Hesston College is a small, two-year college in Kansas with the slogan “Start Here. Go Anywhere.” Last month, a group of education majors did go somewhere: their professor took them to observe education at work in the inner city of Tulsa, Okla. For Hesston students, accustomed to doing their classroom observation in fairly affluent and rural areas, the trip was what their professor described as “cross-cultural.”
Their visit is chronicled on the college’s Web site. (Hat tip to Annie Murphy Paul, an extraordinary aggregator, for sharing it.) The young professor, Marissa King, a veteran of Teach for America, wanted to expose her students to the problems faced by students at a diverse high school that one of its teachers describes as “one of the roughest high schools in the city,” where students “believe prison is more of a reality than college.” (To coastal dwellers questioning whether the Midwestern Tulsa is truly “urban”: I have been there, and it is.) Teachers at Central High hoped meeting college students might encourage the high school students to expand their dreams.
“The day was an eye-opening experience,” said Bonita Garber of Bainbridge, Pa., a freshman. “The level of inequality in education because of economic status is mind blowing. No one ever believed these students could make anything of themselves, so they don’t believe it either.”
“Inequality in education” is one of those shibboleths that gets tossed around a lot, and often in ways that make those who have seen it in action question whether the speakers have really grasped the depth of what they’re talking about. Professor King, at least, ensured that her students — whether they’re future teachers, or just future voters — have had a glimpse of the struggles most of them didn’t experience.
Of course, “low-income, disadvantaged, urban students” are not a species unto themselves, to be visited like the denizens of an old-school zoo. They’re kids with lives and dreams and plans, who have spent years absorbing the struggles of the adults around them. Any rough, urban high school is a place where all that its students have seen and done comes together, which is just one of the many reasons that no single, targeted educational or other solution is going to bring about successful change in many young lives.
Understanding that fully takes more than just a field trip, but a field trip is a fine place to start — which makes this small college’s effort one that more colleges should make.
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