Edumacation Archive

Karen Feldman and Chace Baptista co-chair Young Voices

[This article is continued from Judgment at Central Falls Part 1]

As I detailed in the first part of this story, an organization called Young Voices made up of students from Providence came to Central Falls to protest on behalf of the administration and their right to fire the entire faculty at Central Falls High School.  The amazing thing to me is that none of these students attended Central Falls or had any experience with the faculty there.   Could you imagine the uproar if  people found out that the Tea Party Protesters were all from Canada?   or that anti-war protesters were brought in from Mexico?  I do know that in Iran, they beefed up the pro-government rallies by bringing in people from Lebanon.

Now, I will not put down these students for their age.   High school students do deserve a voice in their education and in their communities.  I’ve been fortunate enough to protest with CPS students whose schools were in danger of closing.   I’ve listened awe inspired to members of Students for Social Justice who spoke with a righteous indignation over a system that wasn’t serving them.   I got chills down my spine as I heard high school student Kellina Mojica demand, “we have a voice and want to be heard…whether you like it or not.”  I’ve also seen how the adults in their organization let the children take the lead.  That doesn’t seem to be the case with Karen Feldman and Chace Baptista who seemed to do most of the talking to reporters.

As I watched a news segment on the protest, I was overwhelmed at the central message of the rally, which was that this was a systemic problem and wasn’t about the teachers, but that the system wasn’t taking the needs of children into account.   I then had to ask myself, how better to make that point then by siding with the management responsible for the system in their battle to replace the teachers who must cope with the same system on a daily basis?

Some of the protesters said that they no Central Falls students were protesting because they were scared of retaliation from the teachers.  I’ve seen Chicago students barge into City Hall to demand to use the computers because the city still had their library closed and they couldn’t apply for college without computer access.  I’ve seen them picket at the board of education and speak out loudly and forcefully.  However, the equally passionate Central Falls students evidently are worried about recrimination from lame duck employees if they come down and support management.   Who do they really think their kidding?

As I looked at the Young Voices website I noticed several interesting things.   The first one was that their main goal was setting new evaluations for teachers that took into account student feedback.   I’m of two minds about this.  I really value student feedback on my own teaching, but I could definitely see this leading to pandering.   If I had to evaluate police officers, the guy who let me off on a speeding ticket with a warning is going to be the best and eventually the cops will quit doing their jobs because it hurts their evaluations.   I still think there is probably a middle ground that gets student voices heard.   They also some very big on doing away with seniority rights.   Unfortunately, they fail to grasp the very real danger that school districts will simply keep the youngest and cheapest teachers instead of the best ones.   Currently, a crafty principal can bend those rules to still keep a great young teacher if they want to.

What is interesting though is that an organization that seems to care so much about the process used to retain and to fire teachers has decided to support simply firing them all.   They also seem to be determined to ignore the student voices at Central Falls while imploring everybody else to listen to the students.

The other big thing I noticed is that Students for Social Justice operate outside the system where they can agitate for the change they believe in.   Young Voices seems to be the Future Establishment Club.   With partnerships with Merck, Trimix, and Providence City Hall, Youth Voices shows that those young voices don’t have to fight for change.  They can just as easily fight for the status quo.  Next, we’ll look at the school environment.

[This article is continues in  Judgment at Central Falls Part 3]

This entry was posted on February 19, 2010 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Karen Feldman, Young Voices. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Central Falls High School, Education Refrom, Young Voices