Education is Politics

Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change
Ira Shor

For this (final) blog post, I chose to pick and reflect on three quotes from the reading.

The first quote is a series of questions that Shor asks:
"Whose history and literature is taught and whose ignored?
Which groups are included and which are left out of the reading list or text?
From whose point of view is the past and present examined?
Which themes are emphasized and which are not?
Is the curriculum balanced and multicultural, giving equal attention to men, women, minorities, and nonelite groups or is it traditionally male-oriented and Eurocentric?"
These questions reminded me of the questions we have been asking in class. These questions relate to many of the readings- Johnson, Delpit, McIntosh, SCHWAMP, and Lake. They are important questions a teacher should ask of herself- if she has a class with mostly Latino students, then the reading material provided should reflect that diversity. White Privilege has allowed us in schools to teach primarily about or own culture from out point of view, which is naïve and wrong.

The second quote I chose is in relation to participation:
"Knowledge is derived from action... to know an object is to act upon it and transform it... to know it is therefore to assimilate reality into structures of transformation and these are the structures that intelligence constructs as a direct intelligence of our actions."
This quote stood out to me for personal reasons. In class, I am not the most outspoken and my participation is not the best. This is not because I don't do the readings, and am not following along with the conversation, but because I didn't believe I had to speak in order to be engaged. This section on participation makes me realize its importance and why Doctor Stevos stresses participation so much.

The last quote I chose from the reading is about student's and teacher's traditional roles in a classroom
"Students learn that education is something to put up with, to tolerate as best they can, to obey, or to resist. Their role is to answer questions, not to question answers. In passive settings, they have despairing and angry feelings about education, about social change, and about themselves. They feel imposed on by schooling. They expect to be lectured at and bored by an irrelevant curriculum. They wait to be told what to do and what things mean."
This quote described to me two situations we have discussed recently: first the classroom Ms. G entered into in the movie the Freedom Writers. Before she began teaching them and making a participatory classroom, the students were told precisely what to do, given a strict curriculum that was of no interest to them, and were told to never question authority or textbooks. This is also the type of schooling described in the lower class schools from the Finn reading.


These images are of a Socratic circle, or Socratic seminar, a method that was used a lot throughout my high school career and similar to the style of discussions used in our FNED class. These encourage participatory and democratic learning- students are encouraged to bring up their own ideas, discuss, debate, relate to one another, offer solutions, relate themes to outside sources and most importantly the students are in control and are all participating.
The link offered is a video of students discussing issues of diversity in schools
 http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=students+in+a+socratic+circle&qs=n&form=QBVLPG&pq=students+in+a+socratic+circle&sc=0-19&sp=-1&sk=#view=detail&mid=6141960756A53062EB946141960756A53062EB94

Social Justice Event: Affirmative Action

Shirley Wicher

 

First I would like to comment on the overwhelming amount of background and experience that Shirley Wilcher was presented to possess. Her educational credentials include graduate of Harvard Law School, and her work background, to name a few, includes Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, Associate Counsel for Civil Rights (in the U.S. House of Representatives), and Executive Director of The America Association for Access, Equity and Diversity. Her background and experiences intrigued me, and made me realize if there was anyone who I should listen to on the topic of Affirmative Action, she was the one!

 

The purpose of Affirmative Action:

• To prevent discrimination based on race, gender, disability or sexual orientation
• To right past wrongs
• It is about opportunity

Affirmative Action's past:

• Roosevelt and Truman were the first to pass orders regarding issues of Affirmative Action
• Brown v. Board of Education
• Desegregation of armed forces
• Kennedy passed EEO-1 Private Sector Report establishing Affirmative Action
• 1991 Civil Rights Act was passed
• In 1997 California banned all forms of Affirmative Action
• 2000 Florida bans using race as a factor in college admissions
• 2007 Michigan bans preferential treatments of minorities

Why We Still Need Affirmative Action Today:

• White children still do better than black children on tests
• This is an indication of White Privilege, as described by Peggy McIntosh
• Women face a glass ceiling in most professions
• S.C.H.W.A.M.P.
• As described in the video the 3 R's, in secondary educational institutions, the upper level Ivy-league schools and universities are mostly comprised of white students, while the lower level state schools and colleges are mostly comprised of students of color or minorities
• Affirmative Action would allow for students of minority greater access to the upper level schools
• Employers need legislature to promote them to hire people that aren't just like them
• Shirley told of a story of trying to hail a cab in Washington State recently, and when the (white) cab driver pulled up and saw that his perspective customer was a (black woman), he drove off just as her hand touched the door handle
• This is a prime example of white privilege, S.C.H.W.A.M.P. and Privilege Power and Difference (Johnson)
• Even in the 21st century, when most people would like to believe that discrimination based on gender, religion, race, color or sexual orientation is no longer an issue, based on the readings in FNED, personal stories that Shirley mentioned and statistics that she gave, it is clear that discrimination is still a major issue, and affirmative action is a great institution to inhibit discrimination and promote opportunity

Other connections to outside sources on Affirmative Action:

http://blog.capital.org/last-minute-requirements-for-2015-affirmative-action-plans/ 

This is a website which talks about the requirements companies must make in accordance with Affirmative Action and similar laws.

http://dailyfreepress.com/2013/03/07/affirmative-action-positive-at-universities-report-suggests/

This article talks about Affirmative Action Specifically at the college level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saIVafSC38k

Barack Obama talks about how Affirmative Action, race and class are all not mutually exclusive.

 

 

 

 

Reflection on Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

Citizenship in School:  Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome
Christopher Kliewer
Instantly when I first started reading this article, the first thing I thought out was a charter school in Orlando Florida that I visited in January. The school was called the UCP of Central Florida. They are a school which is 90% privately funded with around 500 students in ages birth through grade 5. Like the classroom Isaac was a part of, in Shoshone School, their main goal was creating community environment in the classrooms and integrating high functioning students with those who could be classified as "behind" for their age group. The classrooms were about the same class size as described in the article, with a mean around 15, and focused on all of the students expressing their individual talents and everyone contributing to the class in their own way. Each of the students was taught in a way best suited to them, with heavy involvement from members of the community, teacher assistants, therapy (physical, speech, literacy), principals and volunteers.
It was of particular interest to me when Shayne said that she maintained a focus on individual goals for each of the children, and not on linear development, or progression along with state standards, or theories set up by academics. This seems to be of particular importance in going along with many of the themes we have been discussing in class; that often times the way a student may appear on paper, or when compared to other statistics of children is not an accurate representation of that child's abilities, talents, importance to the community or overall ability.
This position if further expressed under the section on "A Belief in One's Ability to Think" where there is a quote "Schools have traditionally taken a narrow position when defining and judging student intellect". This is something I think is true across all education systems and in relation to all students. As we can see from this article, there are various special talents all students possess, even and especially ones who on paper may appear as having a disability. The students with disabilities that I had the privilege of working with for three years while I was in high school all had special talents of their own. I worked with one student who had the ability to memorize anything he saw or read, draw impeccably and compute and mathematic equation instantaneously in his mind. Many of the other students I worked with were gifted musically, others loved to dance, and most all of them were amazing at brightening someone else's day, working hard, making others smile and were almost always in a good mood. They were always excited to learn something new, and always had a positive outlook. I think that looking at our future students the way that Shayne looked at all of her students would make our future students better members of the community, both those who are high functioning and those who may be classified as disabled. The way she looks at her students is a great one, and will allow them in the future to be able to be better members of the community, recognize people for who they are rather than what society values their abilities as.
The link I am posting is a link to the website for the school that I visited in Florida. https://www.ucpcfl.org/

literacy with an attitude

Literacy with an Attitude
Patrick Finn

The part of this article that struck me the most was the study on the comparison of five schools in New Jersey. Since in class we have been mostly focusing on inner city/poor schools, it was interesting to see the black and white comparison between those schools and the more funded schools. What struck me the most was that the differences in the schools do not just stop at the kind of students in the school, or the resources they are using; the main difference actually is the type of education that the students are receiving. In the two lowest schools in New Jersey, the students education consisted of learning to follow rules, performing what was basically just busy word, and learning the one correct way to do things and using to critical thinking or creativity skills. While reading about these two schools in the article, my mind was immediately drawn back to the movie from class, The Freedom Writers, when one of the school administrators told Ms. Gruwell that the students did not need textbooks to read, that it would be a big accomplishment if she could just get the kids to listen and follow directions. This is the exact type of education that the students in the lower-grade schools in New Jersey are receiving. An education in which there is no room for self thought or critical thinking is not an education that will challenge, motivate or teach a student anything useful for outside of a classroom. The work that the students were doing and the skills they were receiving would lead them into the same mechanical type jobs that require no actual thinking.

The working class students were a step above the lower class schools, but not by much. Their education too, followed the pattern that what they were learning in school and the skills they were receiving would basically implant them into jobs of equal status as their parents, because their quality of education would provide them no other alternative. The students were learning facts from textbooks and the skills of memorization. These facts were more meaningful and conceptual than in the lower class school, however students were still not taught to use critical thinking skills, to look for another possible answer or to offer other solutions to problems. Science classes and math classes were more lecture and presentation instead of the hands on type of learning for these subjects that was used in the upper class schools.

In the two upper class schools, the differences in the type of education received was large. In these schools where the students are mostly children of doctors, corporate executives, Wall Street Brokers and TV executives. Therefore, the education and skills that children in these schools are receiving is spring-boarding them into those types of higher paying jobs. The teachers in these schools realize that their student's parents are in the top 1% pay rate of the entire country, and therefore they feel they have a responsibility to teach these students better. The teachers feel that these students have more of a right to an education, so they can achieve a job and the same level of wealth as their parents. This is why these students receive an education heavy on critical thinking, problem solving, discussion, research, creativity, and humanitarianism. In the most affluent school, students were even required to plan their own lessons and teach the class themselves. This is a far cry from students in the lower class school who were listening to their teacher list facts whose relevance had not been explained and filling out worksheets that did not have a meaningful purpose.

I think it would be very interesting to reflect upon which types of education we received as a child. Based on the classes we took in high school, the districts that we come from and the level of income of our families, if we received similar or different educations than explained in this study. For me, the education I received was a mix of all three due to the fact that I went to middle school in a private Catholic school, attended high school in a poor inner city school, however most of my classes were honors/AP therefore usually followed along with the higher level schools types of education.

I found an article that further discusses this education gap between poor and rich schools. The schools compared in this article are from San Diego, California which shows that the education gap is bi-coastal, and is a problem across the whole country. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2009/09/rich_schoolspoor_schools_the_g.html

Response to Videos

For me, the video that connected most to what we have been learning in class, and what I have been experiencing while tutoring was the video entitled Teaching After Brown V Board of Education, Larson-Billings, Lomax, Orefield. What was easiest for me to connect to primarily was the issue of unintentional segregation. In the school I am tutoring in, the segregation is highly evident. The poor neighborhood the school is located in provides for economic segregation, as well as racial, language and religious segregation. At least 90% of the students I work with as of non-white racial background, and due to the fact that the school is located right next to the projects, most of the students also come from impoverished backgrounds. The school has little resources, is located in an old, run down building in a dirty and poor neighborhood. Even though there is no law segregating the students in this school from students in other, mostly white richer public schools, the geographic map of school districts makes segregation inevitable for inner city schools such as the ones we all work in in Providence. 

Another part of the video that really stuck out to me were some of the statistics that were used. Some of them include:
- the average black family has 1/19 the wealth of the average white family
- the average Latino family has 1/13 the wealth of the average white family
- the top 400 universities have almost all white and Asian students, while the 3,200 lower tier universities have mostly black and Latino students
- California has one of the highest problems with unintentional segregation.
The last point that really spoke to me was the point Gloria Larson-Billings stated while Common Core and teacher evaluations was being talked about. She said that while both of these things are important, these issues should not even be on the forefront of education until the issues of segregation and equal funded are finally solved. 50 years ago, Brown V Board of Ed set the laws in place, however, there is still legislature that needs to be put in place to solve these issues that are still very much ongoing. Larson-Billings is right; we need to prioritize the issues of education. Those that began half a century ago and are based on human rights should be fixed before we work on new issues dealing with testing and evaluations.
The Census of 2010 supports the video in that segregation in public schools is still ongoing. The article includes more statistics and offers possible solutions. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2010-12-14-segregation_N.htm

In the Service of What?

In the Service of What?
The Politics of Service Learning
Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer
This was a very relatable article for me. As volunteering was a part of the religious education (CCD) I received, as well as a part of the curriculum for the Catholic School I attended (grades 4-8), as a part of the Child Studies program I was a part of in high school for 3 years, additionally as a requirement both for my graduation of high school and as a requirement for the National Honors Society I was a part of, you could definitely say volunteering in many ways is something I have been doing for a long time.
I have babysat for single mothers for free, interned in preschools and special education classes for hundreds of hours, tutored students before and after school, participated in food drives, worked at food pantries, participated in benefit shows, danced for the elderly, sold snacks at sporting events, raked leaves, ran the Pennies for Patients Drive at my school, participated in 3 Teacher Appreciation Days, and donated and volunteered at countless other events. But never, have I ever written a reflection on any of these experiences as this text suggests.
Do I feel good after a day of volunteering? Sure. But do I feel as if I have changed the world, or learned something? No, not really. At first when reading this article I felt like it was trying to demean or diminish the volunteering that I had previously done. But then I realized that wasn't what it was trying to do at all. What I came to understand from the article was that if people continue to go about volunteering in the ways in which I had been, the cycle of need for volunteers will never be broken. There will be a constant need for help and assistance because no one is learning from the assistance they are giving. But, perhaps if while we are volunteering, we are also looking for solutions, problems, causes and effects, then actual change may be made and a problem may be solved, and the need for volunteering in that area may decrease, so we can then move on to helping and using our efforts in other needy areas .

The service learning project we are asked to do for this class provides me with the first opportunity to do the kind of volunteering described in this article. It asks us to reflect upon our experiences and relate it to articles, ideas and topics we have learned and discussed while in FNED. I am really looking forward to seeing what more there is to gain from a volunteer experience when a reflective aspect is added.   

Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us

For my blog post on Linda Christensen's, Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us, I chose to analyze three important quotes from the text. There were so many important and mind-altering quotes to choose from, but here are the one I chose:

Quote #1
"Consequently, most of the early information we receive about "others"- people racially, religiously, or socioeconomically different from ourselves- does not come as a result of firsthand experience. The secondhand information we receive has often been distorted, shaped by cultural stereotypes and left incomplete..."
I had never realized before that the shows we watch when we are young have such a deep impact on forming who we become later on in life. This was an eye opening quote for me, because I had never before questioned where my ideas on certain topics come from. This quote has made me more aware and analytical of where my deep down biases and stereotypes come from.

Quote #2
"Personally, handling the dissection of dreams has been a major cause of depression for me. Not so much dissecting- but how I react to what is found as a result of the operation. It can be overwhelming and discouraging to find out my whole self image has been formed mostly by others or underneath my worries a out what I look like are of being expose to TV images of girls and their set roles given to them by TV and the media."
When I read this quote for the first time in the article, I was shocked to realize that this is exactly how I feel. After reading the beginning of the article, and reading information such as the quote listed above, I was depressed and saddened as well! It is sad, especially for females who are arguably more impacted due to the importance fairy tales play for girls at an early age, to think that the person we have developed is not something we ourselves developed, but parts of us were developed by society and are developed the same for every American girl. I always thought I was in control of establishing my own values, beliefs, likes, dislikes, aspirations and dreams, but when I look deeply into all of those things, I realize I was definitely not responsible for the shaping of all of them.

Quote #3
"During a class discussion Sabrina said, "I realized these problems weren't just in cartoons. They ere in everything- every magazine I picked up, every television show I watched, every billboard I passed by on the street"... but as Justine wrote earlier, at times my students would like to remain "ignorant and happy". Without giving students an outlet for their despair, I was indeed creating "factories of cynicism" in my classroom- and it wasn't pretty."
This quote shows me how grateful I am for the realization I have received from this article. Although it may be less painful and less work, it is unintelligent and ignorant. I am now so much more aware of the information being sent to me through all forms of media. Like also mentioned in the article, I am going to be much more cautious with the television shows I let my own children watch someday, and as an educator, I hope to do the same.

This article was super eye opening for me, and probably the most relatable article I have read so far. It has made me much more analytical of the daily information I receive from various sources.


http://liptongued.com/are/are-disney-princesses-damaging-our-daughters-ideas-of-women.html
The picture posted and the hyperlink both discuss the impact of princesses on young girls.