. Those conversations were not directly about my feelings or, later analysis on the importance of fear as a motivational social and cultural condition in America, but rather, simply casual friendly conversation. However, the conversations did motivate me to think about the issues of race and educational progress, topics we sometimes discuss. The young professor, Dr. Brian Williams from GA State University at the Alonzo Crim Center, contacted another rising young professor at the University of Alabama (UA). UA is near Greene County, where my work on issues of education and politics continues at the Freedom Farm Civil Rights Museum. I reflect that when I went to Alabama from California to join the National Teacher Corps, it was soon after George Wallace had stood in the door at the University of Alabama. Also, the three CORE Voter Registration activists killed in nearby Philadelphia, MS, and the Selma Marches were recent. It was 1968, the year Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Thanks to Dr. Brian Williams, Dr. Vincent D. Willis has been in contact. I've now read his (2021) book: Audacious Agitation: The Uncompromising Commitment of Black Youth to Equal Education after Brown. As mentioned, Dr. Vincent Willis's book speaks about equal education's essence. Their collective memory from New Orleans traveling in memory from the "Jim Crow" era, through the years, they both have always been about creating Equal Educational opportunity. None of them have wavered in that goal through all the decades I've known some of them, nor the newer examples of courage born of war as Segregated Soldiers that I've learned about more recently— black soldiers who braved WWII to lead the civil rights movement. Many, including two friends, were firsts in their k-12 and collegiate education experiences. They desegregated White schools in the 1960s, and many also went on to have impressive careers. Many also had struggles raising their children to the present in political times with the demagoguery. From my point of view, the political racist demagoguery in the United States is always in the background. Sometimes it has been overt, and sometimes it has been "dog whistle" covert politics, but, in my adult lifetime, it has always been present. In that sense, I accept the fact that Kathy Riedlinger's announced retirement is indeed a milestone in the context of new realities about history, and school names that honor former enslavers, for example. Note: I don't have any knowledge as to the reason for Kathy Riedlinger's sudden resignation. However, I know that there's been recent controversy about re-naming the schools she leads. I have faith, and I have great hope, that new generations will now take the reins and lead us out of our Trump and Biden era. Neither president symbolically nor otherwise is a transformative leader, in my view. They are transitional, and they are in their 70s, soon to be 80s, and it's time to move forward anew. It's time for political dialogue and education to move away from fearmongering with the use of terms such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), as we now see is the newest political, overt, and covert "dog whistle." Monty J. Thornburg, Ph.D., Essay for colleagues in Educational Leadership. January 28, 2022. Re: “Milestone” announcement from New Orleans by Dean, Luis Miron, Loyola University. CRT is the latest intersection between education and American cultural and political change, as recently seen in Virginia with a new governor and in Florida with its legislative mandates to block teaching about the past enslavement of Black people. CRT is now behind the whole and the aggregate, as told philosophically by Dewey. In part, there is controversy about whether the individual or the collective is most important, a controversy that has continued since the Civil Rights Movement. Now we have the rise of the new Jim Crow in all its de facto segregation manifestations of inequality and inequity, still contentious issues. Issues new generations will have to resolve. Notions of libertarianism and socialism have been rising by different groups and in different party politics. References: Alexander, M. (2012) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press. Anderson, C. (2016) White Rage: The unspoken truth of Our Racial Divide. Bloomsbury. Anderson, C. (2019) One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy. Bloomsbury. Ashmore, S. Y. (2008) Carry It On: The war on poverty and the civil rights movement in Alabama 19641972. University of Georgia Press. Cox, M. S. (2013) Segregated Soldiers. (Forward by Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore') LSU Press. Devlin, R. (2018) A Girl Stands at the Door. Basic Books. Gergel, R. (2019) Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. King, J. E. & Mitchell, C. A. (1990) Black Mothers to Sons Peter Lang, Inc. Miron, L. F. (1996) The Social Construction of Urban Schooling. Hampton Press, Inc. Suhor, C. (2020) Creativity and Chaos: Reflections on a decade of progressive change in Public Schools, 1967-1977. New South Books. Thornburg, M. (1986) "Education Vouchers: The issue of family choice in American education" (A Thesis) Thornburg, M. (2001) "School-wide discipline in urban high schools" (A dissertation) Thornburg, M. (2014) "Searching for Social Justice in the San Joaquin Valley of CA" Chap. 38. Springer Thornburg, M. & Terrar, T. (2018) "More Than Race: The 'Full Employment' Civil Rights Work of Robert Brown, Alabama's First Black Public-School Superintendent." Southern Studies Willis, V. D. (2021) Audacious Agitation: The uncompromising commitment of Black Youth to Equal Education after Brown. University of GA Press.