Review of “Closing the Attitude Gap: How to Fire Up Your Students to Strive for Success,” by Baruti K. Kafele. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development [ASCD]).
Paper, 2013, 144 pages.
Kafele missed the boat.
This pre-COVID book goes against the grain of pretty much everything a patient educator wanting to help a disadvantaged student would do. First, I guess we need to call them students with challenges and disadvantages. Second, I think we need to try to understand our students—rather than have strong opinions about poverty—and ignore the realities of it.
It is certainly true that Baruti Kafele has become a much sought-after speaker for professional development and other education-related programs nationwide. In addition to this book, he wrote the best seller Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life (ASCD, 2009). This current book focuses on helping students to improve their attitudes, set goals, and work harder. It tells the story of the original school where he turned test scores completely around and overnight got students on the right track.
It could also be said it is true Kafele has many very good ideas for helping students, starting with making sure the teachers are in the right frame of mind to accept students for who they are and then help them achieve great things despite the disadvantaged situations and difficult settings they may be in.
In this book, Kafele puts forth a lot of opinions on the importance of students using clean paper to submit assignments, the essential component of hard work, the hope that teachers will come to know how their students really are. In short, he emphasizes clarity, respect, and drive in the classroom. While he includes a lot of do-able interesting approaches to teaching, he also makes some statements I really do not care for…
…I must admit: I disagree strongly with how Kafele looks at what to do about students living in poverty. I feel his mindset is a negative and hopeless one regarding poor students and how to help them. For example, he states: “As a classroom teacher, you have no control over poverty; you cannot change the conditions that your students might be going home to every day. At best, you can inspire your students to one day rise above their situation, but you cannot change it, so it makes little sense to dwell on it or make it an excuse…” (p. 25)
Does it not seem rather ironic he makes these statements, when his main goal is to improve attitudes. Perhaps he has not felt enough disappointment or loss, or at least he has never been hungry enough to understand what it is like to be starving when you are supposed to be doing your homework and concentrating on it carefully. I was very surprised he has these kinds of opinions.
Despite the strange perspective on poverty and what to do about it—or rather the notion that nothing can be done about it—all is not lost here. There are some good ideas for helping students do better. I recommend this book—with the warning that the comments on poverty seem foolish and rather unhelpful. As a stand-alone book, I do not think this text leaves the right impression—or a complete one—about disadvantaged students and how to better understand and teach them.
The book MUST be accompanied by various eye-opening warnings. Onyo! Watch out! Achtung! Careful! Keikoku!
…What books would I recommend to be used along with this one in professional development sessions or teacher education courses?
One such book is America’s Poor and the Great Recession, by Kristin S. Seefeldt & John D. Graham, with a foreword by Tavis Smiley, University of Indiana Press, 2013. Another is The Rich and the Rest of Us (by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, SmileyBooks, 2012). Both are brief paperbacks chock full of facts and information so essential to understanding the poor conditions in which many of our students are currently living.
I think Kafele misses the boat on helping students who live in poverty.
He misses the call to save the “whole child” and this is, by the way, a big push from ASCD, of course. It is on their banners!
Perhaps he is frustrated by poverty—and does not know what to do about it—but then the book suffers. Ignoring the recession and poverty do not seem very informed ways to proceed as citizens or as educators.
There are many things teachers can do in their classroom, help students by providing information about resources, help families get connected to the assistance they need, provide referrals to others with more technical information, and of course read up on, study, and discuss poverty.