MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA — In the wake of the sweeping GOP take-over of Congress last week, Dr. Pedro Noguera says he believes that efforts to improve urban education in the United States and other parts of the world will likely be stalled.
“Sadly what happens in the U.S. affects the whole world,” says Noguera, who is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University. “Across the country and the West, the state of education is a mess.”
Noguera—one of the nation’s most prominent scholars—offered his political prognosis to a group of about 500 educators who gathered here this week for the International Conference or Urban Education, convened by The Urban Education Collaborative at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Charlotte High School students gather with keynote speakers Drs. Pedro Noguera and Gloria Ladson-Billings at the International Conference on Urban Education. Dr. Chance W. Lewis, right, is the conference organizer.
“You cannot afford to be marginal in these debates,” he told the enthusiastic crowd, adding that efforts to slash recess and music classes in American schools, has had a devastating impact on school-age children and their development. “We cannot afford to be silent on these issues. It is essential that our voices be heard on the state of education.”
Noguera says that mounting efforts to eliminate teacher tenure in the United States is a deliberate attempt by some to distract from the more pressing issues that beset public education such as overcrowding schools.
“Those who know the least about education have the most to say, and those who know the most, often have no say,” says Noguera.
