Education in Kansas
Ghetto breeds own dialect
By BARBARA LANCASTER
Kansas has some urban headaches, but nothing to rival the head-splitting migraines of states with huge urban populations. Everything may not be completely up-to-date in Kansas City, but the state compares well with others in coping with urban ills.
In the efforts to prepare for future needs as far as physical facilities are concerned, Kansas attempts to make up for needed funds by imaginative and economical planning. In the efforts toward development of its human resources, the same policy seems to be working. A speaker at the recent International Reading Association meeting in Kansas City said of the state's educational efforts, "I would estimate that Kansas ranks about 70 percentile—somewhere within the top 15 of the 50 states in quality of reading instruction and when you consider that many states spend a great deal more on education than Kansas does, this is pretty good."
Teaching quality high
Dr. Doris Gunderson, director of the Ford Foundation-funded Interdisciplinary Committee on Reading Problems, said at the meeting that Kansas also ranks high on the quality of instruction for disadvantaged students. She said that the Bureau of Child Research projects at Juniper Gardens Children's Project in Kansas City shows promise of worthwhile breakthroughs in the early education of culturally different children. Heading the remedial reading project is Montrose Wolf, associate professor of human development and director of the study of spontaneous speech of disadvantaged children is Todd Risley, research associate of child research, both at KU.
In her speech, Dr. Gunderson pointed out some specialized problems in teaching Head Start youngsters. "Language is the principal mediator of cognitive development," she said. "If linguistic performance largely determines educational success, and if lower class children do not use language
adequately as a cognitive tool, it will be reflected in increasing difficulties with reading as the children go through school. Divergent dialect differences currently are receiving much attention, with the complicating factors of differences in phonology and grammatical structure between the non-standard dialect and standard English."
Dialectic difference
Acceptance of the idea that the ghetto Negro child has a dialect which differs enough from standard English to cause serious problems for him did not come easily. The members of the linguistic profession who felt most threatened by the discovery that such a dialect did indeed exist were those dialect geographers who had for decades insisted that the speech of the Negro was the same as white Southern speech.
Another group which reacted with some hostility to the idea when it was originally presented was the segment of the Negro middle class who preferred to play down differences for fear of giving comfort to racists. There were also the usual liberals-gone-overboard who were more concerned about the feelings of adult Negroes who had managed to make it up the difficult path to acquisition of standard English than they were about the child of six trying to cope with school in what was, to him, a foreign language.
Research progressing
The research is nearing completion at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C. The charting of language was pioneered by William A. Stewart, and the first director of the Urban Language Study was Dr. J. L. Dillard. William Labov of Columbia University has for many years conducted research on the language spoken by Harlem Negroes and Puerto Ricans in New York City. Roger Shuy, current director of the Center's Sociolinguistic Program, worked with social dialects in Detroit before coming to Washington. Extensive research has shown that ghetto Negroes in large cities across the
State cuts school districts
By JEAN HERSHEY
nation speak a dialect of English which is similar enough to English to mask its basic difference, while being different enough to make serious problems for urban Negro school children.
"Kansas led the nation in reducing the number of local school districts during 1965 and 1966," says W. C. Kampschroeder, superintendent of public instruction in Kansas
Dangers apparent
One healthy aspect to the Black Consciousness movement is that the Negro is able to escape the feeling that anything which is different from the middle-class norm is necessarily inferior. Too often well-meaning teachers of English have reinforced the idea that because one language has gained a higher place in the "pecking order" of socio-linguistics, it is "better" than another.
Educators are planning now for the time when materials will be available. Teachers attending the NDEA Institutes over the past few summers have become aware of the insights which linguistics can offer, so the next step has been to make the teacher aware of the dangers of possible ethnocentrism by insisting that "there is only one correct way to speak English." He has learned that it is not only time-wasting, but impossible to make the child forsake his own perfectly serviceable (for him, in his environment) language. The teacher seeks to give him the tools to be bi-dialectal, or "bilingual." In that way, he could more comfortably cope with the role he may choose of being a "cultural straddler." A child can accept the idea that he has a language which is right for his block but not in formal situations. He has a tool now to participate in middle class American society if he chooses to do so.
'Ain't' ain't practical
The U.S. Office of Education in 1966 issued a statement saying "the nation is educating more and more children in fewer and fewer school districts." The statement cited Kansas for its achievement.
Linguist James Bostain puts it succinctly and in thoroughly pragmatic terms. "The 'aren't' people are in the saddle and they have decided that 'aint' ain't no good. What's wrong with 'aint't? It conveys your message with perfect clarity, but it conveys messages about your social and educational status you may not wish to convey. To sum it up, any guy who says 'I ain't got no money, ain't never likely to git much.'"
However, the road to unification in Kansas has been long, hard and rocky, filled with blind curves and dead ends.
"A thread of concern for modifying the existing school district structure has existed in Kansas throughout its history as a state," Kampschroeder said.
Kampschroeder said this effort did not last because consolidation meant the expense of building new school buildings.
The fact that the Negro child is assumed to speak standard English has been a frustrating experience both for him and his teacher. He has too often assumed that he is simply being "sloppy" or that he has a "lazy tongue." The child attempts to communicate his thoughts to the teacher in the only language he knows, and he is constantly corrected. He quickly learns that the only way to avoid branding himself as a thoroughly disreputable individual is to keep his mouth shut.
As early as 1861 the legislature passed a law allowing people in one-teacher districts to form a "union" or graded school district by popular vote or petition to the county superintendent. This act enabled two or more districts to form one district or allowed one district to expand its territory.
Delayed reorganization
Few consolidations
The 1901 law stated that consolidated districts could be formed by uniting several small pne-teacher school districts to form a district which maintained a graded school or a graded school and a high school. By 1914 there were 80 consolidated districts.
When the middle class child starts learning to read, he is faced with a comparatively simple decoding task. The graphic representation on paper is in a language he speaks. The ghetto Negro child must first translate the graphic symbols into individual words, and then try to make something meaningful out of words which go together in a pattern that is strange and even senseless to him.
May 13 1969 KANSAN 15
Kampschroeder said there were few consolidations under this law and the trend in education was to form additional small districts.
In 1893, 1895 and 1899 laws were passed which permitted school districts which had lost their populations to disorganize. Kampschroeder noted these laws were used infrequently.
"The first real attempt at reorganization was the consolidated school movement which began in 1901." Kampschroeder stated.
"Consolidation became a word which caused short tempers and high blood pressure and opposition to this permissive law was such that the most significant result of the entire consolidation movement was a delay of much needed reorganization for many years," Kampschroeder explained.
The trend in reorganization was simply to close the schools in one district and transport the students to a neighboring district. This practice had become widespread by the 1930's.
"It is interesting to note that very few pupils from these closed districts were sent to the neighboring one-teacher districts," Kampschroeder said.
Editor's Note: The articles on pages 15 through 18 were written as part of depth study assignments this semester in backgrounds of the news II. Each article represents but a portion of a larger comprehensive study.
This law stated the county commissioners in each county were to appoint a county school reorganization committee to disorganize all nonoperating districts, complete a countywide school survey and work out a reorganization plan which met the needs of the county.
By 1939, more than 1,000 school districts were not operating a school and by 1945 more than 2,500 districts had no schools.
This law met strong opposition and anyone connected with it was attacked by the angered population.
"Among those subject to harassment and abuse were legislators, county committees, county superintendents, and the state superintendent," Kampschroeder said. "Two state senators were sent letters threatening death unless they gave their support to changing the law."
In 1945 the legislature attempted to remedy some of the problems of the school districts by passing an act which required all elementary districts to be reorganized.
Grade school law
The law was slightly amended
in 1947 and was killed later in the year when the Kansas Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional "because of the unrestricted discretion delegated to the county school reorganization committees."
3,700 reorganized
In spite of the bitter opposition to the act, in the two years it was in effect 3,700 school districts had been reorganized and this reorganization was made valid by acts passed in the 1947 legislature.
The general pattern of too many too-small districts remained prevalent, however, and the situation became more critical as the population continued to move from the rural to the urban areas," Kampschroeder noted.
In 1960 there were 255 high schools out of a total of 552 high schools in the state which had less than 75 students.
In 1961 another act was passed which attempted to reorganize the school districts, but this act was also declared unconstitutional by the Kansas Supreme Court.
In 1963 the legislature finally passed a school unification bill which could be upheld by the court.
"The law provided for incorporating all territory of the state into a school district that offered instruction from grades one through 12 with authority to operate a kindergarten, and under certain conditions, a junior college," Kampschroeder explained.
It is this act that has allowed Kansas to reduce the number of school districts from 1,848 to 330 in five years.
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