Behind the Open Door airs the dirty laundry as it is practiced behind closed doors in the community college-especially the contrived rationalizations faculty use to foster the mis-education of minority students and to deny minorities teaching positions. They have become the gatekeepers in the college, the college controllers who know little about the students with whom they work. The scant presence of Asian, Hispanic, and African-American teachers in community colleges is due to intent, not oversight. It is clear that in the two-year college race is a difference that makes a difference.
It is confirmed in the volume that those who control community colleges are baby boomers. The baby boomers' attitudes about people, things and ideas in the college were shaped by their lower-class parents and grandparents who lived during a time of incessant social agitation (1900-1940). From these people the baby boomers learned who to value and who to disregard. With this type of guidance they were programmed for the roles they would later play in their professional lives, some of which were out of sync with the stated egalitarian principles of the community college. They became conservative and resistant to change. This was especially true after they became interested in collective bargaining. As they gained power they made the institution teacher centered. This change affected all aspects of the college.
The baby boomers have not been very successful with developmental education students and often blame the students for their own lack of achievement. They insist the students are without motivation, have low self-esteem, are of low intelligence, and their parents have no higher educationexperience. The teachers are always seeking explanations about cultural and class-based deviations of their students. These assumptions are used to sort and label students. All of this has precipitated the culturally disadvantaged syndrome and the deleterious affect it has had on learning and institutional resources. It is a deficit model but one that has become the centerpiece for faculty activity. The teachers know that developmental education is not education; it is a dead end.
The soliloquies of the students offered in the book reveal much about their own backgrounds and how they feel about their teachers. And like their teachers, when queried about their feelings in the college environment they give socially acceptable answers. But when at IHOP, MacDonald's and Wendy's, they offer no hosannas for their instructors.
Behind the Open Door records some of the lessons in racism that persons in community colleges should know. These include strategies used to hide some of the discriminatory practices from the public. Such practices are easy to understand and easy to dismiss.