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