Why this time of year, most students have ended their semester of fretting about whether they will or will not be accepted to this or that college. They have spent the past few months greeting the mailbox with a mixture of fear and hope. Those who received disappointing responses may now be joining the ranks of those who did not apply at all in asking themselves, “Is college for me?”
Friends often argue to me that “the numbers” answer the question. In the United States, only 28 percent of Americans hold a bachelor’s degree and only 17 percent of blacks hold one. So it’s clear, people reason, that college is not for everyone. Those who subscribe to that view also remind me that the average student comes out of college $20,000 in the hole with student debt. While I can’t dismiss these statistics, I think they paint a far too pessimistic and limited portrait. No, not every college is for everyone. But I do believe that there is a college for everyone. Black people’s progress in society depends on our participation in the educational system beyond high school. Any argument that suggests otherwise undermines our collective advancement.
For African Americans, the stakes of attending college are higher than those for our white counterparts, largely due to resources. Because black folks have lower average household incomes and lower average amounts of prior education, figuring out if college is a necessity rather than a luxury is a common dilemma. But this is not a new dilemma; over a century ago, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington debated the types of schools that blacks should attend (which they never came to agreement on), but in the end both agreed that college was a necessity for the progress of black people in the United States. While resources are limited for the average African-American family, the benefits of continued educational pursuit are individual and collective.
In the past few years, I’ve had an opportunity to visit a number of high schools heavily populated with a black and brown children. When I present on the prospects of college and the future, inevitably a student or two will comment, “Well, you know, college isn’t for everyone.” I often respond, “Well, you have to try it to know if it is for you or not.”
While it makes sense to me that adolescents will question which path their lives should take, it is telling that in many of our schools, children are bred to believe that continued education may not get them what they want. In part, that may be due to the fact that many African Americans who complete college no longer reside in the neighborhoods from which they came, leading to declines in role models for children who remain in the inner city.
But that is only part of the story. Most research suggests that on average black children have higher educational aspirations than white children. This is surprising to many, but in reality these aspirations aren’t typically followed up by behaviors or experiences that will lead to college attendance. The gap between hopes and practices can be mended by producing high schools that prepare children not just to complete school, but that also put them on the path of further learning, whether they want to be a mechanic or a mathematician. One of the single best things local and state school systems can do is to see their job as not just kindergarten to 12th grade, but kindergarten to 16th grade.
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By R. L’Heureux Lewis
Shout out to Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, my professor for posting this on his blog.
© 2008, @BWyche. All rights reserved.
