Well, I Guess They Need a New Theme Song Now

I wanted to wait a while before posting another article, but current events just made this impractical. Before we continue, I am a native of New Orleans, LA. And let me say my viewpoint on my hometown is...“complex”. Love the people, love the food, hate the Saints (you heard me, right; I can’t stand the Saints). There’s a special diversity and charm in New Orleans (please don’t call it ‘N’awlins’; I’ll slap you). And it’s a great place to visit. But then we get into the (infrastructure) challenges of being a resident of New Orleans (and trust; there are many). Today, however, I’m only here to speak to one issue in New Orleans: education.

Education has always been a touchy subject in New Orleans, which probably has one of the most inequitable “opportunity indices” on the planet. However, despite coming from what can only be seen as the lower end of said index, attended the educational "cream of the crop", preparing me well for college even if I was a bit of a slacker. But the public schools I went to, Robert Mills Lusher and Benjamin Franklin High School, are exceptions to the "New Orleans rule". They were highly ranked public schools during my time, and Franklin itself is currently ranked 64th in the latest U.S News Education Rankings, and since my graduation many moons ago, have never been below #100, possibly even below #75.

However, as I have stated before, I am not that fond of metrics. So let’s go past the metrics.

What makes these schools so special? Is it the mystique of the school? The way they treat teachers? Maybe Franklin's partnership with the University of New Orleans helps things out (Lusher has a similar one with Tulane University), but whatever it is, these two schools stand out amongst their counterparts. Most schools in New Orleans offer significantly less educational opportunity, and despite having these gems, the school district is gloriously below average, even by Louisiana standards, which itself is ranked 48th in education by that same U.S. News. So one could conclude that there needs to be change in culture in New Orleans, right? Well, I think one recent drive gets that change is necessary, but how they go about it? Not so much.

In a similar vein to recent campaign to remove Confederate statues, school names in New Orleans (namely Lusher's) are being changed to reflect greater diversity (Benjamin Franklin High also is considering a name change to the building, but not the school) and wipe away the stench of the Confederate legacy from the face of the Earth, and as mentioned before, celebrate the diverse minds of the past. And that’s fine I guess; history is told by the victors right? You would not be able to tell though, as there's a lot of pushback to this concept in various places. But “the War Between the States” ended in 1865, so why so much emphasis in 2021?

Robert Mills Lusher, my elementary/middle school’s namesake (I'm a little too old to have gone to the high school; I hear it's great though), was pretty heavy in Confederate culture, while being a New Orleans-area educator. And I get it; his legacy is disgusting. He was about as anti-diversity as they come, and folks like that should not be celebrated by having their names on things. Lusher (the school) has an iconic song that as a child, that I will admit, did not understand what I was "really singing", called “Learning the Lusher Way”, penned by Philip Manuel, a black man who was heavily involved in school operations as a volunteer parent during my time there (I like(d) Manuel and have zero issue with him in this matter). I wonder if he knew about Lusher (the man) when he was writing the song, though. Either way, this song we all grew up probably dead and buried with the name change. However, what’s really being done to erase the real legacy of Lusher and people like him? The short answer: not nearly enough.

Stifling the intellectual marketplace because you don’t like the ideas of the people who don’t look like you or come from your background is trash;we know this. It is evident in many fields and they struggle with diversity to this day. It's evident that a racially-driven mindset adverse to diversity largely contributed to many school systems in the south, including that of New Orleans (even without race, education is as uncreative as it is has ever been, save for a few examples). And now you have schools moving to change the names on the school buildings that bear his name and names like his. Great. But, in taking a step back from Lusher, and even New Orleans schools, what is this really doing? We already have kids who are so over their educational environment, they have challenged themselves to…”monthly teen chaos”. Guess the kids are being kids, being tired of being fed the same thing. The same meals are boring, and children who do not feel purposeful are liable to go in a direction like this; it was inevitable. And with that said, I have to ask some questions at this point:

• “What are we doing to bring equity to the opportunity index of these kids?”
• “What are we doing to protect our kids in this pandemic environment?”
• “What justice are we doing to kids by shutting off the intellectual marketplace?”
• “How are we practically preparing our kids for life using the K-12 educational marketplace?”

Many of you who know me have heard me say time and time again about how schools being taught based on test scores is a high-risk practice. And I get it; you do need metrics to make some measurements and barometers; something has to go to the process improvement table right? The real issue I have with this is that teachers are expected to do so much with so little, they are over it. I know several educators who have resorted to consultancy to make a difference, because they feel powerless in the classroom. With class sizes that are too big, deadlines that are too strict, expectations that are too impractical, and curricula that are too impractical, teachers seem to just be the facilitators of spoon-feeding the “TV dinner education” that will perpetuate increasingly ill-prepared young adults with progressing generators. The current health crisis only seems to make this worse, for various reasons. The fact of the matter is simple: the education system is anemic and we need a greater investment in its lifeblood: classroom educators.

I would personally argue that a shift in autonomy is necessary, taking the power out of the hands of suits in Washington, and returning to those in the communities who need it. More diverse opportunities must be offered as opposed to shoehorning ill-prepared children to go to college to go into debt and go into super saturated fields. As it stands, kids seem to have less opportunity than they did a generation or two ago. We need to do something soon, because time is running out.

I don’t like that monsters of yesteryear have their legacies on buildings, particularly schoolhouses. It shows our impressionable children that sometimes the “bad guys” win, and that they can only build a legacy if they look a certain way. I absolutely understand that. However, if change is the goal, then attack this education paradigm so that there can be more ideas can be introduced, which would naturally give way to a broader range of positive outcomes. I am a strong advocate for our children being comprehensively prepared for life, and while changing names is great for symbolic change, changing ideas and ideals is best for lasting change.