Veteran educator Arnold Hillman and his wife Carol retired to South Carolina. But instead of golfing, they devoted themselves to a high-poverty high school and worked directly with the students to encourage them to aspire them to go to college.
Arnold writes here about what he has learned about South Carolina:
As with the beginning of any sports season, odds makers, fans, team owners, managers and coaches and players look forward to the onset of the games. In single person sports like golf, tennis, combat sports such as real wrestling, boxing, UFC, and the martial arts, expectations are even greater.
How do successful teams, individuals and those who are in charge, manage to rise above others? Why are certain teams and individuals levels of expectations so very high? Why is it that former doormats become champions in a few short years?
There are many examples of those kind or turnarounds. How about Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) destroying the world champion Sonny Liston? How did the 1980 USA hockey team come from obscurity to defeat the greatest teams in the world?. For pitysake, how did the New York Mets go from nothingness to World Series Champs in 1969?
There are so many examples of these kind of things that apply to what is happening in education here in South Carolina. Let’s go back to sports for a moment. Certainly, individuals have their own expectations of how they will succeed. Whether nature or nurture, is always a question. If a group of players on a football team have their own beliefs, and they are not shared by the coach, there will be little success.
Try and explain the success of the New England Patriots and then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In the case of New England, players wanted to be traded there because of the level of expectations the teams always had of themselves. Tom Brady and Bill Belicheck knew how to win and how to inspire others. Mediocre players who migrated to the Pats soon became integral parts of the success of the team.
Now that Tom Brady is with the Bucs and Bruce Arians, the Coach, there is also an expectation of victories. So, they win the Super Bowl in their first year together. On the other end is the Jacksonville Jaguars, with a super quarterback and a coach who had no level of expectations.
What does this have to do with education in South Carolina? Do we ever wonder why our state is always at the bottom of any ranking list in education? The history is long and continual. Here is a site that will take you a while to read. It is, however, a clear picture of why education has not flourished in our state.
Now that you understand our history, you can see why the level of expectation for our children is so low. Pat Conroy and his “Corridor of Shame,” described the situation in many of our poor and rural school districts. He taught in one of those districts. He understood.
For some reason, it appears that those in charge of education at the state level continue to treat parts of our state in a way that encourages low expectations. Here are some historical reasons why South Carolina’s education system has floundered though the years:
“1. A strong tradition brought from England that public support for education should be limited to the poor
2. Education seen as more of the responsibility of the Church than the State
3. Attitudes of those outside the wealthy class that worked against a unified system, including low regard for learning, reluctance to accept charity through free tuition, and the need to keep children in the family labor force
4. The very high cost in the 1700s and 1800s to provide quality schools outside the citiesand coastal areas, population was sparse and transportation poor
5. Strong resistance to local taxation for schools until the late 1800s
6. Interruption of a burgeoning “common school movement” in South Carolina by the CivilWar, and the subsequent disruption of a tax base
7. Increased white resistance to the public school idea following the Reconstruction government’s attempts to open schools to all races
8. An attitude on the part of some 20th century leaders that too much education would damage the state’s cheap labor force
9. The slow growth of state supervision of the schools due to strong sentiments toward local control
10. The financial burden of operating a racially segregated system, and the social and educational impact of combining two unequal systems”
(The History of South Carolina Schools
Edited by Virginia B. Bartels
Study commissioned by the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement)
(CERRA–SC)
These historical happenings still are partially responsible for our current education system. Low test scores in the poor and rural sections of the state confound state leadership. Therefore, they have come to expect these outcomes year after year.
Yet, in travels across the state, SCORS (South Carolina Organization of Rural Schools) has seen how those school districts and their children make huge efforts to improve education. We have worked with these children in one local high school and seen the lack of resources, lack of quality of instruction, and actual lack of teachers in math and sciences.
In many of the rural and poor school districts, there has been “white flight” to private schools, charter schools, religious schools and home schoolings. Once again the wealthier the school district, the higher they are in the rankings of school districts in the state.
So, what is left- a lack of expectations for those left in the public schools. Why, say the talking heads and misunderstanders, aren’t these schools doing better. The system is really stacked against those poor and rural folks. However, are the children really unable to learn or compete, on any level, with the lighthouse districts? You bet they can. I have seen it.
Let me give you some anecdotal evidence. Dr. Vernon (not her real name) was the superintendent of a rural school district in South Carolina. She was, in fact, a product of the public schools in SC. She came from humble beginings and rose to her position as superintendent with some help from people and a great desire to help youngsters like herself.
After 5 years as superintendent, her board changed dramatically. One of her board members said that the students test scores on certain state tests were not true and that she had elevated those test scores. The Department of Education was called in and found none of those charges to be true. Board members could not believe that the children could be this good. By the way the superintendent and board parted ways with much acrimony.
Certainly there was much politics in her leaving. She also sued the board for defamation of character and won. Was all this because the level of expectations for the poor, minority and rural children were unable to improve on their test scores?
Another anecdote centers about a student (and an excellent basketball player) was placed in a prep school outside of Philadelphia. He spent a year there as a post graduate. After the first four weeks of school, he retook the SATs and got 120 more points than he had at his old school. He got an athletic scholarship from a prestigious university.
So what does all that mean? We can tell you from my 61 years in education that there is a blanket on our poor and rural children that leads to a lack of expectations and a lack of will to help these children.
I love my country, stupid and cruel.
Excellent column
You had me at Pat Conroy. “The Water is WIde” – AKA “Conrack” is packed with examples. (21st century or not, I love the line about his record player and not taking to “machine learning!”). Some criticize him. He showed up!
Bottom lines:
He met kids where they were and with high expectations.
He taught them to swim and threw them in the water, but not the deep end like so many schools (profess to) do today.
He realized there was an opportunity gap to close:
They couldn’t read, he met them were they were. Birth to five reading development, real world experiences, and the “everything you needed to know” (Kindergarten, not Hirsch). Got parents on his side. Relevance. Genuine care and interest. Building agency.
No silver bullet and no leadership by slogan and power point.
We are immersed in an educational world – STILL – of quick fix, superintendents who have THE program or methodology so it’s out with the old and in with the next best thing until the next one comes along.
No persistence to actually stick with a reading program or making sure that what gets trained actually gets implemented.
Right hand meet the left hand.
And, taking all kids no matter who they are – including the ones who are “counseled out” because that quick fix (for profit charter) didn’t have the square hold for that round peg.
The list goes on an on.
Well said. There are no magic bullets, just dedicated commitment to students and their needs. “Rome wasn’t built in day.”
The REAL educator is an empath. They find pleasure in the pleasure of their students and watching them grow into a confident adult.
Unfortunately, the ‘teaching profession’ also attracts narcissists, who get joy in being able to boss kids around.
Changing school culture is a marathon, not a sprint. It must be based on trust and respect or else the efforts will flame out.
I don’t think many red states are interested in improving public schools. They want to dismantle them. They all need many more teachers, but few people are signing up for the abuse that comes with the job. Florida just announced it will allow former military and their spouses to teach without any mention of qualifications or certification. Even most of the right wing parents think this is ridiculous.
Unfortunately, when you use the term ‘red states’, you smear the people who live in them. Thus, you promote Civil War style division, and pretend that ‘blue states’ are superior’.
Let me tell you, Wisconsin is as bad as Tennessee, and New Jersey had some of the most blatant racism I have ever encountered.
Unfortunately, “red states” like my native Texas pass bigoted laws and pass laws allowing anyone to carry a deadly weapon without a permit. I know some good people in Texas who oppose the state leadership. I am not smearing the good people when I speak out against terrible leaders.
Most people don’t think of ‘terrible leaders’ defining States. They think, instead, of the people who live there. Thus, most in New York consider anyone in Alabama or Mississippi to be inferior, despite the fact that the American South has produced more ‘classic American literature’ than any other region.
And, the birthplace of ‘modern American music’ was NOT New York. John Cage was a joke. Delta blues made American music world famous.
I live in Florida. I didn’t vote for DeSantis or Gaetz, but I must deal with the horrible policies. The leadership of Florida is not a reflection me or my other relatives that vote blue.
I think your comment makes my point. Every State is populated by a wide range of people, and to categorize them as ‘red’ and ‘blue’ is an absurd reduction verging on infantile. It only serves to encourage division.
The division exists whether we admit it or not. I live in a part of Florida where 80% of the people are Republicans. I get along with the people well as long as we don’t talk politics, and I generally avoid that topic.
“. . . superintendents who have THE program or methodology so it’s out with the old and in with the next best thing until the next one comes along.”
Your statement encapsulates why I call them adminimals. They have minimal critical thinking skills (due to the Sinclair Syndrome) and they are animal herd behavior specialists implementing whatever highly ballyhooed malpractice that comes along. . . especially if it has been implemented in a neighboring district.
Wait, What? Wrote that Pat Conroy Showed Up. And that is it. Sometimes just one The Water Is Wide guy is all it takes to upset their nasty little apple cart.
Or retired Arnold and Carol who are supposed to show up at the coastal paradise and shutdown their every BEST instinct.
But they don’t. They refuse the blinders. 61 years of wisdom informs their recreation. Their idea of fun is to stick their bodies right in the middle of SC plantation model Public Schools. And what they experience is an outrage. They are Spies From The House Of Love. They activate and they report out on what is going down.
Remember that South Carolina’s Esau Jenkins & Septima Clark began the Citizenship Literacy Schools on John’s Island. These were later incorporated into the CRM Voter Registration Movement. A very dangerous business. Teaching island adults to READ so they could pass the Literacy Tests at the racist Courthouse.
A very dangerous business. Having liberating expectations, public schools and taxpayer dollars teaching ALL SC youth to be the BEST they can be.
Often the rural poor are ignored in so many ways in our country. It was not always so. The Appalachian projects of LBJ great society programs sought to ameliorate the inequities of a booming post-war economy.
There is, however, an aspect of rural poverty and education that is way more intractable and is not treated in this piece. In addition to low expectations from the broader society, rural people are far more likely to suffer from decided bias against education in general. This phenomenon occurs in many ethnic groups and extends to some urban families, especially those who are first generation migrants to the city. Many parents see education as a threat to their own values and backgrounds. Families often frown on children who want to move longer distances from the family location to achieve a higher wage. They also react negatively to ideas that question their traditions.
Being a teacher in a rural area, I have witnessed all these things over the years. I used to have a cartoon that put it best on my board. It came from Tiger. The first frame featured Tiger explaining to Hugo about the advantages of education: “If you get a good education, you can really go places”. Hugo responds in frame two: “but what if you like it where you are?”
Such are the many contradictory feelings rural areas have about education.
Frankly, I think the shifting demographics are responsible for some of the decisions to disinvest in public education. When it was reported that more than half the young people in public schools are black and brown, the right wing states saw “choice” as a way to create segregated schools, and that is exactly what they are doing. The rise of the “Christo-libertarians” are another reason why many on the right consider public schools unworthy.
Thanks, Roy.
As it turns out, three of the most ‘successful’ people in my neighborhood did not graduate from High School.
All are male, and one is one of the largest landowners in the county (and runs an agricultural equipment franchise business). Another turned over a very successful tree service company to his son (father didn’t graduate from grade school, son DID graduate from High school, but started working ‘in the business’ at that point). And the third is a highly skilled excavator (didn’t graduate from high school).
So, ‘education’ comes in many forms, and that provided by the traditional school system doesn’t come close to providing a comprehensive version. Not all kids can afford, nor would they benefit either financially or socially from college.
That’s great for these successful non-high school graduates, but most who don’t have a high school diploma won’t get an entry-level job.
Diane,
‘Getting a job’ is not the goal of an education, or at least ought not to be.
“It was not always so”
As in the, sky-daddy forbid, socialistic rural electric coops that were established in the 30s-50s.
South Carolina is returning to the Stone age (as in , the age when abortion providers were stoned to death)
SOUTH CAROLINA REPUBLICANS BASICALLY WANT TO MAKE IT ILLEGAL TO UTTER THE WORD ABORTION
A new bill would make it illegal to provide information “by telephone, internet, or any other mode of communication” on how to get an abortion .”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/07/south-carolina-abortion-law
SC is yet another state to add to my “Don’t visit and don’t travel through” list
Of course, why would I want to travel through SC anyway? To get to Georgia or Florida?
Ha ha ha.
Let’s see. Words banned in SC: abortion, gay. Any more?
Woke, CRT, racism, equal rights, transgender, gender, General Grant, Abe Lincoln, Appomattox
The words are there, but the meanings got lost somewhere for decency, fairness, and tolerance.
Indeed, Greg, those words are rather complex concepts which can easily lose their meaning without careful consideration.
Education should not be a competition. ‘Education’ means drawing out from within the student. Therefore, the curriculum should offer an appropriate niche for each student, not just a way to get into college (not the goal of many students).
Don’t get me wrong, I was a coach throughout my teaching career, and I think sports can help educate, however the primary goal of an educator is to help a student ‘find his/herself’. To help create a person happy within themselves and prepared to meet the shocks our volatile society will place upon them in the near and, hopefully, distant future.
‘High Expectations’ sounds like a failing Charter School approach.
High Expectations sounds like a book — one where a bitter old woman abandoned by her fiance on her wedding day grooms a beautiful young girl to break a boy’s heart in order to get back at men.
Maybe I’ll write it.
Expectations without opportunities don’t mean much.
And all too often, particularly for poor and minority children, expectations are equated with rigid, military style rules of behavior.
“Higher expectations” is the failed idea behind the NCLB, so yes, it does sound like a failed charter school approach. It is that. “Reformers” during the Bush years repeated ad nausea that we needed to have “higher expectations” because the schools were “failing”. Competition to raise test scores or face hostile, corporate takeover has been, however, undermining public schools that were never failing in the first place. Instruction can only be improved by funding well compensated professionals with low class sizes and plentiful resources, not with competition. No one wins when trying to raise test scores instead of provide a well rounded education. Bring back shop classes. We need to have higher expectations for federal and state governments, not for “achievement” “outcomes”.
Hear, hear! Thanks.
Wasn’t “the soft bigotry of low expectations” one of the slogans for justifying so-called reform.” Of course, the assumption was that public schools have low expectations for black students and that is why test scores are low. Ever since the plan has been to put public schools on the defensive and repeat the lies told about them.
Once again, anyone who believes that most high schoolers can master calculus is expectations are set high enough should have nothing to do with education policy or administration. Education achievement, like athletic performance, falls along an S-curve and no amount of coach speak can change that.
Truth is that most high school students CAN get a good intro to calculus. It’s not all that hard, and in some respects easier than Algebra II. However, why? Where are they going to use it?
Most High School students will never factor a quadratic equation again in their lives. As an Astronomy and Physics major, I never did. Most problems that end in a second-degree equation leave an equation that is not ‘factorable’ into whole numbers. It might be fun to some as a game, but totally useless in ‘real life’.
Using the same logic, why teach anything? I studied Medieval History in college. Did I “use” it? Not to make a living. My intro to Calculus taught me why we develop certain context in Algebra.
The logic I always used was different. We teach so that our students can all contribute to society at some point. Most students will be parents someday. If you teach a parent to enjoy a subject, their children will be more likely to like the subject.
You bring up an interesting perspective.
In our society, literacy (being able to read) is important. Personally, I think science (the use of inductive logic) is as well, though few know what that even means. I suppose the basic understanding of math is also important since we need to understand our bank statements. I would say that a GOOD course in ‘social studies’ is important, to understand the different social structures man has tried (not just European). All of this would help illuminate and prepare kids for the future.
Perhaps.
Calc? huh!
Good God, yall
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothin
Yep! LOL… It’s about as useful to most folks as quadratic equations.
I wonder about the math curriculum, in general. I taught ‘math’ in several different schools, and always said it was a silly game (like chess). Those who ‘excelled’ were the ‘winners’, however …. so what?
Some of my proudest accomplishments, however, were getting kids to clear the ‘math hurdle’. Before I was ‘certified’, I had to do ‘student teaching’. My charge was a bunch of kids who had flunked Algebra. The response of those kids was the final kick in the butt that projected me into my next 25 years as a ‘professional’ (seriously, I adopted a ‘profession’ and have never regretted that decision).
One of those kids gave me a little carved wooden box at the end of the course. Still have it, will never give it up.
Paul Dirac probably thought he would never need to factor a quadratic after high school either.
I doubt that he did.
As you know, math is useful as a tool upon occasion, but it ain’t science. Although, Einstein followed ‘math’ to inform another vision, and it turned out that ‘science’ confirmed his speculation.
So, perhaps it’s a partnership between inductive and deductive. But, I’d still give the preference to inductive (the logic of nature).
Dirac actually did use factoring of a quadratic equation to come up with his relativistic wave equation for the electron, which predicted electron spin and the existence of anti-particles.
Of course, it was not the same as the sort of factoring one learns in middle school algebra, since it involved complex numbers and matrices but it was “factoring of a quadratic.”
Thought so…
Almost all ‘real life’ problems that end up as a quadratic (second degree) equation do not have solutions which emerge as whole numbers. Hence, the uselessness of teaching kids to ‘factor’ such equations as if it were important.
Few kids will become a ‘Dirac’, and even Dirac couldn’t solve the problem without a computer (or, at least a lot of pencilled in calculation… You know, “x = the square root of …etc.)
There is a very close relationship between math and science, particularly physics.
As a programmer developing measurement algorithms for scientific applications (spectrometers and machine vision instruments), I used algebra all the time and also calculus, albeit less frequently.
I’d say the importance of learning math is not so much what you learn specifically, but now math teaches you to think.
“For pitysake, how did the New York Mets go from nothingness to World Series Champs in 1969?”
Epic Cubbie collapse!
See: https://sportsobsessive.com/mlb/mlb_features/the-epic-collapse-of-the-1969-chicago-cubs/
Only the Cubbies. . .
. . . well and maybe the Phillies!
It’s easy to have high expectations when you have Time Brady as a quarterback.
And what we learned when Brady switched teams was that Bill Belichick was not the magic sauce that people thought he was.
Tom, not Time
Autocorrect doesn’t even know GOATs
High Expectations
I expect that Brady
Will make our team “the best”
Not, expectation “maybe”
But expectation “Yes”
Duane: 1969, the year of disappointing playoffs. My Braves, led by Aaron, gave me youthful hope, only to be crushed by the young arms of Seaver, Koosman, and Ryan. The Cubs, collapsing despite one of the great infields of all time. The Orioles, maybe the most dominating team of that era, beaten by the Mets.