The ‘Official’ Culture Shifts, and the Endangered List Grows Longer : Education: The L.A. schools tilt resources to the Latino majority, leaving a host of bewildered new ‘minorities.’

“A school,” said Horst, looking grimly ironic. “We were crazy to make this trip. I told you so from the outset.” Speaking was Horst Kettner, assistant to photographer Leni Riefenstahl, upon their arrival in the remote village of Kau, in the Sudan. In “People of Kau” (published in 1976), Riefenstahl continues: “I was just as disappointed, for the presence of a school seemed to blight our prospects of finding anyone who had preserved their way of life.”

As it turned out, the ancient Kau culture was fully intact a short climb into the nearby hills, but this image of the school as culture destroyer leaps out at me. It’s a compelling image, especially against the backdrop of a destroyed, or soon to be destroyed culture here. Certainly, the California mission schools were such culture destroyers, serving not to integrate the Chumash and other tribes into European life, but to produce menial labor and destroy 10,000 years of local culture.

But is that what schools always do? Is it what the Los Angeles Unified School District does now?

The question is significant to me. I attended LAUSD schools from kindergarten through 12th grade, both my children attend L.A. schools and I teach second grade for the district.

When in doubt, I like to start with the dictionary. Mine (“American Heritage,” 1970) defines a school first as: “An institution for the instruction of children.” Under “instruct” there are two meanings: “to furnish with knowledge” and “to give orders to.” Perhaps the first meaning applied to ancient Chumash schools, the second to the missions.

More problematical is the word culture. Related to cultivate, it originally meant “breeding of animals or growing of plants,” then, by extension, “social and intellectual formation,” and finally, “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs and institutions. . . . “ Defining a culture would thus seem to be a pretty tough challenge. Imagine codifying the totality of “socially transmitted behavior patterns,” for modern Los Angeles. One could, in a work the size of a phone book, describe this totality (as in, “Korean restaurants often will expect you to cook your own food at your table; Sephardic Jews endow hard-boiled eggs with important symbolism,” and so on). But what we couldn’t do, I think, is determine which cultures are being dismantled by public education.

We used to say that “white” culture was being preserved in America at the expense of all others. But few “whites” feel that way today. (“White” is woefully vague as an ethnic or cultural term, but its vagueness is preferable to “Anglo,” which refers only to people of English descent).

Los Angeles Unified defines me as “white,” and sometimes, incorrectly, as “Anglo,” and has determined that my culture is preserved just fine. But sometimes my thoughts stray to my great-grandfather, who stood praying one Saturday afternoon in a synagogue near Odessa, Russia. Word of an impending pogrom burst into the temple. His wife and children ran into the fields and hid. But my great-grandfather stayed praying, stayed with his culture, until a sword cut him down.

This is emotional stuff, difficult to think through. I think some of my culture is dead. But are Serrania Elementary and Taft High destroying my kids’ culture now? Maybe a little, though I think that sword 90 years ago did most of the work.

What about the Hollywood school where I teach, Ramona Elementary? One-third of our enrollment is Armenian, two-thirds Latino. I can’t speak for our students and their families on whether they think their cultures are being destroyed in our schools, but I can tell you what the district has decided. It has decided, apparently, that the Hispanic language and culture is in danger of being destroyed, but Armenian is not. Latino enrollment in the LAUSD is more than 60%, Armenian is less than 2%, yet the district has decreed that Latinos are a “minority” and Armenians are not. As a result, the bilingual master plan allocates tens of thousands of dollars to Spanish-language instruction. Armenians, not being endowed with the magical rubric “minority,” (they are, like me, “OW’s,” or “other whites”) are denied this largess.

All of the kids in my class are Latino and are designated LEP (“limited English proficient”). I am, therefore, prohibited from teaching them to read English. The district buys them a bilingual aide and reading materials, and pays Spanish-speaking teachers (who pass a difficult cultural and language test) an extra $4,000 a year for teaching them. This would seem to be an attempt to preserve culture, but it is explained differently. The district contends that children learn a second language better if they first master their native language to a very high degree. These kids must pass a very difficult test in Spanish before “transitioning” to English. Few pass it before the fourth grade.

Here’s the irony: Most kids in my class can read English. I’ve been bringing third- and fourth-grade books into my class, and about half of the kids can read them with no problem. The rest are coming along fast. Some are getting help at home, but many appear to be teaching themselves. They’re still LEP’s, though, and it has been made very clear to me that I may not give them formal English instruction. If the district isn’t trying to maintain a Spanish-speaking enclave in Los Angeles, like the French-speaking enclave of Quebec in Canada, then I don’t know what the heck it’s doing.

With governance like this, it’s no wonder so many people want to break up the district (according to a recent Times Poll, 60% in the San Fernando Valley favor breakup, including 42% of Valley Latinos.) Perhaps the point isn’t that small districts are always better, but that many people now feel they need protection from the cultural Mafia.

We sure do spend a lot of time fretting about things like this. It’s like a war of the cultures. I get mad when somebody calls me an “Anglo,” or says that I’m too fortunate to be a “minority.” And somebody else gets mad when told something else. We’re all mad. There probably is no political solution, since politics involves giving things to people. If I won a battle to get district funding for texts on Russian Jewry (fat chance), someone would feel deprived and demand something else, and so on forever.

Maybe culture is just a state of mind, finally. Maybe it’s just how you feel when you wake up in the morning, when you go through your day, when you go to sleep, and when you dream. And if your culture is in your mind, then its preservation or destruction is a personal matter. I can ask the district to stop calling me an “Anglo,” and to let me teach English because that is our common language, but I cannot ask the district to preserve my culture. My culture: the totality of myself, my memories and desires--only I can preserve that.