Learning is Good!

          This marginalization is subtle and thus difficult to explain. From my recollection, I don’t think there was one teacher that had ill intentions; in fact, I think they all had good intentions. It seems as though they all wanted to be fair and provide an equitable education to all their students. My time at LEP has been very similar. Though LEP is what I would consider progressive, and as a whole the school models a huge step in the right direction, I find even there this seemingly hidden missing link between the students of color and their teachers. I’ve noticed that many of the students of color notice this disconnection (though most cannot articulate it) but the teachers and other students seem to be oblivious to it. What does this disconnection look like in classroom activities?

          To conserve time and to express the severe nature of this reality, I’ll give a few examples of marginalization from LEP, the progressive school. Several instances, from two different teachers, that equated to the same outcomes come to mind. Though I only worked with each teacher for four weeks each, I noticed similar patterns. The teachers started class with a warm-up; went over the warm-up; explained the work for that day; and handed out a worksheet that allowed students to practice what had been discussed by the teacher. Having passed out the worksheets, the teacher proceeded to make rounds or circle the class answering questions. I happen to be doing the same thing. Every session I had in this class I noticed the majority of the students of color up from their seats, talking, going to the restroom, but seldom doing any work. Both well-intentioned teachers circled but circled around the students of color. Only when a situation became too loud or physical would either teacher tell these students to sit down. Not one student has ever been disciplined or made to stay after school. Few of these students learned any of the procedures that they were “taught” (this is in a math class). When I would ask the students why they weren’t doing their work, they assured me that they were passing the class but they were emphatically bored. They also expressed not being made to do anything besides be there. This was consistent and has been a perpetual experience I’ve had in educational settings.

          Who is at fault here? Don’t students play a role in their education? Though students play a role, a huge role in their education, teachers are who the majority of where this marginalizing comes from. What I have described is a situation where certain students are allowed to fail. There’s typically one trained professional in each classroom and one person getting paid to educate. Too often students of color get neglected by their teachers. The two teachers I described spent the majority of their time helping the students who are “perceived” as “docile”, “smart”, “focused”, and “well-behaved”. I understand the comfortability of primarily working with these students, but is that what teachers get paid to do? No. Teachers get paid to facilitate the education of all of their students equally. Teachers shouldn’t get paid to exert high expectations only on those students that they like and allow the others to fend for themselves—this too often results in the failure of students of color. I call this lack of attention, neglect, and lack of discipline, allowing students to fail. I wish there were a lot more Dr. Lorraine Monroe’s around. These teachers would either have to shape up or ship out.

          I pose as one major reason for this marginalization, a missing component in teacher preparation—the ability to adequately relate to students of color and teach culturally relevant curricula. Traditional multicultural classes, the ones that most teachers receive, is an oversimplified, romanticized, surface overview about fostering appreciation of diversity; whereas what is needed is a critical multiculturalism or antiracist education that says: 

”although we cannot ignore social, cultural, and home factors, much of the blame must be located in    institutionalized racism in the classroom, school, and society. Differences in performance are understood as being produced not by differences in ability or motivation, but by the organization, conduct, and content of pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment” (Lewis).

Though many Euro-American educators fail to notice the aforementioned situations as relating to race, this behavior is well-documented as typical. The behavior the teachers exhibited is typical and the notion that it had nothing to do with race is typical. Race works in ways unseen and unacknowledged even in situations in which race doesn’t appear to be central.

            I’ve noticed this denial and attempt to avoid racial language in this class of future educators. People try using code words to describe race relations and situations like inner-city, low-income, at-risk, low-achieving, urban, ghetto, underprivileged, low-class,  underfunded schools, etc…everyone knows exactly what you mean why don’t you just say it? This avoidance or desired ability to conceal race language is also typical and has been revealed in the literature. Gloria Ladson-Billings points this out in an explanation of this phenomenon: 

“Kochman (1981) detailed the differences in communication styles that made it difficult for his White and African American students to make sense of each other’s perspectives. According to Kochman, when his African American students were upset about things expressed in the classroom, they tended to get angry, speak loudly, and challenge those ideas. Conversely, his White students’ response to things that made them angry or upset was to become quiet and withdraw from the discussion. The White students judged the African American students to be too emotional, confrontational, and argumentative. The African American students judged the White students to be duplicitous, secretive, and not forthcoming”.

Avoiding conversations of race and racism does damage to both privileged and marginalized groups as it serves to reinscribe and crystallize present inequities. Some appear to believe that if conversations on racism are avoided then the problem will magically just go away. Every single person raised in a racialized society is racialized; meaning, every person has a racial identity that has a profound effect on their interpersonal relationships and life outcomes. This is unavoidable and should become common conversation in and out of k-12 and post secondary classrooms. This is not a panacea but a necessary start in the right direction if race relations are ever to really be mended.

            In her now famous essay about white privilege, Peggy McIntosh, a European-American woman with a primarily White audience in mind, poses a few alarming questions and cautions against idleness: 

“Disapproving of the systems won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if White individuals changed their attitudes. But white skin in the United States opens many doors for Whites whether or not we approve…to redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tools here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects…What will we do with such knowledge?…it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrary awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base”.

These are the questions that educators and those who consider themselves “liberal” and “progressive” must answer. What will you do with your privilege? Will you use it for libratory purposes or continue to bury your head in the sand? A truly democratic education must take action against racism and the assumption that Eurocentric thinking is superior—the solution to ethnocentrism[3] is critical multiculturalism, or the inclusion of a variety of cultural perspectives on their own terms—no hierarchies.

References

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Delpit, L., & Dowdy, J. K. (2002). The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts On Language and Culture in the Classroom. New York : The New Press.
Delpit, L., & White-Bradley, P. (2003). Educating or Imprisoning the Spirit: Lessons From Ancient Egypt . Theory into Practice, Vol.42, No. 4 , 283-288.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Theory into Practice, Vol. 34, No. 3 , 159-165.
Ladson-Billings, G. (Spring 1996. Vol.35, No.2). Silences as Weapons: Challenges of a Black Professor Teaching White Students. Theory Into Practice , 79-85.
Landsman, J. (2004). Confronting the Racism of Low Expectations. Educational Leadership , 28-32.
Lewis, A. E. (Winter 2001. Vol. 38, No. 4). There Is No “Race” in the Schoolyard: Color-Blind Ideology in an (Almost) All- White School . American Educational Research Journal , 781-811.
Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2000). Intercultural Communication in Contexts 2nd Edition. Mountain View : Mayfield Publishing Company.
McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Wellesley College Center for Research on Women , 1-3.
Noddings, N. (2005). What Does it Mean to Educate the Whole Child? Educational Leadership , 8-13.
Peterson, B. (2006). Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers. Wisconsin .
Pransky, K. (December 2002/January 2003). To meet your students where they are, first you have to find them: Working with culturally and linguistically diverse at-risk students. The Reading Teacher , 370-383.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils’ Intellectual Development. New York : Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Schwartz, F. (1981, Summer). Supporting or Subverting Learning: Peer Group Patterns in Four Tracked Schools. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol.12, No.2. , pp. 99-121.
Thompson, A. (1997). For: Anti-Racist Education. Curriculum Inquiry , 7-44.