Former White House adviser speaks at MUSC Black History event

David Johns, former executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans and senior education policy adviser to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, spoke at MUSC’s Black History Month noonday event Feb. 8. His talk, titled “Are We Worthy of Our Children?” drew on his work with the Senate and White House, identifying evidence-based best practices to improve African-American student achievement “from cradle to career.”

“Often when adults seek to solve problems for young people, we gather in rooms with other adults, we think about what it was like when we were in school way back when, and we design solutions based on what we think we would need without ever asking young people what they need,” Johns said.

When he took the reins of the White House Initiative, which President Obama created in 2012 and tasked him to lead, Johns said he sought out the real education experts — students. 

“I’ve never met a child who was not a genius,” he said, quoting educational psychologist Asa Hilliard. “There is no such thing as a problem child. All of our children are born wanting to learn, and it is the responsibility of us, as caring and concerned adults, to support them.”

Many African-American students, he said, do not have that kind of support. “The collusion of race and racism in public education means black students get punished more often and have access to educational support less often than their white peers,” he said. “There are physiological responses to race-based stressors, and when we have conversations about education, there is often an over-emphasis on cognitive development to the neglect of children’s social and emotional well-being.”

Johns said when children of any color receive the support they need, they thrive, explaining the importance of being able to identify role models that look like them. That’s often a problem, he said, in the STEAM fields. “If you ask a lot of African-American students to name a STEAM professional of color, they draw a blank. So, it’s important for us to highlight diversity in terms of the application of science, technology, engineering, the arts, agriculture and mathematics to help kids make the connections that no one else is going to make for them.”

He gave an example, citing 11-year-old Mikaila Ulmer, who used her grandmother’s flaxseed oil recipe to produce nutritious honey-sweetened lemonade and founded a company called Me & the Bees to sell it nationwide. “Mikaila’s grandmother is not someone we would ever celebrate traditionally as a STEAM entrepreneur. But she is. She doesn’t have a credential. She’s not certified by any post-secondary institution. But she used her ingenuity and understanding of science to create something.”

Johns said it is important to foster positive narratives about African-Americans, such as that of Mikaila and her grandmother, rather than allowing stereotypes and negative media portrayals to dictate one’s perceptions.

“It’s a sad reality today that a child’s access to opportunity is still predicted by a code — his or her genetic code or zip code,” he said, paraphrasing something former first lady Michelle Obama said. “So much of that has to do with how we perceive our children and how we teach them to perceive themselves.”

Citing Department of Education statistics, Johns said the rates of students suspended or expelled from school at the kindergarten through 12th-grade levels were three times higher for black boys and six times higher for black girls when compared to their white peers.

“The toughest job I had in my life was teaching kindergarten. It’s what prepared me to work with Congress,” he said, encouraging everyone in his audience to visit an elementary school classroom firsthand. “Anyone who has not spent time sitting with a group of 5 year olds, listening to them grappling with the same things we grapple with, it’s both sobering and affirming. Among the things I miss about being a kindergarten teacher is the clarity with which young people make sense of the world.

“The most fundamental questions we can ask about the world revolve around a three-letter word: why. And the reality is that we as adults side step, obfuscate and dance around that question, especially when the answers might be uncomfortable.”

As an example, Johns pointed to Michael Brown, who police shot in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, leading to waves of protest and unrest in the St. Louis suburb over the weeks that followed. “Michael Brown was killed on a Saturday, and the district canceled school for the following week,” he said. “And, when they came back to school the following Monday, teachers were told, ‘Do not talk about what happened.’ What do you think kids were talking about that whole week? We do ourselves, our children and our communities a disservice when we don’t sit in that discomfort and figure out how to answer their questions.”

Johns said he makes a point, whenever he talks to students, to ask what they need to feel safe and to thrive. The most frequent answer he hears is love. “Love both affirms and challenges,” he said. “It can be uncomfortable, and it can be a risk. But we need to show up, even for the kids we sometimes want to shake. Because, that’s the kind of love that matters most.”