1. Childhood Development
Children are wild flowers. Teachers think them weeds and root them up to civilize them (pg. 39)
This book focuses heavily on the differences Black and brown children who receive education and experience childhood based solely on their economic status. This quote emphasizes O'Gorman's ideological thinking of children as innocent vessels who are shaped by external forces. Teachers then, in the critical sense, can be negative forces on children and their development. If teachers constantly punish, dismiss, and arouse fear, anger, or passiveness within their students, they are not harnessing the potential of these children. Instead, they are creating in them pessimistic views of the world around them: teachers are children's eyes into the world unseen by them since they are always deemed not ready to experience it themselves.
I had taken T. to the country. He was four.
In the middle of the night he climbed into my bed and woke me.
Hear dem monsters. They is getting ready to cut me.
Hear dem. Dey is licking their lips.T. burrowed into me and pulled the covers over his head.
I listened. Children always hear what they say they hear and see what they say they see.
And then I knew what T. heard.Crickets. (pg. 89)
O'Gorman throughout the book focuses on the individuality of each student being highlighted. O'Gorman's goal for the storefront was to become a "place where the senses were freed from the fate of the streets", (pg. 16), which is why he made sure the children had access to things like books and instruments, as well as access to experiences like going to museums and beaches. O'Gorman states that the streets of Harlem to children are the only world that they know. The "white world, hover[s] like a lead mist over everything; creating devils and fantasies of dreadful power" (pg. 89). The restrictions of place plus the inadequacies of teachers who refuse to help broaden children's worldview create fear in the child that can be difficult, if not impossible to grow out of. By bringing T. to a new environment to experience something new, the difficulty to shed that fear lessens, especially because to T., O'Gorman was a safe enough space to run to and seek comfort from.
2. Intersectionality
Children impose discipline on themselves. All they want to know is what they can do; most of the time they are told what they cannot do. I told a psychiatrist, hired by Headstart to solve problems teachers and parents had among themselves and with the children, "the problem most of the time is the teacher's problem with the interior life of the children. They are scared of it. The teacher is the un-disciplined one - not the child. An 'un-disciplined' child is the creature of a teacher who forces children into a regimented day to save 'teacher's' nerves. It is no wonder a child rebels (pg. 64).
Age is an identity that constantly goes undiscussed. Children are innocent actors in the corrupted systems in which we, as adults, dutifully operate within. O'Gorman believes that children need to be allowed space, not restriction. Children are often seen as extensions of the 'teacher', or, more refined, any guardian. As O'Gorman says, the un-disciplined child is a creature created by the teacher's anxieties. The idea of a child existing outside of the guardian's control is always seen as a positive, yet when the negatives of discipline begin to show face, it is the child that is blamed as being "rebellious" or "misbehaved". And in some cases, if race and socioeconomic status begin to intersect with these notions, the blame can be seen as inherent and unavoidable (i.e the existence of school-to-prison pipeline, police presence on campuses, etc._
Lesson in observation. Children in Tunisia. [The children in the school] were one thing: docile and mannerly. Their docility didn't seem to interfere with the freedom and gaiety of the classroom. I admired that school though I knew that such tranquility would be denied our children as long as one had to struggle so to keep their bodies and their spirits alive (We feed our children an enormous breakfast and lunch and see to all their medical trouble. We've an eye doctor, a brain surgeon, a plastic surgeon, and an orthopedist ready to do what we need done). But I love to see our wild ones when they step aside from the eruptions in the world outside and from the eruptions within and sit still, quietly dreaming, content, smiling (pg. 66).
O'Gorman points out that a child's hierarchy of needs is directly related to how 'well' they behave or, in better terms, how relaxed they will feel in an academic space. Comparing the Harlem schools and their students to a school in Tunisia, a country in North Africa, O'Gorman finds that in America, there is a constant need for students to be taken care of. Sometimes, it can seem as it is too much, like we as a collective society are trying not to let our children ever get dirty. But in Tunisia, students were "docile and mannerly" without losing their childlike wonderment. They were still wild and silly like children universally are, but without it interrupting their studies. This is not something that is prioritized in American schools, but obviously could be through structures like what was happening at the storefront.