get rid of homos niggers towel heads beaners and tuition will go down tea party USA 4 Eva

This graffiti showed up in several women’s bathroom stalls on my college campus, California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) (just north of San Diego) last week. It fell on the heels of several racial incidents at another local campus, University of California San Diego, and the announcement on our campus, that we had been officially granted “Hispanic Serving Institution” status.

The President of the university immediately issued a statement that “hate crimes on campus will not be tolerated,” and university police “are taking all necessary steps to bring the person responsible to justice.” The president also posted a picture of the graffiti for all to witness (above). Students organized a huge “Stop the hate at CSUSM” rally within days, and during the rally many students expressed their fears, hopes, thoughts, and experiences through rap and poetry. In 1967, when I was in 3d grade, my elementary report card began with these words:

The school aims to assist in making a good future citizen of your child. To gain this end, home and school must work together. [His] training to be a citizen worthy of character is as much a matter of developing the right attitudes as it is of teaching [him] facts. -Beverly Massachusetts

I had art, music, and physical education teachers, and I was graded in these areas on my report card. This is in sharp contrast to my daughter's report card (2010) which does not grade the arts nor physical education. The district’s mission, “is to guarantee that our students flourish in life as enthusiastic, confident learners in a world class educational system.” There is no mention of preparing a good citizen, nor is there any mention of the relationship between home and schooling.

I was heartened at my campus rally to see so many students and professors speak out (and even shout!) for social justice. And, at the same time I was heartbroken that in 2010 students on campuses harbor such racist views. It is not such a surprise, however. K-12 schools are not setting the stage for the learning of democracy. And the consequences are too dire to ignore.

Over the last forty years (since my 3d grade report card), public education has transformed many times and in many ways. The loss of arts, and the institutionalization of testing and test-taking skills has severely diminished the time and opportunity for students to learn the ABCs of democracy, and engagement. These are skills that cannot be taught via a worksheet or in solitude. Children need the time and opportunity to learn to work together, to problem solve, to think outside of the box, and to understand there are many kinds of people, and ways of thinking when it comes to any particular issue or event in history. Ultimately, children need to learn to care about each other, and about learning. Yet, this is not the focus or aim of most schools or curriculum.

I was particularly intrigued with students' expressions of outrage at the CSUSM rally, since so many students expressed themselves via poetry and rapping. They were passionate, they were confident, they were hurt, they were angry, and at the same time they felt empowered to share their views with the audience. Their poetry and raps were engaging, creative, and powerful. Most of these students did not have any significant arts training in their formal education. Imagine if they did! It seems to me that the arts will survive as a mode of communicating whether or not they are taught in schools. However, students could have easily used their talents to communicate very different and disturbing messages. In fact, it appears to me as if the graffiti on my campus was written as a poem.

I am not arguing that arts and sports in schools will solve all of our societal problems or erase bigotry. They won’t. But they will help students go a long way toward becoming more engaged. Through participating in the arts, core values and skills of democracy are taught: the ability to work cooperatively, listen to each other, critically analyze and reflect, improvise, question, and negotiate. Democracy demands an attention to understanding others - including people who come from different economic backgrounds, races, cultures, sexual orientations, religions, and so on.

The student(s) on my campus who wrote the hateful graffiti are a sad reflection of a broken educational system. Though I remain hopeful that the human spirit will always outweigh any attempts at hate, we have no time to spare at this point. Paying close attention to how and what is taught in school in order to prepare future engaged citizens should become top priority over the attainment of great test scores.

We need to support effective school leaders such as principals who are willing to create their schools into communities of learning and of understanding; leaders who look into the future as they guide their students to become engaged and caring citizens. Restore arts, sports, and a kind of learning that empowers students to think, reflect, and take action. No one ever said that democracy was easy. But it is attainable, if our education system allows it. And by the way, for those of you stuck on test scores…here’s the great news: research has shown over and over (and in all settings) that arts-rich schools produce higher test scores.

As a side note, I sent an e-mail to volunteers at the Tea Party with a picture of the graffiti above saying: "I hope your organization is taking or will assume responsibility for training college students to speak their values without inciting racial hatred." I haven't, however, heard back from them.