Saturday, December 14, 2013
Awesome Life
Found this at Nordstrom's last night & thought of you all! Just a friendly reminder to live your life for you. Not based on where someone else is on their path. All paths and people are meant to be different!
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Liberation Praxis: Participation & Inquiry
Reflecting
on Quotes from Ira Shor’s Empowering
Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change article
“Get up, stand up:
Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up: Don’t give up the fight.”
–Bob Marley
I really enjoyed the first chapter
of this piece immensely. This article was an accumulation of a few of my
passions regarding teaching. It touched upon allowing the students to decide
what they would be learning based on their interests and prior knowledge. It
also talked about how important participation in the world is in helping
students know first-hand how their help makes a difference. It talks about encourages
students to become empowered by asking questions and seeking out the answers.
By standing up for what they believe and fighting for the change that will give
them what they deserve. Liberation is as praxis: the action and reflection of
people upon their world in order to transform it” (Shor, 33)
The tools we need in order to empower
our students have been given to us this semester has we read through the
articles each week and then blogged about them. As I read through this article
I kept stumbling upon connections with all of the texts we had read. Some had
one more than one author that related to the passage but here I just put down
the author that came to mind first. I flagged them and will share them here:
·
August’s “Creating Safe Spaces: “Our
role as teachers is to create a safe environment in which students can express
opinions and most importantly, generate their own language materials for
learning and peer-teaching” (Shor, 43).
August’s Advocacy &
Protection: “From a critical point of view, existing cannons
of knowledge and usage are not a common culture; they have ignored the multicultural
themes, idioms and achievements of non-elite groups such as woman, minorities,
homosexuals and working people.
·
Christensen’s Media Control: “The hostile
reception in the mass media and in academic circles in the United States to
feminist and multicultural studies since the 1960’s exemplifies the political nature
of apparently neutral knowledge” (Shor, 34).
·
Collier’s “Code-Switching”: “As
writing teachers to Afro-Caribbean students, they taught the community idiom,
Creole and standard English simultaneously. They did not install white English
as the preferred idiom in the classroom. Instead they developed bilingual
literacy and a political awareness of the relationship between the dominant and
the community languages” (Shor, 48).
Collier’s Acceptance of Home Language: “Their
class in Creole and standard English is an example of multicultural language
arts seeking a critical and democratic balance between community speech and the
dominant usage, without denying either” (Shor, 50)
·
Delpit’s “Rules and Codes of Power”: “As
conscious human beings, we can discover how we are conditioned by the dominant
ideology. We can gain distance on our moment of existence…we can struggle free precisely
because we know we aren’t free! That is why we can think of transformation.
Human beings are capable of overcoming limits if they can openly examine them.
The participatory class offers that possibility” (Shor, 22-23)
Delpit’s “Rules and Codes of
Power”: “Most kids like the sound of their home language better…we talk about
why it might be necessary to learn standard English…asking my students to
memorize the rules without asking who makes the rules, who enforces the rues,
who benefits from the rules, who loses from the rules…legitimates a social
system that devalues my students’ knowledge and language” (Shor, 53).
·
Johnston’s “Say the Words”: “Politics
reside not only in subjects matter but in the discourse of the classroom; in
the way teachers and students speak to each other. The rules for talking are a
key mechanism for empowering or disempowering students” (Shor, 14).
·
Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn From You Technique”: “Many
students do not like the knowledge, process or rules set out for them in class.
In reaction, they drop out or withdraw into passivity or silence in the
classroom. Some become self-educated; some sabotage the curriculum by misbehaving”
(Shor, 14).
Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn From You Technique”: The
Performance Strike: Until students experience lively participation, mutual
authority and meaningful work, they will display depr4essed skills and knowledge,
as well as negative emotions. Teachers will be measuring and reacting to an artificially
low picture of student abilities” (Shor, 21)
Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn From You Technique”: “The authoritarian
traditional curriculum itself generate bad feelings with lead many students to
resist or sabotage the lessons” (Shor, 24)
Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn From You Technique”: Some
follow instructions, others go around them; some manipulate the teacher; still
others undermine the class. In such an environment, many students become
cynical, identifying intellectual life with dullness and indignity” (Shor, 26).
·
Kohn’s “Manipulating Children”: “Education
can socialize students into critical through or into dependence on authority,
that is, into autonomous habits of mind into passive habits of following authorities,
waiting to be told what to do and what things mean” (Shor, 13).
Kohn’s “Reducing Achievement”: “The
typical classroom is framed by competition. Star charts on the wall announce who
has been successful at learning…competition encourages people to survey other
people’s differences for potential weak spots” (Shor, 23-24)
·
Kozol’s The Poor Remain Poor Theory: “School
funding is another political dimension of education, because more money had
always been invested in the education of upper-class children and elite
collegians than has been spent on students from lower-income homes and in
community college” (Shor, 15).
·
Kozol’s Stereotyping Theory: “Low
status traditionally ascribed to everyday language…the medium of expression of
those colonized was always viewed by the colonists as something inferior, ugly,
poverty-stricken, incapable for example of conveying scientific or
technological ideas, as if languages did not change historically in step with
actual developments in the forces of production” (Shor, 52).
·
McIntosh’s Privileges: “Not
encouraging students to question knowledge, society and experience tacitly
endorses and supports the status quo” (Shor, 12).
McIntosh’s Privileges: “Instead
of blaming themselves, they learned that the problem of doing well in school is
a problem of an unequal society that devalues the idiom spoken by ordinary
people” (Shor, 53)
·
Westheimer’s Reflecting Upon Service Learning: “Piaget
says ‘Knowledge is derived from action…to know an object is to act upon it and
to transform it…to know is therefore to assimilate reality into structures of
transformation and these are the structures that intelligence constructs as a
direct extension of our actions.’ With a Deweyan emphasis, Piaget reiterated
that we learn by doing and thinking
about our experience” (Shor, 17).
Other than all the quotes I listed above, I found
six more that really stood out for me that I will continue to discuss here. They
touched upon everything from empowerment to reflecting to participating to
keeping an open mind in order to accept differences and things we at first don’t
understand. These are all key elements in teaching in my opinion. “Schools need
to be defended as an important public service that educates students to be
critical citizens who can think, challenge, take risks and believe that their
actions will make a difference in a larger society” (Shor 16).
The aspect I have always struggled with the most is
that balance between teaching what I think is right whilst not enforcing my
beliefs on my students, instead encouraging them to think and feel for
themselves. “By limiting creative and critical questioning, the banking model
makes education into an authoritarian transfer instead of a democratic
experience. Any material imposed by authority as doctrine stops being knowledge
and becomes dogma. Critical learning and democratic education end where
orthodoxy begins” (Shor, 34).
“In the social setting of education, passive curricula
help prepare students for life in undemocratic institutions. Students do not
practice democratic habits in co-governing their classroom, schools or
colleges. There, they learn that unilateral authority is the normal way things
are done in society. They are introduced in school to the reality of management
holding dominant unelected power. At the same time they are told that they live
in freedom and democracy” (Shor, 19). The rules and code of power keep the
students opinions at bay. They are taught that their needs and thoughts do not
matter. This is why it’s so important to run a democratic classroom, where we
can show our students that their voice doe sin fact matter greatly.
“To help move students away from passivity and
cynicism, a powerful signal has to be sent from the very start, a signal that
learning is participatory, involving humour, hope and curiosity. A strong
participatory and affective opening broadcasts optimistic feelings about the
students’ potential and about the future; students are people whose voices are
worth listening to, whose minds can carry the weight of serious intellectual
work, whose thought and feeling can entertain transforming self and society” (Shor,
26) This is important because we must allow students to know how much their opinions
matter. They must be taught that their voice is powerful and needs to be used.
By having open discussion forums in class, they can feel the rush and
excitement of adding to the conversation!
I would like to sum up this piece with two quotes. I’ll reward you with a video and the middle. “People
begin life as motivated learners, not as passive beings. Children naturally join
the world around them. They learn by interacting, by experimenting and by using
play to internalize the meaning of words and experience. Language intrigues
children; they have needs they want met; they busy the older people in their
lives with questions and requests for show me, tell me. But year by year their
dynamic learning erodes in passive classrooms not organized around their
cultural backgrounds, conditions or interests. Their curiosity and social instincts
decline until many become nonparticipants” (Shor, 17). This touched me so
deeply because I have always subscribed to the theory that children know more
than we could ever know. They are so much wiser than we are because they are
untainted by society still. They still believe in their hopes and dreams and
goodness and Santa Claus. Then we slowly strip away their confidence and
passion for play and life. They do love to learn, they want to learn and grow
much more so than most adults. So why not allow them to?
This video of Sir Ken Robinson speaking on Changing Education Paradigms, edited and drawn by the RSA team plays to the
very themes in the above quote. It also touches upon all of the issues brought
up in this piece as well as lots of other pressing education issues like the
lack of the arts, creativity and the old industrial revolution format of our
education system. It’s only eleven minutes long. Please watch it. Robinson is funny, smart, witty and
passionate about what we all care about.
The last thing I’d like to share (I
know I’m dragging it out, it’s our final blog post after all!) is a quote from
this piece which I refer to as the holy grail. This is why knowledge
is power and why it’s so important that we how our students that they have
the power to make great change! “Knowledge has always been a place where forces
contend for power, as Galileo discovered in his conflicts with the Vatican, as
slaveholders in the American south understood when they made it illegal to
teach slaves to read or write and as the Bush White House demonstrated when it imposed
strict censorship on the coverage of the Gulf War. In no society is knowledge a
neutral terrain. Because some groups in history have had the power to establish
standard knowledge and standard usage, these canons need to be studied
critically, not absorbed as a bogus common culture” (Shor, 34-35). Food for
thought indeed!
Questions For Class:
·
The aspect I have always struggled with the most is
that balance between teaching what I think is right whilst not enforcing my
beliefs on my students, instead encouraging them to think and feel for
themselves. What are some ways that I can use in order to not allow my passion
to persuade others to believe what I do while still sharing what I believe is
right to encourage them to do what’s right?
Picture Links:
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
An IEP Meeting Powerpoint
Hi Everyone!
I found the powerpoint presentation of my IEP study but I don't know how to attach it here, anyone knows who can help me?
For now, I can at least share something. On slide seven I put a youtube link. It's a xtranormal video that someone made to show what how a parent can be really confused during an IEP meeting (one-on-one here). You'll only need to watch the first minute to get the gist! It's copied and pasted it here too:
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Those Who Can Teach...
Individuality and Personality of the Human Being:
Extended
Comments from Chelsea’s Post on Christopher Kliewer’s Citizenship in School: Reconceptualising Down Syndrome article
As Chelsea pointed out in her post, this article
was difficult to get through. I think this is because we now can read article
like this with new lens. Lens we have honed with the tools we have gathered in
reading other pieces that focused on aspects like the rules and culture of
power, safe spaces and privilege. We will never see the world the same ever
again. As we have found out in reading this article, that is both a blessing
and a curse. A curse because our antennas are now up and receptive much more
clearly to what is really going on around us and so we can no longer ignore it without
feeling something about it first. A blessing for the same reason because now we
can do something about it! In this article we learn about teachers who have
done just that in their classrooms with children who have Down syndrome. Chelsea
talks about three such students; Lee, Isaac and John. I will take it a step
farther by comparing these stories to the theories of Bilken, my man Vygotsky
and the super cool Dewey.
The story of Lee illustrates how we automatically stereotype
those students who simply look different. Lee’s teacher points this out when he
is singled out saying “anybody who knows Lee knows he’s gifted in how he solves
problems, cares about others, reads, loves math. So I guess what I’m arguing is
that if you did pick Lee out, you wouldn’t be seeing Lee. It’s not Lee you are
picking out. It’s your stereotype, your mind-set. It’s you and it has nothing
to do with Lee” (pg. 84). “The challenge is to erase negative attitudes about people
with developmental disabilities, get rid of the stereotypes and break the
barriers for people with disabilities” (pg. 73) says Kingsley.
We can do this by changing the rules and codes of
power that Delpit speaks of and Bilken points out because it is they that sort
everyone out into compartments they can label and it is they who controls where
they are all placed. I agree with Kozol when he says that if we don’t, we end
up paying a tremendous intellectual, emotional, spiritual and economic cost”
(pg. 73). “Society is hurt when schools act as cultural sorting machines justifying
a competitive ethic that marginalizes certain students that legitimize
discrimination and devaluation on the basis of the dominant society’s
preferences in matters of ability, gender, ethnicity and race and that endorse
an elaborate process of sorting by perceived ability and behaviour” (pg. 73).
This perceived ability and behaviour can also be
seen in Isaac’s story. Isaac’s teacher Shayne saw early on how
he understood lessons in his own way. She didn’t see his movements and
outbursts as behavioural disobedience but instead saw it as his flair for the
dramatic because he enjoyed the “drama of life.” As Chelsea also points out “the
presumed defectiveness exists not as an intrinsic commodity of the child who
thoughts fail to fit within the perceived static border of normality. Rather
the idea of defect emerges from culturally devalued sets of relationships
that that child has with his or her surroundings” (pg. 82). Vygotsky would
agree as he believed that children constructed their knowledge by having
relationships with others and then learning to understand them through their
engagements.
When Isaac is tested with blocks and spoons and
doesn’t follow directions to a tee, the evaluator, who doesn’t know him at all,
misreads his actions. “He separated the blocks from the spoons and tasted each
spoon before throwing it aside. He was not even given credit by the psychologist,
who noted that Isaac had not conformed to the specific directions of the test
item and so he didn’t even get credit for it because he didn’t do it right but
he clearly knew which was the block, which was the spoon and he followed
directions in an organizing sense” (pg. 84). Shayne saw this incompetence as a perception
ascribed to a child by others who misunderstood the meaning of the child’s
performance” (pg. 83). As Kohn points out, the student isn’t going to learn
from you if you don’t respect what they have to say or how they handle learning
themselves.
As Shayne points out “the notion of
Down syndrome often obscures out ability to recognize the child as a child”. John
Mcgough knew this first hand when he lived in North Hollywood where he did not
know what it was like to be “accepted for what he is, not what he isn’t”. When
he moved with his family to Mendocino, John was able to really throw himself
into the community because they welcomed him with open arms and didn’t treat
him as someone who was lacking abilities of any kind and instead were able to “see
past his chromosomal anomaly to his humanity”. As one of his siblings pointed
out “here he is safe-what he calls a safe space and he can concentrate on what
he can do instead of being shown or being told what he can’t do” (all pg. 86) August
touches upon this as well, cited how in created a safe space for students, they
are able to feel more comfortable in their skin so that they can focus on
learning.
Dewey too mentions a safe space in
the way of a community, which is what Mendocino is to John. Most importantly
how a democratic community can help value individuality. In the realization of
human reciprocity we can see democracy as “more than a form of government it is
primarily a mode of associate living, of conjoint communicated experience”,
which can also be seen in Shayne teaching in an inclusive classroom with Isaac
and other Down syndrome students. Just as Shayne too points out how the
students learn from one another, Dewey took notices “democracy as a way of life
in which community both establishes and is derived from each individual’s
recognition of the value of every other individual.” This is the most important
part to remember because “democracy can only occur when no person’s voice is
deterministically silenced” (pg. 72).
In Chelsea’s blog, she address key
points in this article including why students with down syndrome should be
place in inclusive classes because they learn from one another, what it means
when we accept people for who they are instead of who they aren't and how
common traits in all of us help us to relate to other's who are different than
us. I posted a YouTube video below called We’re More Alike Than Different. I
think it shows that is certainly true of people with Down syndrome, other
learning disabilities, ablebodyiness and any other aspect that makes them
different that the so called “norm” (up, there’s that word I so despise again).
Shanye has been teaching that way for years. Kliewer is bringing it to our
attention here. Now it’s our job to take our lens out and go make the necessary
changes to show why schools should constitute inclusive classrooms because the “dialogic
of democracy is ultimately a set of values based upon respect, humility and
creative listening” (pg. 73).
Question For Class:
- I really appreciated how this article compared the inclusive classroom to the fundamental framework of a democracy. The question left is how a democratic country, which is based on accepting one and all and treating everyone the same has turned into a place of segregation, privilege, labels and opportunities to point out what is different. How can we fix this and make America what is was intended to be all along-a place for all?
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Art Speaks
I keep watching this...sometimes I just listen. I can't get enough of it. Perhaps it's Radiohead's (a favourite band of mine) soothing sounds pushing you towards forward thinking or Sir Ken Robinson's (a hero of mine) welcoming voice reminding us that it is we who are responsible for removing the idea that we are creative ourselves. Perhaps it's because it's a subject that moves me. Perhaps it's because it's important. Perhaps is a accumulation of these things-in fact I know it is. All of the subjects in school should meld into one another to show how everything is connected because it is. We are. The arts shows us this is true.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Collaboration, Connection & Reflection
Promising Practices Conference 2013
As I took my seat at one of our class’s circle of tables, I couldn’t help but feel like I was part of a bonded group. We all sought each other out and even those of us who sat with other friends, sat close by. I’m sure part of the bond came from our Thursday class supportive discussion on college and our teaching professions but as we learned at the conference, a foundation must be laid before you build upon it. Attending this conference together was a way to add to the strong foundation we have collectively built in class all ready.
I noticed how we all jotted down notes and kept our reactions to our self for the first hour. Perhaps it was because we were getting restless or because the Mayor said the hot point words that hit a chord with us, but an hour into the panel, we were all starting to show our feelings on what we were hearing and experiencing. All we had to do was make eye contact with one another in order to understand that the told Dr. Bogad had given us in class where at work, applying themselves as a way to connect what we were hearing to what we were feeling.
I have lot of random notes from this panel, which can be read out like a beat poem. In order to hone in on some ideas, I went through and highlighted aspects that jumped out. These notes are a mix of what I was hearing and the connections I was making to what I was hearing. Here they are: cohesive collaboration within the community, show them a better logic-build the ground-now secure it, take ideas and actually put them into action-real purpose in the real world, needs are connected, can’t just fix one-must fix all-only way to prevent the band-aid (Kozol-Mott Haven), don’t use socioeconomic achievement as an excuse BUT you must guide them through-they can’t do it alone, whole needs of a family-not just teaching but food and housing too, America isn’t the best anymore-we need incentives to be the best (Kohn-Good Job), stop changing theories and foundations every 3-4 years-look at basics and bring them into the digital future, take the parents and encourage them to exceed and then their children will want to do the same-show by example.
I just delivered those ideas to you in the order I heard them. I’d like to point out the first and last idea. It starts with a cohesive collaboration in the community which is how we can help to encourage parents to strive for a better life by going after a better career. Then their children will see them as an example and follow suit. The point I’m making in joining these two ideas’ together is that in order to put the parent in a position where they can change their socioeconomic status and be a good role model for their children, we must collaborate ideas together in order to connect with them so we can give them guidance and help lead them to better opportunities. Show them a better logic model, build from the ground up. Stop changing theories every 3-4 years and look, focus, on the basics. Take ideas and actually put them into action. See a pattern here? The observations are in place. The ideas are swirling. Now it’s time to add a bit of action to them, like our good friend Benjamin Franklin suggested centuries ago!
This pattern of collaborate, connect and reflect continued throughout the sessions I took and key-note address. In Artistic Approaches in Cultivating Community the instructor gave us an artsy model of civic pride through collaborative work. A 6th grade class in New Bedford, MA studied the history of their area and then brainstormed on what they learned. In their conversation, they created a list of pictures from the past, present and their hopes for the future that they joined together with a common element for a mural in their cafeteria. This helped the students to not only feel proud of where they came from but also build a personal sense of ownership to their part in the community. Even the parents got involved, prepping the panel with whitewash and painting alongside their children. They were given enough patience, persistence and time to complete the project, which garnered the attention of the Historical Society. They students were given an opportunity to look around and notice the place they came from and then to make changes in their environment.
The group that presented The Community Lens showed their students civic engagement through collaborative engagement. They asked their students to visualize peace and justice and to write, talk and capture through photographs what that looked like to them. In working with kids from Providence through City Arts and from Ecuador they were able to show how similar the ideas around peace and justice were. They showed that through reciprocal and enduring relationships, there could be conflict resolution. By using photographs, you didn’t have to speak the same language. Instead you could use non-verbal’s to be together, to communicate together. Stereotypes could be squashed, like they were in the Kahne and Westheimer piece, once the students were able to see the existing humanity in other countries. They discovered that peace and justice looks the same in all places. Perhaps this is a great way to actually help peace and justice on earth come into fruition.
During the keynote address, our presenter focused on the charity versus change model that Kahne and Westhemier shares with us. He does this by flipping the idea of service learning on its head by titling his presentation “Why Service Learning Is Bad.” He spoke about how we needed to engage with our communities again and that service could “solve” that need but only if we started to focus on the whole of the problem instead of the individuals within in the problem or, just as Kozol pointed out, we are only making a temporary fix. He said that we need to change the oppressive elements of reality by redistributing the power because right now we are living in an economic contradiction. McIntosh and Johnson also point this out when they talk about white privilege as well as Delpit in her culture of power. Well-being in the way of success is based on your zip code because those zip codes are often zoned by race and the minorities are always left with the bottom of the heap. The presenter recommended that we combine the work of anthropology, sociology, geography and community studies in order to focus on the whole problem.
My last session was a combination of two subjects. The first was a quick study in Service Learning. They used a design, implement and assess model. Just like in Kahne and Westhemier, the focus is not only on the actual volunteer work but the reflection of it as well. The presenter adds education to the community service umbrella and focuses on two needs; that of the community and that of the student. He shared a story about a student’s experience who discovered that the water in town was toxic so they did further investigation, brought up the issue and worked towards cleaning it up, which they did. But connecting service, education and community they were able to fix a problem that mattered.
The second part of the last session was probably my favourite. In Critical Stance or Critical Dance we learned how to evaluate possibilities and envision alternatives. To take a stance means to speak your opinion at another person and then moving on-it’s not a conversation, instead it’s just spewing out words. While dancing is a form of collaboration where something is created together-it’s a relationship that acts. Dance has elements of fluidity, variation and improv. So a critical dance is a way to share out in the open your opinions and then listen to other’s view as well. The presenter shared a story from the school she works at called School One. A few years ago students had put up posters in the hallway advocating for equal marriage rights. One female student was very upset about and took it up with the Principle. The Principle said that she had every right to her feelings but that a discussion had to take place in order to discuss how they would handle the struggle between her feelings and the students who put up the posters as well as the rest of the student body. Upset, she left the room and ripped down all the posters.
The school had an assembly where they discussed how to handle the subject of hanging posters and also the disciple that should be given to the girl who pulled the posters down. The treated the school as a democracy, one where the students had a say. They decided that the student should make a hate speech poster to show how she made the students who put up the posters feel when she ripped them down. They then discussed how to handle political speech and put rules into place. They would designated an area where students could put up any message they wanted as long as it only focused on your opinion. No words of opposition from the other side of the issue were allowed on the poster, it had to remain positive. The girl saw how her actions affected others and learned from her punishment. Later on she ended up coming to terms with her sexuality and came out. This story showed how to deal with an unavoidable dance through care ethics that ended up transforming the entire school!
As I have mentioned above the themes I saw throughout this conference are collaboration, connection and reflection. I believe these themes have also been prevalent in our classroom throughout all of our discussions on the texts we have read and the experiences we’ve had during out service learning. Topics we have covered in class also came up throughout the conference. Ideas on white privilege (Johnson and McIntosh) and the culture of power (Delpit). The change vs. change model of service learning (Kahne & Westhemier). The look of education and life of those in the low class (Kozol). The safe spaces we can create for LQGBTV students (August). And actually tuning our minds in order to notice and analyze all of this (Christensen). As Dr. Bogad pointed out in the beginning of the semester, if you had bad eyesight, why wouldn’t you want to wear glasses so you could see better? Through the topics we have worked on in class, we now have super charged glasses which give us the power to see clearly what is really going on in our country. Together through collaboration, connection and reflection, we can make the changes we truly wish to see!
Picture Links:
http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep-calm-and-reflect-on-6.png
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Our Duty: Vigilance and Participation
Reflections
on The Smithsonian exhibit of Brown v. Board of Education, Tim Wise’s radio
interview and Bob Herbert’s Separate but
Unequal article
The
Smithsonian website of Brown v. Board of Education was full of components to
the build-up of and the actual event. I think they were trying to show how important
events that led up to this case were in building a foundation for a favoured
vote. They show how everything in the past is a basis and are connected to how
we live in the present and what will come in the future. Because of this, I
needed to do some background digging. So I searched Wikipedia.
Among
these key events were first the Civil War’s influence of passing the 14th
Amendment in 1868, which not only alludes to the 13th Amendment
which emancipated all slaves but states “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This means that all Americans are free and equal,
regardless of race. However we know that because of segregation, this didn’t begin
to look true until almost 100 years later with Brown v. Board of Education. Even
today as all of our texts ranging from McIntosh, Johnson, Delpit, August, etc.
point out, this amendment is not truly upheld.
The next key moment in history came with the
case of Plessy
v. Ferguson in 1896, which was about a man who was considered Black (he was
actually 7/8th’s White and 1/8’s Black) who was encouraged by the
Committee of Citizens to board a white railroad car. He was arrested and stated
the 14th amendment as his defence. Plessy lost the case as the
Supreme Court stated that the separation of races was public policy and that in
this defence it “stamps
the coloured race with a badge of inferiority.” Yes, I know, I’m fired up
too! The court said that
segregation made every one equal. But as we learn from the Smithsonian tour,
what transpired was actually more like separate and unequal.
Meanwhile behind the scenes after Plessy
v. Ferguson, Charles Houston gathered a group of budding lawyers to find a way
to prove that segregation laws (Jim Crow laws) were enforcing unequal treatment.
Houston decided after this case that the justices on the Supreme Court were not
going to overturn separation. When he passed the reigns over to Thurgood
Marshall in 1936, various other lawsuits on transportation, teaching salaries
and schools were filed in an attempt to prove their point. The time was ripe to
overturn segregation because American was questioning was being a Democracy
really meant which lead to a deeper focus on racial justices. Finally, in 1951,
with Brown v. Board of Education, he felt they had a strong case.
In the fall of 1951 parents of Topeka, Kansas,
encouraged by the NAACP, attempted to enroll their children in a closer school
to their home, which just happened to be a White school. When they were
refused, they filed suit against the education board of their city and put
Oliver L. Brown at the helm, who was trying to enroll his daughter. Not only
was the school closer but it was better. At the time states funded White
schools better than any other. Often books for the White schools, outdated and
replaced, were given to the Black, Mexican, Asian, etc. schools. These races
also had to fundraise through BBQ’s and dig into their own pockets in order to
raise money for their schools. They often built the schools and hired their own
teachers. I’d call that pretty unequal.
During
the case, people starting spreading the word of what was going on in their
world. Whites were either ignoring the problem or ignorant. Hoping that the
majority was doing the latter, they hung flags whenever a Black man was hung.
They were saying the words in order to spread consciousness. Allan Johnson said
“if we dispense with the words we make it impossible to talk about what’s
really going on and what it has to do with us” which is why it’s important to
keep the conversation going about what is happening in our country. The case
was won in favour of Brown in a unanimous vote. Most of us are familiar with
the Norman Rockwell’s (an artist most known for paintings of American life)
painting of the black girl being escorted by white U.S. Marshalls to school with
her book and school supplies in hand. The Smithsonian makes mention of this
picture because it depicts that even after a law is passed, how much opposition
it can still have. Something I hadn’t even recognized before was the smashed tomato
against the wall where the girl had just passed. Just appalling.
At
the end of the virtual high school level tour of the Smithsonian exhibit, the curators
along with a historian answer questions from students. I found these very
informative because they addressed how the case of Brown v. Board of Education has
influenced other minority disadvantages that came after. Almost like a full
circle gathering of historical context, showing how everything is influential
and connected. One student was told after their question how this case paved
the way for woman (workplace), disabled (ADA laws) and LGBQTV (marriage) individuals
of today. Alonzo Smith mentioned after a question was posed how Dr. Kenneth
Clark went into schools to test how students felt about race by using a Black
and a White skinned doll. This study proved how segregation affected
self-esteem in Black children and dislike of Blacks in White children and was a
key component in the case. Smith goes on to say that “you can’t make money
without good education and so your life chances are severely restricted.” This
reminds me of the Kozol article where the Mott Haven residents are faced with
the same vicious circle kind of situation.
Bob
Herbert addresses some of these same issues in his article Separate and Unequal. His focus is more on the idea of rich and
poor schools and how that usually relates to race. He points out that studies
have shown low-income students performing better in schools that were more advantaged.
In fact “studies have shown that it is not the race
of the students that is significant, but rather the improved all-around
environment of schools with better teachers.” These poorer students can keep up
with those who have more money, they just aren’t being given the opportunity to
because they are given less expectations and forced to attend a school with
lowered budgets. In order to change this throughout the country, there has to
be ethnic and racial as well as diverse income statuses of students’ integration
of schools. That way truly there is no child left behind in every sense of the
phrase and it becomes a program that actually works.
Tim
Wise takes these ideas a step further by pointing out that we may have overcome
our racism 1.0 but that we have graduated to racism 2.0. What he means by this
is that we may have a Black President so we could say that we aren’t racist but
that we actually are because it’s a certain kind of Black person who we accept;
one, who comes from a great educational background, is well versed and erudite.
He alludes to colour comfort idea as well but doesn’t come right out stating
that which none of us have really said-Barack Obama has light brown skin. Would
he have been elected if he was a darker shade? Would he have been elected if
sounded as hillbilly as George W. Bush? Wise says no because in order for
an ethnic person to break the glass ceiling, they have to be truly exceptional.”
As we saw yesterday at the Promising Practices conference during the panel and
as Wise says being
poor is not an excuse but it is a reason for why changes must take place in our
schools. Poor students must be given the tools in order to give them the opportunity
to not use their socioeconomic status as an excuse and that it is our
responsibility to do so.
Wise
wants us to be reminded that just because but an ethnic person may not present
themselves the same way Obama does, doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent and
that by ignoring them, we are supressing someone who may have something to say.
We have to stop judging from the surface, just as Peggy McIntosh points out in
her article. Wise also points out a common theme in all three of these
presentations and articles which is that we must remember about how much work
still needs to be done and that it’s no good remaining in a denial state. We
must, as Johnston also mentions, say the words! We deny the problems at hand by
trying hard to be racist by being nice but remaining oblivious to our actions
and the actions of others. He points out that in 1962 most people didn’t think
there was a racism problem in our country. There clearly was but most were too
ignorant to recognize it.
The reason it is important to learn
about cases like Brown v. Board of Education is to see what changes can be
made. The reason it is important to explore the case and be reminded of it
fifty years later is to recognize the changes that still need to be made. This
is made clear by the Smithsonian exhibit, Bob Herbert and Tim Wise. Harry
Rubinstein sums this point up perfectly; “it’s not just about passing the law,
it requires more like on-going vigilance and participation.” This case affects
everyone in America because we are all diverse in different ways. We all must continue
to fight for equal rights by participating in the conversation and striving for
changes that truly make us all equal.
Questions For Class:
·
At
the conference yesterday, a hot point was Mayor Angel Taveras comment about how
being poor isn’t an excuse. These articles show us that it is the education
system and essential we as citizens, not as teachers, are making an excuse by
not addressing the reasons why poor students have trouble. These article show
point out ways we can change this like socioeconomic, ethnic and race mixed
classrooms but how do we actually make it happen?
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