The desegregation adventure in Baker County, Florida started in 1971-1972 school year, the system moved a number of black students into the white elementary schools. For the 1972-1973 year the system trashed the junior high program and went to a model that included K-6 Elementary School, 7th/8th Middle School, 9th– 12th High School. My class was the first to go to the Keller Middle School as we all called it. J. Franklin Keller was the black principal of the black school system K-12, and would continue to follow the state’s lead as principal of the Middle School. As my dad entered the game J. Franklin Keller was trying to define the system, but the politicians, school administrators and racists all refuse to listen to the common sense he was pushing. I listened to a tape of J Franklin Keller from 1972 made in 1980. Dr. Keller pushed things that were obvious at best. As affirmative action was implemented for universities, Dr Keller had 3 major issues with education. The FIRST delt with the idea discounting any level of education based on race, or economic status. He said: Excepting the premise that any equally funded education system with equal educators, and facilities, would send forth a substandard student, then blame the failures of the system on the race of the student, rather than performance of the system is unthinkable. To continue, he thought that challenging student performance, as a societal position relative to race and not a performance issue is against common acceptance. Students of any race should have opportunities to enter equal learning communities and accept the responsibilities in accordance with. Laws that replace or discount a student’s standing based on another student’s race discount the overall performance of the whole system. He believed education will experience a linear percentage of decline that will directly affect the continuity of the education system as universities replace professors’ pre-affirmative action with professors that are post affirmative action. For each generation of affirmative action, the education experience will be discounted and must be readjusted at some point to reestablish the original value. SECOND: I will give you a visual concept, you have a pint jar Student 1, a quart jar Student 2, and a ½ gallon jar Student 3. Students learn by absorbing information, we as teachers transfer that information systematically in the most effective way to entertain multiple students. Visualize taking a pint of information that pour it into the pint jar, the quart jar, and the ½ gallon. Each easily held the pint of information. Now take a second pint and transfer it, the pint jar won’t hold it, but the others will, now let’s transfer some more knowledge, only the ½ gallon vessel holds the expanded volume. Students are like these vessels, we as a system want to transfer a set amount to each vessel but the vessels are as different as snowflakes. Some vessels are capable of holding more volume, does that make them better? Folks are quick to challenge the small vessel as remedial, but what if the pint vessel holds a pint of focused talent say baseball, but the quart and the ½ gallon doesn’t have any baseball in their vessels. What if the ½ gallon is all math, nothing else entertains him. Do we force him to ignore some of his math to get baseball. What if the quart is all music, or engineering, or cooking, or farming. We have created a system that is policed by folks that want all students to be the same thing. THIRD: On the topic of segregation and/or desegregation. Today if I had 50 students in a class, the “A” students would sit together, the “B” students would sit together, the sports kids together, the music kids together and troublemakers together. This in reality is a form of segregation. If I grouped them in alphabetical order that would be desegregation. In most instances they will align by common interest communities and not as much race. In Macclenny, FL you have politicians that believe most folks that segregate in neighborhoods by race, the driving force inside that segregation phenomenon is they are families/kin of the same race. We have seen that alignment in every big city, that also includes communities defined by sports, music, jobs, food, sexual orientation but families control the majority of neighborhoods. When we were forced by the government to desegregate, we must accept two premises, that politicians forcing us to attend certain schools or live somewhere are asking us to accept their motives of measuring equality, this politically motived equality is masked as giving us 100% free choice while giving the opposite of what we want. The question still exists; what if the school is overwhelmingly black by student choice, should a black student be forced to attend a different facility, who has the final say? School choice is always the answer for the student and parent. In the current federal government education blueprint, we don’t meet the education wants of the parents or the students but establish a common level of complacency that drives a lower given standard. This lower standard is being blamed on a misconception that race segregation is the issue not the ability of the system to transfer a quality education at equivalent levels. School choice for all races and focused learning communities correct the education issues.
J Franklin Keller had the answer in 1971 but the political system refused to listen as it continues too today.