Monday, May 25, 2009

Talking Points

Quote #1:“And I do not advocate that it is the school's job to attempt to change the homes of poor and nonwhite children to match the homes of those in the culture of power. That may indeed be a form of cultural genocide.”

It has been said that America is a “melting pot” where immigrants, in the process of becoming Americans, add their culture to create a blended society different from where they came or what they found when they came to this country. To become part of the American culture, it is possible to lose your culture of origin. Just as when yellow paint is added to blue paint to create green, you can never get yellow back again. It is forever green, until another color is added to the mix. As anyone who has ever played with paint knows, eventually you get a murky brownish black. When this happens with people, there is the potential for cultural genocide. That part of a person, their identity, including language, ideology, and tradition, are lost to that person forever. As well as being lost to the new immigrant, the cultures of those already in the mix have also lost their identity to become American.
As some Americans say, these new immigrants are in America now and have to speak the language and “be American”. This is historically the schools responsibility. It is not, however, the job of schools to unlearn a child's culture in the process of teaching him/her the skills to be successful in America. Unfortunately, this has been happening for generations in this country, as families lose the language of their origin as they learn English. Language is the glue of a culture. One of the first things a conquering nation takes from the invaded country.

Quote #2: “No, I am certain that if we are truly to effect societal change, we cannot do so from the bottom up, but we must push and agitate from the top down.”

Those people who are living outside the culture of power are not in the position to effect change. Like the “glass ceiling” that allows women to see the goal they want to achieve, but are prevented from reaching the pinnacle, by the people with the power, those same people who don't want to share or give up the power. As teachers we believe that education is the key to personal success and socioeconomic change for our students. Delpit states that that is not the case, that a student without power does not have the power to change the controlling forces of power and therefore their future.

Quote #3: “We do not really see through our eyes and hear through our ears, but through our beliefs.”

As we saw with the S.C.W.A.M.P. exercise and the diversity wheel, ideology and “social reality shapes our lives” (Johnson, 2001). When we listen with our eyes and ears, we are listening with our ideology, prescribed by the culture in power. Few of us are the perfect combination of the inner and outer ring of the diversity wheel, despite our attempt to find perfection in society. When we are reflective, most of us can find a time or place in our life where we felt denied the privileges of the culture of power. Feeling somehow connected to those without the code of rules and the culture of power, empathy may allow us to listen with our hearts and beliefs. Despite the ideology of the power of culture, most of us believe in in the basic right of humanity. That is what brings new immigrants to this country. As the one place in their new country, schools have the ideal place to truly listen with the empathy and humanity that we know is the right thing to do for our students.

2 comments:

  1. Great comments, Mary Beth. I love the connection to Johnson and the points you raise about listening through ideology. I think that is the key here! So what do you hear as Delpit's "big picture" given what she raises in these quotes?

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  2. Hi Lesley, As we said in class tonight, students need more than process approaches to learning the code of power so they may be successful in the environment of the power of culture. It is our job as teachers to teach our students the rules they need to do that without stripping them of their culture. That implicit instruction is key to understanding how to navigate the status quo culture. It is so sad to talk to people who lost their language of origin in order to learn how to fit into their new country.

    I didn't have a chance to ask this question tonight in class, but are these articles kind of "old". Is Delpit 1995 or 2006? And Johnson...1991? I just saw on Keith Matthews, while eating dinner tonight, that Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by the President as the next Supreme Court Justice. Can we talk a little about that tomorrow night? Things they are a changin...I also wanted to share an anticdote from last week but we just never seemed to have the time in class. Maybe this blog thing is good. I went to traffic court last Thursday. (My Bad!:( I looked for profiling and saw none. White folks were about 60% of the defendents,Hispanics maybe 30%, Blacks about 10%. Just antecdotal, but worth mentioning. However, Hispanics were treated slightly more disrespectfully than others. A question was asked in a louder voice than expected, "Do you speak English? Do you need a translator?" They speak Spanish; they aren't deaf. Just blogging.

    Also, a technical question. I still can't check out other blogs. I got a message saying I couldn't get on because of "cookies"??? Please advise.

    Thanks for another great class.
    Mary Beth

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