Jeanne Theoharis thinks people have the wrong idea that students are too young and immature to have a say in urban schools’ problems.

‘Many people see urban youth as troublemakers instead of stakeholders in education policy, as they actually are,’ Theoharis said.

Theoharis and Celina Su, two of three authors of the 2009 book ‘Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education,’ spoke in Eggers Hall on Thursday. The authors, the third of whom is Gaston Alonso, argue students who attend these troubled schools are not the problem but the solution.

Theoharis and Su came to Syracuse University as the latest guests in the School of Education’s Landscape of Urban Education Lecture Series. The authors expanded on their views expressed in the book, saying the education system is to blame for urban schools’ problems, and students are the ones who can provide answers. 

The authors were motivated to write ‘Our Schools Suck’ when they saw children being talked down to and misunderstood time and time again, Su said. Students were put into broken systems and told not to call attention to the school system’s problems because that’s what troublemakers do, Su said. 

Su described a meeting with a coalition of students, parents and school officials. The students attended a school where even the slightest broken rule, such as being late to class, was dealt with by the police department, she said. As school officials began reciting data to support police involvement, a student interrupted the meeting and said, ‘We are the data,’ Su said. 

Theoharis, one of the book’s other authors, described her research in which she taught at urban schools in some of the poorest parts of Los Angeles and New York City. She had her students write two weekly journals about anything of their choice, and she was taken aback by how many students wrote about goals and ambitions they had, she said.

‘The students wanted to be challenged, pushed and afforded all of the opportunities of a student from a school in a nicer area,’ Theoharis said.

But even people who embrace the findings in ‘Our Schools Suck’ remain skeptical of the authors’ method of talking to students as a solution to improve schools, Theoharis said.

Patrick Geoghegan, a senior social studies education and history major, said the lecture definitely had an effect on him and left him with a lot to think about. 

‘They provided me with a new perspective and changed some assumptions I had about urban education,’ Geoghegan said.

Kelsey Wiemer, a senior social studies education and history major, said she thought the lecture brought up many good points.

‘I think it’s important for educators to take responsibility for the problems with education,’ Wiemer said, ‘instead of putting it all on the students.’ 

ndgallag@syr.edu

Published on March 6, 2011 at 12:00 pm