What We Mean When We Say “High Expectations”
When I was a teen camper at Camp Monserrate in Lake Placid, NY, I had visions of ascending to the highest natural peak in New York State: Mt. Marcy. At 5,344 feet, it didn’t have the steepest hike, but it felt like the most arduous. Dozens of campers who waited for years to do this trip rode together before dawn, peanut butter jelly sandwiches, first aid kits, and bug spray in our backpacks. At 240-pound burgeoning high school freshman, I was told for years I was too fat to make it, even though by then, I had already hiked #2 (Algonquin), #3 (Mt. Haystack), and #5 (Whiteface).
The counselors drove us before dawn to the start of the hiking path, knapsacks sifting and faux-camel skin canteens clanging on our way up. Three hours into the hike, the caravan had split off into two factions: those who would return in time for our regular night cap and those of who were far too stubborn. To the shock of everyone in the former, I chose the latter.
The shorter version of this story is that, yes, I made it all the way to the top, and it felt like I could see the whole state from the apex. (I couldn’t.) The longer version includes me losing my breath an hour before we arrived at the top. It involves my basketball sneakers, not clingy enough to scale mildew-covered rocks. It involved a little too much drinking water and plenty of pit-stops along the way. It also involved a few elder counselors rolling their eyes as they scaled the rocks with ease while I wheezed behind, in front, and in the middle. I made a wild forecast at the beginning of that trip, mostly due to seemingly irrational feelings of denial, but also resentment and dejection from naysayers. I didn’t do it because people expected me to; if anything, I did it because people didn’t expect me to.
The term “high expectations” is a backhanded pejorative.
At first glance, the term sounds important as an educational motto in a time when we’re analyzing students’ educational attainment, especially across racial, gender, and class lines. Study after daunting study confirms what so many people have known all along: our society expects less from our children of color, regardless of their actual capacity for the work. For those of who consider ourselves educators, this matters even more because we want all of our students to get the best education we possibly can given the circumstances we’re teaching in.
A student fails a test, even though they tried their best, studied all night, and asked the teacher for help throughout the week. The teacher does timely assessments, asks informative questions, and makes students struggle with work before directly intervening. The administrator stays hours before and after school tending to mounds of paperwork, responding to e-mails at wee hours of the night. Parents work two jobs at the oddest hours so they can get from one job to the next, rubbing menthol on the soreness and turning around to ask their child “Where’s the homework?” In any given role on any given day, the roles we take on in our schools don’t love us back.
How do we ask for “high expectations” of folks when we don’t set a similar expectation for our society writ large?
Some folks like to say that we can’t wait for society to get it right for our kids while still expecting actors with vacillating interests to save us from our squalor. When I hear their arguments, I hear centuries of frustration. Citizenship tests based on literacy denied to black people. Eugenics was created a science to justify reasons for the supremacy of white people. That is, whoever was deemed white at the time. Cultural genocide in the form of boarding schools functioned to complete the work on First Nations / indigenous peoples that President Andrew Jackson proliferated in policy. Efforts across the nation to delegitimize Brown vs. Board of Education and all of its underpinnings started as soon as the gavel struck the block at the Supreme Court. Too many people use class arguments to dissuade people of color from holding accountable any number of activists, progressives, and moderates who’ve enabled our exclusion from the narrative of schooling in this country.
Even to this day, this same set of people often turn the other cheek in favor of creating a big tent. Then, they wonder why some of us won’t come in when it rains.
At the same time, the idea of “high expectations” places too much emphasis on the work people of color must do in order to attain even a semblance of equity that white people get. When used correctly, “high expectations” can mean that we’re demanding the full breadth of experiences and knowledges afforded to white counterparts. Sure. When used incorrectly, and that’s OFTEN, “high expectations” means we need to double down on the elements of school that students hate. Similar to grit, “high expectations” means more focus on direct instruction, high-stakes standardized testing (and all of their derivatives), and rote behavior management.
For too many, classroom discussions are important only if the discussions make the students sound more like visions of a sterilized aristocracy.
Should anyone deviate from the script, they’re deemed “loosey-goosey,” a death knell that suggest some impropriety with the High Expectation Orthodoxy™️. Meanwhile, policies and funding from above go awry and nary a head shall roll. Tax codes, billion-dollar third-party vendors, politicians, lobbyists, and any number of think tank groups with constricting agendas exacerbate any number of gaps and deficits people maintain in their understanding of education reform. Too many people are good with calling our parents, students, and teachers for their failures, but refuse to hold our country accountable for being “loosey-goosey” about activism, civil rights, educational equity on personal and institutional levels.
The easiest item to point out is that I — and any number of people around me— had high expectations for myself, not just evidenced by that trip to Mt. Marcy, but also my trajectory from that moment. I graduated from solid institutions of learning, earned a masters’ degree, and achieved some level of middle-classness. My retort usually starts off with a reminder that not every peak looks the same for everyone, but everyone’s peak can mean success for them. I didn’t make it on my own either. I didn’t buy my own clothes. I didn’t get accept myself into the schools I attended nor did I choose the counselors that eventually prompted me to attend the trip to Mt. Marcy. I didn’t fund the camp that housed us and didn’t provide a stipend to the counselors who were alumni of the camp and had expertise in climbing the mount. I can’t take credit for all of my inherent psychological gifts that allowed me to push through and I certainly couldn’t control the eyerolls and snide comments that fueled some of my defiance.
Being self-made is also a combination of works, opportunities, and fortunes.
It was easy at the moment when I saw the full range of mountains to say “if I can do it, so can the other big black fat kids from the hood.” That’s not precise enough. I was granted any number of opportunities and points of leverage and had just enough social capital (and stubbornness) to act on it. A privilege is a privilege by any other name. I’d like for anomalies like this to become less aberrant.
My journey does not have to be others’, nor does it mean that those who didn’t make the trip up don’t deserve their share of what nature has to offer. What does it look like for our students to already have high expectations for themselves when society does not support those expectations? Who do these expectations evade? Who do they define? What measures reinforce our notions of expectations and what stories are we using to refute or double down on narratives that keep us from these answers? Who gets expectations and who gets remuneration? Who gets to defy those expectations? What happens when there’s a disconnect between people’s visions for themselves and their families and any number of actors don’t hold their end of the bargain?
What do we expect?
