Core Knowledge, Interpretation and Synthesis
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COLLEGE OF HUMAN SCIENCES Curriculum and Instruction
Foundations Core Knowledge, Interpretation and Synthesis
Michelle Nichole Garland
This section will show I have the ability to (1) accurately capture and reflect on current thinking related to my interests. I can join the professional discussion, by (2) providing my own perspective on issues and questions. I am able to (3) analyze, re-interpret, and synthesize issues, and frame problems in promising ways. I can also demonstrate the ability to (4) understand and use research and scholarship from a wide range of traditions.
1 SELF-REFLECTION
I have very much enjoyed writing assignments which allow for my own interpretations when synthesizing the course readings. Each one of us brings our own set of unique experiences, or pre-existing cognitive schemas (Piaget), to everything we do in life. It is through these schemas we are able to scaffold (Vygotsky) new knowledge, thus creating new schemas. I find great joy in being able to share my old and new schemas with you.
Artifact #1 (p. 6) is my final paper from the course CI 578, Pedagogy, Equality, Opportunity, and the Education of Blacks in the U.S.(PEOEBUS). For this paper, we were to take a nonlinear, reflective view of the historical, social, economic, political, and legal contexts of the education of African Americans. Throughout the semester we examined educational theories and philosophies, from the traditional to the progressive, to determine their impact upon the education of Black Americans within the previously mentioned contexts. Particular focus was also given to the thoughts of Black philosophers and their interpretations of historical events.
In this final paper, I chose to explore the concept of resistance, as defined in relation to this course, and how this concept, according to my interpretations, could be found throughout the course readings.
Artifact #2 (p. 16) was a final paper for the course HPC 588, History of American Education. In this course we learned about the various people and conflicting world views that have shaped the institution of schooling in America over the past 300 years. Schools are continually changing and their histories are complex. We conducted several historical examinations which exposed the forces governing change in the past and what may also influence the future. By studying how schooling has unfolded in the past, we can push through passive acceptance of the status quo to develop new and invigorating ideas through critique and analysis. This final essay paper asked us to address a theme we believe best defines how schooling has unfolded in this country. Of course my personal cognitive schemas influenced my interpretations of the course readings, which constantly led me to analyze and critique the role of religion in public schools, especially in the context of American education and the First Amendment in the American Constitution.
Artifact # 3 (p. 22) is my personal subjectivity and professional praxis statement from the course Bi-Lingual Education and U.S. Mexican Youth, CI 520x. The purpose of this course was to gain a greater understanding of the educational and non-educational needs of bicultural and bilingual learners, and if schools are meeting the needs of these students. Class readings and discussions focused on the experiences of U.S. Mexican youth and their families as we examined the ways in which public policy, school program structures and modes of classroom instruction influenced learner outcomes of this minority group.
Artifact #4a (p. 49) is a paper written about Rousseau’s Emile for the class Classics of Educational Philosophy –HPC 584. For this assignment we were given the choice of addressing one question from a list written by professor, David Owen, or we were allowed to create our own question. I chose to write my own question influenced by my cognitive schemas as a female reading a book that takes place during a time period which was extremely patriarchal. I found much of the reading to be so exclusive of my version of equality and rights, I was quick to notice the sporadic hints of equality. Although these sporadic hints of female social justice are few and far between, Dr. Owen said Rousseau was very cutting edge, at that time, as an advocate of women’s rights. I chose to focus on this theme through a philosophical dialogue that becomes so deep and far removed from the life of Emile and Sophie, my paper almost off topic to the novice reader. However, this was also the style of Rousseau’s writing, to announce an idea and then discuss the philosophy of other ideas for an entire chapter before bringing the exchange of ideas to a full circle. Keep in mind this paper was written in that same style.
Artifact #4b (p. 54) was also written for Classics of Educational Philosophy, HPC-584, in the same format as artifact #4a, however, this paper was written from John Dewey’s book, Democracy and Education. This paper covers a specific theory or topic of discussion, of my 3 choice, that would apply specifically to the teacher (for method) and learner. I chose to write how Dewey would address the teaching method and acquisition of a second language.
Artifact #5 (p. 59) is a theoretical interpretation of Critical Theory from the course Critical Issues in Interpretive Methodology- ResEv 680. Critical Theory includes many traditions, such as Hegemony, Knowledge Production, and Communicative Action, with a common goal of engaging in cultural critique as a means for the hope of creating a better world. Critical theory believes researchers should commit their work to the greater cause of “confronting the many injustices and oppressive practices that pervade contemporary societies”
I was drawn to writing my theoretical interpretation over critical theory because this theory will lend credibility and understanding to the research I hope will be accepted for my dissertation. Also, I used many parts of this paper in a proposal submission for the Ethnographic and Qualitative Researchers in Education conference, held in June of 2007, and was accepted.
This course focused on contemporary methodological theory for interpretive inquiry by examining the ways contemporary interpretive fieldwork is conducted, how ethnographic, narrative, and/or linguistic data are theorized and analyzed, and how interpretive texts are written. These issues were examined against the backdrop of theories emerging from postmodern, feminist, and postcolonial scholarship.
Artifact #6 (p. 63) was also from Critical Issues in Interpretive Methodology – ResEv 680 and was our final assignment. For this assignment we were to conduct an exhaustive overview of the literature including a minimum of 20 sources from both books and professional journals, over a particular method or critical issue in interpretive research. I chose to write a literature review on the method of Critical Ethnography because this is of special interest to me, and again, if accepted by my Graduate Committee members will work well as part of the literature review for my dissertation.
Artifact #7 (p. 75) is a book analysis and critique paper for the course Qualitative Research Methods-ResEv 580. In this course we examined the history, philosophy and process of conducting, but not in depth analysis of, qualitative research. The one thing I really loved about this class was the practical and real life issues we all discussed as we were trying to conduct research for our final assignment (which was later used for ResEv 680 to conduct the in- depth interpretations). At times, it was just great to have a support system by being able to talk with others going through the same grief and process at the same time. This open discussion time was encouraged by our professor, MaryBeth Wright, and I am very thankful she was so flexible and encouraging of this time for us. Some professors have a schedule and don’t really allow for class discussions, I appreciated this about Dr. Wright, it is when I learned the most.
I enjoyed our class readings and chose to write my book analysis over the qualitative research book called School-Smart and Mother-Wise: Working-Class Women’s Identity and Schooling by Wendy Luttrell (1997). The theme I chose, which is woven throughout the book is that of splitting, which according to Luttrell, is the breakdown of the whole person into parts of a person. Luttrell uses the term broadly throughout the book to address issues of splitting with regard to “psychological, cultural, and institutional forces that divide objects, people, ideas, and feelings into oppositions in which one side is devalued and the other is idealized” (Lutrell,1997, p. 9). I found this book and theme helped me better understand myself as a mother, employee, and student trying to better myself while also supporting my family. I more often than not feel I am being a bad mother because I am no longer a stay-at-home-mom. This is just one of the themes discussed in the book, and it was nice for me to read about how I feel through an academic lens with analysis.
5 Artifact #1
CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION - 578
Pedagogy, Equality, Opportunity, and the Education of Blancks in the U.S. (PEOEBUS)
Final Cumulative Paper
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of resistance with respect to Africans stolen from their homes, subjugated to treatment worse than livestock upon slave ships, and then sold into slavery upon reaching the Americas. Furthermore, this paper will examine the continuance of African American resistance to white supremacy and domination up until present times.
Resistance to slavery and white oppression began with some of the first slave ships some 400 years ago and continues to present times. Resistance has taken many forms; from physical revolts to social justice education. Some forms of resistance include: women poisoning their master’s food, the establishment and running of the underground railroad, the civil rights movement, the development and employment of critical race theory and antiracist curriculum in the schools, narrative research/scholarship, employment of racial uplift, structural determinism, affirmative action, Dionysian element on black Christianity, black women’s clubs, the establishment of the Hampton School, and even something as small as a poem, such as “I know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.
Resistance to slavery was almost an immediate response by the stolen Africans as they were forced onto slave ships. A widely known example happened in 1839 on the Amistad, a slave ship headed to Cuba. The slaves killed the captain and crew, but left some members to direct them back to Africa. However, the crew tricked them and instead sailed to the U.S. mainland, where these slaves were placed on trial. The trial was won, and they were returned to Africa.
There were many forms of resistance, most of which had nothing to do with physical violence. For instance, mere survival could be considered a form of resistance, but then so could suicide. If a slave owner paid “good” money for a slave and then that person committed suicide, the slave owner would be out of the money, and nothing was produced to compensate for the money spent. However, as discussed in West (2001), “until the early seventies black Americans had the lowest suicide rate in the United States” (p. 24). West also gave credit to the foremothers and fathers for convincing their children not to commit suicide and surviving and thriving in the usually adverse New World conditions. Many Holocaust survivors have said just surviving was a form of resistance. In a Holocaust documentary, I recall a survivor stating, “they wanted our souls, and I wasn’t about to let them take mine.” The same ideology could be true for the African slaves, the thought that the brutal and savage life of slavery could not last forever, that it had to end one day, and they were hopeful to see that day in their life time.
Race Uplift Linda Perkins (1993) describes the term "race uplift" as achieving an education for the sake of helping others, which in turn will benefit the entire race. Many people received an education to educate other African Americans. Others used their education to write educational articles about inequalities, which I will discuss later. Yet others succeeded in business to become economically independent and help other African Americans achieve economic self sufficiency, as was true with the Booker T. Washington’s National Negro Business League. The idea of race uplift was also suggested by Bell (1987) in the chapter called, “The DeVine Gift.” In this chapter, a prominent and wealthy African American business man, Mr. DeVine, offers the only African American professor at a law school a scholarship program. The benefactor had been “searching for blacks who are truly committed to helping other blacks move up. We have located and helped several individuals over the years with what we call the ‘DeVine Gift’. . . .We want to help you help other blacks . . .” (p. 141). Hampton School 7 Everything mentioned thus far in the previous paragraphs are forms of resistance, for success of the oppressed is resistance! This became quite common after the abolition of slavery, especially when it was no longer illegal for the African Americans to learn how to read and write. "If the Negro was to learn, he must teach himself, and the most effective help that could be given him was the establishment of schools to train Negro teachers" (DuBois, 1994, p. 60). Unfortunately, schools could not be founded until there were black teachers to teach in these schools. Quickly this obstacle was overcome. As DuBois (1994) points out, “in a single generation they put thirty thousand black teachers in the South; they wiped out the illiteracy of the majority of the black people of the land, and they made Tuskegee possible” (p. 60). However, they had to get a start somewhere, and while it was not ideal, the Hampton school was one of the first schools to teach the newly freed slaves how to read and write.
An article by Anderson (1988) suggested that the Hampton school instilled within the students the idea that hard work will help one become a proper person. Thus the students spent their days tilling the fields without pay, and the Hampton school, or rather the founder of the school—Samuel Chapman Armstrong—reaped a profit from their labor. I believe the “ideology” of the school, supported by Booker T Washington, was a way of manipulating the Negro into “thinking” they were not actually still being treated as slaves. The only difference between slavery and the Hampton school was that the Black population was learning how to read and write, and according to this article, were not being beaten or whipped.
Armstrong worked to create a black laboring class by teaching those who would become elementary teachers that there was dignity in labor, and these teachers should teach the same to the black children they would soon teach. Armstrong worked to keep the blacks economically insolvent. Booker T. Washington embraced this model when he replicated a Hampton school at Tuskegee. Washington verbally spoke of the concept that “no race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem” (Atlanta Exposition speech, 1895). One might ask how this is racial uplift or resistance? Let us delve further. It is my belief that the students realized they were being exploited, but saw this as a means to an end for the next generation. “Yes, I am being abused,” says one of them, “but when I become a teacher, I will make things better for the next generation so they won't have to work as hard." I believe this to be an example of resistance through perseverance which one hopes will lead to racial uplift. Dubois (1994) points out that this ideology did indeed happen! “In a single generation they put thirty thousand black teachers in the South; they wiped out the illiteracy of the majority of the black people of the land, and they made Tuskegee possible” (p. 60). Booker T Washington Some believe Booker T. Washington was a traitor to his people for perpetuating the ideologies of Armstrong. However, we can gain a greater understanding of Washington’s motives through chapter nine, “The Space Traders,” of Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992). One of the characters, Golightly, is a government official who discusses how Booker T. Washington was his hero and also took on a “conformist” stance, as Golightly had to do as well (p. 171). Golightly speaks of people viewing him as a traitor to his race, calling him an Uncle Tom, and that “he could bear that, knowing he made a contribution few others were able-or willing-to make to the racial cause. . . . Golightly knew he had done more for the black people than had a dozen of the loud-mouthed leaders who, he felt, talked much and produced little” (Bell, 1992, p. 171). I view this verbal conformist ideology: that even if they said and acted one way, their thoughts were different . . . and their thoughts led to race uplift, where everything they were doing was to uplift the race. By being compliant and placating the white majority, Booker T Washington was acting in a form of resistance. Narrative Research/Scholarship Let us now look at another form of resistance through narrative research/scholarship (Tate, 1997), which is the use of first hand narratives or stories in scholarly writing. This could be comparable to ethnographic studies, which is widely used in the field of anthropology and education. Narratives can illuminate inequalities that have occurred and are persuasive to start legal and social change. For example, narratives were used in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Supreme Court of the United States, 1954. 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686), especially through the research of scientists Kenneth and Mami Clark’s doll experiments in the 1940s. In these experiments, the Clarks showed African American children white dolls and colored dolls. Next the children were asked to point to the doll they like they most, and the African American children predominately pointed to the white dolls. He would then ask the 9 children to point to the good doll, they would point to a “white” doll. Next he would ask the children to point to the bad doll, and they would point to a colored doll. Then he would ask the children which doll looked most like them. If they chose the colored doll, and had chosen this doll as the “bad” doll too, in essence, they were saying they believed they were bad because of the color of their skin. This is what society, especially through segregation, taught them even in the Negro schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that separating black children from white children "solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone" (Supreme Court of the United States, 1954. 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686). These narratives were used as powerful means of addressing "savage inequalities" (Kozol, J. 1992) in public education. Those who were against the validity of narratives began to understand their power. Narrative can be viewed as more subjective and less neutral, and is used as a persuasive tool to catalyze social change, and thus we have come full circle to show how narrative research can be used as a form of resistance. Structural Determinism While on the topic of social change through legal venues, we should not overlook the use of structural determinism as discussed in the Tate (1997). Structural determinism is when critical race scholars look for consistencies or patterns in the legal system to find ways in which it maintains the status quo or the accepted norms, which are discriminatory towards African Americans. This form of discrimination happens due to a lack of available information. This is an instance in which we don't always see the ways in which discrimination is occurring, but it is. By having legal scholars sort through legal doctrine to find language that is discriminating, there is a chance for change. “The Index to Legal Periodicals and Decennial Digest,” for example, lead the reader to works on civil rights, employment discrimination, and school integration or desegregation, but do not contain entries for hegemony or interest convergence” (Delgado & Stefancic, in Tate, 1997, p. 222). Think of the Index to Legal Periodicals as a “google search” for law cases. One would type in a key word, and legal cases would appear on the screen that are associated with that word. However, this original database needed to be built and the legal system overlooked many of the cases related to African American civil issues, thus they became lost in a sea of legal doctrine. Structural determinism investigates legal records to discriminate the information and create a broader searching database. By creating more venues in the Index to Legal Periodicals, for use in avenues such as Lexis Nexus, often used by the novice lawyer or law student, more information about discrimination in the past, and/or cases won which can be cited to further a present case is an unquestionable form of resistance. Affirmative Action The rationale behind affirmative action was that if there were two equally qualified individuals, and one person is of minority status or a woman, and the other is not...if the department or place hiring needed to have more minority representation, it would hire the woman or minority person. The idea behind this being (1) a voice for that minority group in this position, (2) a better life for someone that is usually overlooked due to discrimination in the past, (3) hopefully this person can provide a better financial lifestyle for her/his family, which in return, the children will have better chances in life, (4) the person hired can also serve as a role model of success for others from the same minority group. Affirmative action helped ensure African Americans deserving of an employment opportunity/position would no longer be discriminated against or overlooked in the hiring process. Affirmative action served as a strong form of legal resistance against hundreds of years of employment and hiring discrimination towards African American population. The Church Moving away from the legal and scholarly venue of resistance, the church should not be overlooked in its role in helping to resist against white domination and strengthening the spirit and soul of the black wo(man). According to the article by Frazier (1974) the slaves had been cut off from their native African religions; most slaves became Christians by force and also out of necessity for a yearning to believe in a higher power that all would be well. In an effort to maintain their native forms of prayer and spirituality, the slaves fused elements of African and Western traditions and drew their own conclusions from the Scripture. The Scriptures which spoke to them the most were that of the Hebrews being forced into slavery in Egypt and G-D hearing the cries of the Hebrews and releasing them from bondage through a series of great miracles. This story gave
11 the slaves hope and something to believe in. Hope and the will to survive is a strong form of resistance.
Since the slaves found such similarities between their situation and that of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, one would think they would have been drawn to the practice of Judaism. The slaves found commonality in the persecutions of Jesus. Again, they found parallels with their lives and that of a person from the Jewish faith, as Jesus had lived his entire life as a Jewish man and was persecuted by the Romans for preaching the ways of Torah, the Jewish holy text. At that time, the Romans had outlawed torah study, and those doing so were persecuted. The historical Jesus (most likely named Joshua) was not a Christian, however, his followers started an offshoot practice of Judaism, which included Jesus as the messiah (Morrison, 1890; Wormley Latimer, 1899; Wheely, 2003) . Judaism teaches when the messiah comes there will be world peace, therefore, people of the Jewish faith believe the messiah has yet to come. The slaves were able to identify with this ideology, but one has to be realistic concerning their circumstances. They were being held by predominantely Christian slave owners, and their only access and exposure to organized religion was that of Christianity, which was often forced on them as well. However, they were able to tailor the Christian teachings to their own preferences.
For example, on Feb. 15, in a WebCT conversation, a classmate named Anita Rollins shared with us how Black Methodists “ingeniously evaded the traditional Methodist ban on dancing as sinful: three or four people would stand still in a ring, clapping hands and beating time with their feet (but never crossing their legs, thus not officially “dancing”), while others walked around the ring, singing in unison. This ‘ringshout’ derived from African practices; modern American dances, including the Charleston, in turn derived from this African-American hybrid.”
Another example of church resistance, West (1999), states that singing and dancing are weapons of struggle and survival, and were used as a way to release the tensions and anxieties produced by oppression and harsh conditions. Singing, crying out loud, moaning, dancing, preaching, etc. “not only release pressures and desperation, they also constitute bonds of solidarity and sources for individuality” (West, 1999, p. 436).
“In providing a structured social life in which the Negro [sic] could give expression to his deepest feeling and at the same time achieve status and find a meaningful existence the Negro church [sic] provided a refuge in a hostile white world” (Frazier, 1974, p. 50). In referring to the church as a form of resistance, Frazier (1974) also states, “they became and have remained until the past twenty years or so, the most important agency of social control among Negros” (p. 40). The preacher could spread the word of hope, and also spread social messages of survival and success as well.
Black Women’s Clubs Another form of resistance began with the creation of Black Women’s Clubs. Giddings (2001) conveys that Black women were "inspired" by the success of the White women’s club movement and decided to start their own women’s clubs. These clubs valued education and what education could provide. They believed home was valuable, as well as the woman's moral influence in it. Since the family was seen as a microcosm and foundation of society, what women contributed was of the utmost value. The black women’s clubs pursued reform, aided the poor, and sought self-actualization. These clubs were seen as a way to advance an entire race of people; “much of what has been interpreted as a mere imitation of White values among middle class Black women was a race conscious mission” (Giddings, 2001, p. 99). By extending opportunity and involvement to all Black women, the clubs believed that through their actions, they would be able to advance the neediest classes of individuals, and therefore change how all Black women were perceived by society. Giddings (2001) points out the women organizing and leading these clubs often had the fewest resources and the least opportunities. Passing Passing, as related to this paper, refers to the racial identity of a member of a racial being mistaken for the racial identity of another group. In an article by Harris (1995) we are told the story of her grandmother, a black woman, who had light enough skin she was able to pass for being white and was therefore able to “hide” her black identity allowing her to take a job as a sales clerk in a Chicago department store, which at the time was a job only offered to white women. Because of Harris’ grandmothers’ ability to pass, she was able to earn a higher salary passing as a white woman, than she could if she revealed her true racial identity. She was able to support her family by passing, which also became a form of racial uplift. Passing is a form of resistance, because it is rebellion against white rules of conduct. Perseverance
13 Caswell County Schools was the site of fourteen years of perseverance described in Walker (1996). In Walker’s article we learn of the African American community asking the school board to provide better school facilities for their children. At one point in time, there were 425 African American children crammed into a small ten room school, while money was constantly being donated to the white schools. The first request for school improvements was made in April of 1937, and it was not until “March of 1951 the faculty and students finally moved in the new Caswell County Training School” (Walker, 1996, p. 61). During the years, the parents and lawyers constantly went to the school board asking for financial help, and were constantly told the board promised “to give full consideration to their request” (Walker, 1996, p. 47). Around 1942 some of the African American parents collected money to buy lumber and also gathered lumber from their farms and donated trees to be cut and hauled to the mill in order to help build a new school. This ended up not happening, and according to an elementary teacher, “The folks gave the lumber and they [the school board] took that lumber and give it to the white folks, and we didn’t never get that lumber” (Walker, 1994, p.54). After years and years of bureaucratic struggles, through perseverance, the black community finally received the school they had well deserved. In this instance, the black community’s persistence and perseverance was a form of resistance towards the dominating, discriminating and controlling community white community. The white community thought if they placated the members of the black community for long enough, the black community would finally give up. However, they did not give up; they resisted fiercely through diplomacy and perseverance. CONCLUSION Many aspects of African American history are left out of mainstream texts. The purpose of this paper was to acclimate the reader to the idea of resistance on behalf of the African American population over the past 400 year as a response to slavery and oppression. It is my hope this paper has been able to illuminate a part of history, with consideration to some of the heroes of our country, who are more often than not, have been overlooked and forgotten. This paper pays tribute to those people. REFERENCES Anderson, J. (1988). Education of blacks in the south. NC: The University of North Carolina
Press. Bell, D. (1992). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. NY: Basic
Books. Bell, D. (1987). And we are not saved: The elusive quest for racial justice. NY: Basic
Books. DuBois, W. (1994). Souls of black folk. NY: Dover Publications Frazier, E. (1974). The negro church in American. NY: Schoken Books Inc. Giddings, P.(2001). When and where I enter: The impact of black women on race and
sex in America. NY: Perennial. Harris, C. (1995). Whiteness as property. In K. Crenshaw, N. Kotanda, G. Peller & K.
Thomas (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writing that formed the movement
(1996, pp.276-291). NY: New Press. Morrison, D. (1890). The Jews under Roman rule: The story of the nations. New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons. Perkins, L. (1993). The role of education in the development of black feminist thought.
History of Education, 22 (3), 265-275.
15 Tate, W. (1997). Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications.
Review of Research in Education, 22, 195-247. Walker, V. (1996). Their highest potential: an African American school community in
the segregated south. NC: The University of North Carolina Press. West, C. (2001). Race Matters. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. West, C. (1999). Cornel West reader. NY: Basic Civitis Book. Wheely, A. (2003). Josephus on Jesus: The testimonium Flavianum controversy from antiquity
to modern times. New York: Peter Lang.
Wormeley Latimer, E. (1899). Judea from Cyrus to Titus, 537 B.C.-70 A.D. New York: A.C. McClurg. Artifact #2 HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION
History of American Education – HPC 588
Synthesis Essay: Has U.S. Schooling Unfolded Through the Theme of Religion?
INTRODUCTION
Although we no longer use the Christian Bible as a classroom reader or to teach lessons in morality, there is still a highly problematic theme of Christian Privilege (Scholsser, 2003) throughout public schools. In their book American Education: A History (2004), Urban and Wagoner state (p.6), “not only did American schooling unfold through the theme of religion, schooling is a direct result of the desire to civilize and Christianize children of the indigenous peoples by the Euro-Americans as they established villages in their ‘newly discovered’ land.” Christopher Columbus writes in his journal, dated 1492, “the indigenous people of the land are well mannered, even though they run naked...Your Highness should feel great joy, because presently they will be Christians, and instructed in the good manners of your realms.”
Missionary Schools
By the early 1600s, the Spanish Catholics began spreading missionary schools and James I instructed the leaders of the 1606 expedition to “carry the Christian religion to the Infidels and Savages” (Urban and Wagoner, 2004, p.16), referring to the Indigenous people of this land. In an early attempt to establish schools in Virginia and improve relations with the natives, a college was to be built for the Indian boys in Henrico City to “educate in true religion and the principles of civilized life” (Urban and Wagoner, 2004, p.19). Before the college could be built, in a coordinated effort, the Indigenous peoples of the land fought back and the foundations of the college were torched. This delayed the deculturalization (Spring, 2004) of the Indigenous peoples way of life. Unfortunately, this was only a minor postponement of the inevitably forced assimilation to the norms of a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) society by way of the “reservation day schools” established around the 1860s (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 166).
The dawn of the 18th century saw Jesuits and Franciscans joining the ranks of spreading mission schools as well (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 7). In the middle of that same century, Quakers, Moravians, German Reformed, and Presbyterian Calvinists settled in the Piedmont region and lived their lives and ran schools by the teachings of their strong religious views (Urban & Wagon, 2004, p. 20).
However, there was another group in this region rejecting the teachings of the above mentioned groups. They called themselves “Nothingarians” and complained of being “eaten up by Teachers and Preachers” spreading unwelcomed versions of Christianity (Urban and Wagoner, 2004, p. 20). One of the Anglican missionaries described these “Nothingarians” as “the lowest vilest Scum of Mankind, a people plainly beyond the reach of the gospel” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 21). How unfortunate for anyone who was not of their brand of the Christian faith to be seen as the “lowest vilest Scum of Mankind.”
Originally taken from the book, Education and the Forming of American Society (1960), Bernard Bailyn believed “fear was the energizing force behind the education laws and concerns for literacy among the puritans” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 38). Bailyn asserted that the people in Virginia were concerned that “unless bold measures were taken to provide for education, the present and coming generations would succumb to the savage environment” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 38).
Secular Laws Influence the School
17 One of the “first acts of the Virginia General Assembly in 1619 required colonists to attend church services twice on Sunday” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 24) Virginia wasn’t the only state to hold such laws. In 1642, the Massachusetts law “compelled heads of households to provide occupational training and ensure that their children learned to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 40). If parents did not adhere to this law, they could be fined and have their children removed from the household and placed under the care of more diligent guardians. Similar laws were passed in Connecticut in 1650, New haven in 1655, New York in 1665, Plymouth in 1671, and Pennsylvania in 1683 (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 40). The “Old Deluder Satan Act” was passed in 1647, asserting “Satan, master of deception, was keeping people from true knowledge of the Scriptures.” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 42). This law required towns with 50 or more families to provide for instruction in reading and writing with the ultimate goal of being able to read, understand, and adhere to the writings of the Scriptures. One is left to wonder what happened to people who were not of the Christian faith, for they did exist in America during that time period.
Colonial Curriculum
For Protestants, the primary purpose of learning how to read was to have access to the Scriptures and Hornbooks were an important teaching aid. They presented the alphabet, a few non-sense words to learn the skill of combining vowels and consonants, the Lord’s Prayer, The Apostles’ Creed, and some other biblical lesson. The Bible, devotional texts, catechisms, psalters (collections of psalms) and primers were also used for reading instruction (Urban and Wagoner, 2004, p. 44). Initially, primers were used in conjunction with worship. The following is an example of “An Alphabet of Lessons for Youth,” The New England Primer first published in 1689 (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 44):
A Wise Son makes a glad Father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure and trouble therewith.
Come unto CHRIST all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and he will give you rest. During the 1700’s, more than eighty schoolmasters devoted themselves to teaching charity school children to read and write. These schoolmasters distributed Bibles, prayer books, and sermons, printed in English, French, German, Dutch, and various Indian dialects (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 25). Becoming literate and “memorizing passages from religious texts was clearly the norm” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 45).
The first book on pedagogy was written in 1770 by Christopher Dock called School Management. Dock “instructed schoolmasters to be sensitive to individual differences and....managed to deal with children from various religious persuasions without exciting sectarian controversy” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 54).
Finally we reach the age of educating backed by the teaching philosophies of Enlightenment (1776-1830). The ideas of enlightenment are in contradiction to the traditional ideas of Christian cosmology that a better life awaits after death. The “Enlightenment ideology promised a state in which all would be happy in this world – and within the near future” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 65). John Locke, one of the founding fathers of the Enlightenment movement, proposed the idea of tabula rasa, or “blank slate.” This idea purports humans are not born evil, and man is not born from sin - as expressed in the teaching of Christianity. The Enlightenment ideology teaches that if we do evil “it is not because of our nature to do so....the experiences and environmental influences have shaped us...” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 65).
As you can see, the tide is turning away from teaching on a strictly Christian/Protestant ideology. However, some people push to keep the status quo, and one of those people is Benjamin Rush. In 1786, Rush presented a document titled A Plan for Establishment of Public Schools and the Diffusion of knowledge in Pennsylvania. Rush asserts the “republican education and citizenship must be grounded in religion...and Christianity was best suited to promote happiness in society” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 76).
The McGuffey reader was introduced in the 1830s and religious content still remained, however, there was a greater shift in the content of the readers to be more inclusive of a secular perspective. Unfortunately, the “histories, geographies, readers, and companion books offered a view of the world that consistently celebrated the assumed superiority of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 82). 19 During the Common School era (1820-1860), Horace Mann was one of the biggest promoters of the common school for the common man. He believed the same curriculum should be used by everyone to create equality. Unfortunately, this did not include black children or white children with “strange” religious beliefs (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 95). Scholars have described the ideology of Mann as Protestant Republicism. These Protestant Republicans “supported the assimilation of groups with different moral creeds and values into the Protestant Republic mainstream” (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 99). However, the idea of using Protestant Bibles was refused by the Irish Catholic minority of New York City. Eventually, schools in Catholic neighborhoods were allowed a Catholic “flavor” in the classroom (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 112). During the 19th century, Catholics began to build their own private schools.
The Progressive era (1890-1915) was characterized by a mass wave of immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe and this prompted many reforms in the school system (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 194). However, in meeting the needs of the new immigrants, underlying messages were still enforced that to be American meant to assimilate to WASP mainstream thinking and way of life and leave the “old country” behind.
During the 1960s, bilingual education programs were developed and were used as a bridge in the acquisition of English as a second language (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 316). This was also the time of the Civil Rights era, where blacks and Hispanics were engaging in protests and devising strategies to gain access to mainstream society, and some Indian activists were redoubling efforts to... prevent further assimilation (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 318).
In 1962, the United States Supreme court heard the case of Engle v. Vital (370 u.S. 421,82 S. Ct. 1261) and found “a New York Regents prayer unconstitutional, and found both prayer and Bible reading offensive to the First Amendment” Alexander & Alexander, 1998, p.176). One year later, the Supreme Court ruled in the cases of School District of Abington Township v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett (374 U.S. 203,83 S. Ct.1560) that “Neither state, nor school, nor teacher can hold religious services of any type in the public schools” (Alexander & Alexander, 1998, p. 177) Despite a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting prayer in schools, Ronald Regan, former U.S. president during most of the 1980s and George Bush senior, were advocate of school prayer. During this time frame, some states passed “moment- of- silence” laws and many people misinterpreted this law as time for prayers in school (Urban & Wagoner, 2004, p. 348). CONCLUSION
U.S. public schools strive to promote multiculturalism and respect for diversity in the classroom and through the curriculum. However, we still celebrate Christian holidays near the date of the holiday by displaying icons and themes surrounding said holiday, only now we use the terms “winter celebration” instead of Christmas or “spring celebration” for Easter. Decorated pine bushes are displayed in December, and colorfully decorated eggs and little bunnies adorn the classroom in April. For those who are not of the Christian faith, they are “allowed to choose not to participate” in the classroom “seasonal” parties, “seasonal” art projects, and “seasonal” songs in music class. I call this unforced religious segregation, where a child is put into a position of not being a part of the “norm” of that society and therefore forced to become “different” from the rest of the class out of respect for her/his religious differences.
The idea of the First Amendment with respect to Separation of Church and State, and religious content as part of the school’s curriculum, whether formal or part of the hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968) is still a predominate issue in many public schools. However, in America, we can no longer afford this attitude of WASP superiority and acceptance as the cultural “norm,” by doing so, too many of our children feel marginalized and are forced to assimilate and give up their home culture to feel accepted by teachers and peers alike. I look forward to the day when the curriculum and teachers present a world that honors and embraces our differences as something to be cherished and not changed.
REFERENCES
Alexander, K. and Alexander, M. (1998). American Public School Law, 4th Edition. Belmont,
CA: West/Wadsworth.
Jackson, P. (1968). Life in classrooms. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston.
Schlosser, L. (2003). Christian Privilege: Breaking a Sacred Taboo. Journal of Multicultural
Counseling and Development, 31, 44-51. Urban, W. and Wagoner, J. (2004). American education: A history. New York: McGraw Hill.
21 Artifact #3 CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION – 520x Bi-Lingual Education and U.S. Mexican Youth Personal Subjectivity and Professional Praxis Statement
INTRODUCTION
This paper will introduce the reader to the concept of a multicultural education through addressing the reasons for needing a multicultural curriculum and how a multicultural curriculum is beneficial for all students regardless of race or ethnicity. I will also discuss the need for and benefits of bilingual education as part of the school curriculum and also to be included as part of a multicultural curriculum. Finally, I will provide information for the reader to see how the Georgia school systems have transformed from promoting monoculture teaching to embracing a more multicultural curriculum through bilingual education for both teachers and students alike. The Georgia schools have realized how important it is for their minority youth to see themselves reflected in the curriculum of the school and for their language and culture to enter the school as well. My goals for this assignment are to convey to the reader my beliefs about multicultural and bilingual education in U.S. schools. Through a review of the literature I will give support to the following three themes: (1) benefits of a multicultural curriculum, even in a homogeneous community (2) benefits of being bilingual and at what age bilingual exposure should start, (3) how to create a multicultural, bilingual curriculum infusion. For the purpose of this class, in my third theme, I will only focus on recommendations for the integration of Mexican culture and the Spanish language as part of a new curriculum. Subjectivity Statement Bi-lingual Education I came into this course with a great deal of background knowledge about bilingual education. My master’s thesis, Will Using the Key/Link Word Method Derived from First Language Inner Speech Enhance the Rate and Recall of Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (Garland, 2003) made me, as my major advisor commented, an expert in the area of second language acquisition. Incidentally I would like to provide first hand information regarding “what I knew about bilingualism before taking this class” in the form of submitting my thesis to you as well. When addressing the question what it means to know a language, my opinion has not changed from what I wrote at the beginning of class, which was, “to know a language is to have intimate feelings with the language; the ability to dream in the language, to know the nuances, slang, and to have formal written and oral capabilities.” My first statement actually had a lot of thought behind it, as this was a discussion I had with University of Haifa professor, Salim Abu- Rabia (2003, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1995). We discussed being bilingual from birth, and which language should be considered the first language, which he said could vary according to circumstances. With some words, one may have very intimate feelings in one language but 23 not as strong of a connection in the other language, and the reverse is true as well. So there are some things you “know” in one language, and “know” in another, and depending on the context, your feelings of what could be considered your first language can change. For instance, maybe a loved one speaks to you in language “A.” Perhaps this is a parent, and specific things were learned from this parent, in language “A.” Due to this connection, may have intimate feelings associated with the words because of the original teacher of the language. Another example would be to have a pleasurable experience in language “B” and when something is spoken related to that experience in the language “B”, the same person may now have intimate feelings in language “B,” thus language “B” has now become the first language. This is part of what it means to “know” a language; to have an intimate connection with the words. An article by Anzaldua, (1987) also discusses how intimate a language can be to a person. Baker (2001) discusses what it means to be bilingual, and has created a bi-lingual language scale. According to this scale, there can never be true equal bilingualism. Baker suggests as one language becomes stronger, the other becomes weaker. From my experience and what I have observed with my children, I tend to agree with this idea. As I was immersed in Hebrew learning, I started to forget how to say something in English. Also, an immigrant friend from Canada, living in Israel, warned me this would happen with the kids and it was very important for me to force the children to speak with me in English only, without code-switching, which is mixing words from both languages to form a sentence. When code-switching in English and Spanish, Bejarano (2005) and Anzaldua (1987) refer to this as Spanglish, which is currently being debated by scholars as being recognized as an official language, similar to that of Ebonics. After being in Israel for about six months, I stopped learning Hebrew and focused on keeping my children’s English strong and my Hebrew weak, forcing them to speak to me in English if they wanted me to understand what they had to say. I have also been a teacher of bilingual education, so I know from firsthand experience what it means to teach a second language to children. I would like to give a somewhat detailed description of my experiences teaching ELL so my methods will become more vivid in your mind. While living in Israel I opened an English school. My students were comprised of adults and children, speaking Korean, Russian, Hebrew, and Arabic as their first languages. They ranged in age from 2 years old to mid 30s. Some of the students were fluent in two languages and English was their third language to acquire. I personally found all of these students to be brilliant and fast learners, especially the children. The tri-lingual learners were ahead of their peers in my classes. In addition to running my school, I also taught English twice a week at a private school. This particular school, Realei - Ahuza, is a highly respected school to which people from around the country send their children. When teaching ELL, one of the quickest ways to get language learners to start speaking the language is through songs. This is a way for the learner to practice saying words out loud in a non threatening way. I started all of my lessons with children by singing concept songs. We sang the ABC’s, counting songs, songs about the body, songs about movements, songs about spatial relations, etc. After the song, I read a book about animals and the sounds they make. The kids would say the name of the animal, by repeating after me so they could mimic my accent, and the sound the animal makes. Sometimes after reading the story I would call out the name of an animal in English and it was their job to act like and make the sounds of the animal. After the story, for the elementary learners, we would learn three new letters each week. To reach all learning styles, every lesson was tailored to meet the needs of visual, audial, and tactile learners. I had 5” foam letters which fit into a “frame” with the outline of the letter. First I would show and say the name of the letter and they would repeat after me. Then I would break apart the letter from the “frame” and pass out a frame or a letter to each student (my groups were no larger than 6 or 7). The students were then required to match the frame to the letter by interacting with one another, and then make a group effort to put the interlocking frames together in order. Each week we added three new letters to the already known letters. This was a really neat activity to distribute a total of 48 letters and frames to the students and have them put it together in order, especially at the age of four and five! After putting together the letters, we then went to the table and colored pictures of the new letters of the week and practiced writing the letter properly (Zaner-Bloser style) on the lines. There were also worksheets with activities about the letters. For instance, maybe they were to circle all of the pictures that had a word which started with the letter. In doing so, they were learning English vocabulary. If time permitted, I would end the lesson with a game of ABC “go-fish,” alphabet puzzles with pictures, or ABC memory games with pictures. Once the kids knew the letters, we started to build writing vocabulary, five new words each week. I would post each word on a note card in black marker on the wall as a way for them 25 to watch their progress and we used this as a way for review each week as well. I would point to the word, and they would read it to me. These words were posted in alphabetical order. I also grouped words according to similarities, such as: bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat . The kids would write each word six times on special writing paper with lines and dots. Then on a blank piece of paper, there was a line for them to write the word and then draw a picture of the word. This way, they could use whatever image they have formed from previous knowledge to associate with the word. This allowed for the children to connect newly learned knowledge with previous knowledge. After we had a pretty good amount of vocabulary learned, the kids started to read sentences and would then draw pictures about the sentence they read. Finally, with teaching the kids only once a week for an hour lesson, at the end of the school year, kids in second grade were writing and illustrating their own short story books! And that is what I call “the proof is in the pudding!” Because of the results I saw from my students, I would conclude I am an effective teacher of English as a second language. I will say, from my experience, it was important for me to be able to communicate, at a minimal level, with the children in their native language. They were very generous about my language errors, and often laughed hysterically at my mistakes, but I think my weak Hebrew was actually to their advantage. My making mistakes made it ok for them to take risks and make mistakes too. I also felt that I wasn’t being judged by them, as I would from adults, and I actually learned more Hebrew from my students than I did going to Hebrew classes (taught in Russian!). The children felt loved and respected by me, and this is important for creating a safe learning environment. Also, the culture of Israel and speaking Hebrew was naturally a part of our lessons, as English was NOT the dominant language. I would suggest the same atmosphere be provided for the U.S. Mexican kids when trying to learn English. Throughout chapter five of Baker (2001), many second language studies coming from Israel were discussed due to the steady flow of immigration since the founding of the State in 1948. In this chapter the Ulpan system for adult learning was discussed, which is the system I used to learn Hebrew, one week after I immigrated to Israel. Unfortunately I didn’t learn very well in this setting because all of my classmates were Russian and the teacher taught the lessons in Russian. However, this was a learning benefit for the Russians, just not for anyone else who could not speak Russian. Also of importance is to note that Russian culture was an integral part of the teaching methodology as well. The teacher would write a word in Hebrew on the board and ask what it meant, and everyone would respond in Russian and write down the translation in their notebook, and possibly relate the word to something in Russian culture. While all of this was happening, I usually sat there completely clueless as to what was being said, unless the one person in the class who spoke English and Russian was able to translate for me. However, it was very disruptive to his learning and the entire class when he would translate in English so I could understand the lesson or conversation. Due to this experience, I feel I can relate very well to how the Mexican immigrant children feel when entering a submersion classroom with a “sink or swim” philosophy. During this time of Ulpan, if we made proper progress, did our homework, etc. we were allowed to stay. Each month we had to have a progress report from our teacher, which we gave to another office to give us our monthly living stipend. We have the opportunity to do this for six months, and then our time is out, so this created a lot of pressure/motivation to do well. For most immigrants, learning Hebrew was a way to survive. For most Mexican immigrants to the U.S. learning English is a matter of survival. However, if an immigrant does not learn a language well, there are always low paying jobs for that person, such as cleaning a house or working in a factory. However, these jobs often do not reflect that person’s full potential. For instance, one lady from my class was a college professor in Russia. After coming to Israel, she served coffee in a bank. Another friend was a pediatrician in Russia and after coming to Israel, she cleaned houses. Cleaning houses didn’t upset her because she told me she earned $30 a month as a pediatrician in Russia, and could earn the same amount in 4 hours cleaning someone’s home. She didn’t learn Hebrew because she stayed home with their child and her husband, my English translator, went to Ulpan. I have read this is also a common phenomenon that the man goes to work and learns the language of the country and the woman stays home, often with children, and does not learn the new language. I would like to note that Russian immigrants coming to Israel before the second Intifada (Palestinian uprising), Oct. 2000 had equal jobs with the Israelis and were not placed in these menial positions. However since 2001, Israel has been in the worst economic depression since the founding of the State in 1948. In recent years, many Israelis have lost their jobs and are living below the poverty level too.
27 Fortunately, or possibly even unfortunately, I didn’t have this “survival” pressure on me when it came to learning Hebrew. Also, Russian tends to be looked down upon and English is seen as a superior language, (quite like Spanish and English in the States). Because I was a native speaker of a desired language, I was able to earn a living by teaching English. The same was not true for my Russian speaker counterparts; nobody really cared about learning Russian except for the merchants in the shook (open air market) who wanted their money. In conclusion, the superior language in any country under any circumstance boils down to, “who has the money and who needs it.” The person with the money suddenly has the superior language. I see this trend starting to happen for the Mexican immigrants as they grow in number and become prosperous. They have money to spend, and if the Americans want it, they better start learning how to speak Spanish. U.S. Mexican Americans Before taking this course, my limited view of Mexican Americans was from my own interactions with friends and classmates on the south side of Des Moines, Iowa. My former understanding of and experience with U.S. Mexican youth is consistent with the description from Millard and Chappa (2004, p. 85), which states that Mexican Americans “are middle class professionals such as teachers, police officers, and business owners.” This description pretty much characterizes the average person on the south side of Des Moines, and is not limited to the U.S. Mexican population. The Mexican Americans in my community comprise an integral part of our city and enjoy social and financial privilege, and the youth enjoy popularity among their peers at school. To give a few examples, one of my best friends is Mexican American, many classmates and friends are Mexican American, my childhood private swimming teacher is Mexican American (she had an underground pool in the back of her home in a wealthy neighborhood), and a Mexican American female in my grade was a popular cheerleader and also nominated for homecoming queen. With ample examples, Mexican American youth are accepted and enjoy popularity among the residents of the south side of Des Moines. However, after taking this class, I realize this social status is not enjoyed by a majority of the U.S. Mexican youth. According to the book, Improving Schools for Latino’s, (Valverde, 2006, p. 8) discusses something so simple as sending burritos and tortillas to school in the Mexican kids’ lunch bags made them feel ashamed, and continues by stating, “they somehow knew they were supposed to eat sandwiches made with slices of white bread…extending this example to the broader context, to be Mexican was inferior to being American.” I grew up in a community that loved each other’s ethnicities and contributions to society, and Mexican food was a part of our school lunch menu. Also, the Mexican Americans in my community take great pride in their culture and allowed all of us to become a part of their extended family as well. When Mrs. Vilalobus, was asked to have a party for 20, she and her husband invited 200, and cooked for 500! We also had a Mexican gang, the Pachuco’s in Des Moines, but gangs were normal too. As a matter of fact, upon entering his freshman year at Lincoln High school, my brother, having a dark complexion, was assumed to be Mexican and was asked by Pachucho members to join their gang. The gang was not about causing problems for people, vandalizing, etc., it was just Mexican Americans wanting to form a group. If someone happened to get picked on from the gang, the other members were there to support and back that person. Fighting and violence was a daily occurrence in my school, and you didn’t need to be in a gang to fight. However, being in a gang afforded one a certain level of security, because people knew if they picked on you, they had your whole gang of friends to deal with too. After reading School Connections by Gibson et al. (2004) and watching some documentaries on U.S. Mexican youth, I really became aware of the discriminatory practices towards U.S. Mexicans in the United States, such as how the borders were formed, and where they used to be in comparison to where they are now. It is hard to digest the way the Mexicans have been treated throughout American history. One day a person has a house in Mexico, and the next day their house is considered to be on U.S. soil and they are suddenly illegal immigrants on what used to be their own property. Another common theme throughout the readings, which I was not aware of, is how U.S. Mexicans prefer to be addressed according to their geographical location. “Mexican American” (Millard & Chapa, 2004) in the Mid-West, Chicana(o) vs. Mexicana(o) (Bejarano, 2005), around the Borders, Mestiza “when affirming both our Indian and Spanish heritage… and Tejanos when we are Chicanos from Texas” (Anzaldua, 1987, p. 63). This situation makes any analysis even more complex as we realize the Mexican culture in itself is not uniform, and we must be aware of and respect these differences.
29 Bejarano (2005, p. 139) discuss U.S. Mexican ethnic self identity by describing a clash of cultures between the Americans of Mexican descent, Chicanas, and those who had recently immigrated to the States, Mexicanas. According to the observations of Bejarano, the two groups hardly wanted to have anything to do with one another. The Mexicanas felt the Chicanas were too wild, dressed immodestly, and couldn’t understand how the Chicanas could be Mexican and not know Spanish. The Chicana’s, looked down and belittled the Mexicanas , often making fun of them for their lack of English language skills, and unfashionable and conservative dress. Also, the Mexicana parents tended to keep “tight reigns” on their children for fear of them becoming “too American.” While the class division seems to be the prevailing theme for ethnic self identity among the border cultures, a theme of ethnic cohesiveness seems to emerge in areas away from the border. It seems where there are fewer numbers of students of Mexican descent, there tends to be more cohesiveness and helpfulness among peers towards one another (Gibson, 1995, p. 139). I also noticed Chicana(o)s in the border lands tended to express internalized oppression. They took on the stereotype given to them by society and began to oppress themselves. Going back to what I knew of Mexican culture from my community, with the issues of bilingual education, I now realize our school system missed the mark by implementing an English only philosophy in our schools district. When I attended school there were not ESL or ELL programs, there were “sink or swim” programs (Stein, 1986). The student was put into a classroom and learned the language by total immersion. I am not sure of the practices within recent years, but I can report on practices from 10 years ago from a school on the Southside of Des Moines. I recently spoke with another Mexican American friend of mine, Eva, about the bilingual education system while she was in school. She attended McKinley Elementary School from 1992-1996. At this time they had an ESL program, and the students were pulled out of class to go to the ESL classroom. Eva said she spoke with her friends in Spanish; however, the teacher discouraged this and prompted to the kids to speak in English with one another. Also, the English speaking children were not learning Spanish. Eva came from San Bernardino, California, and said there was more respect towards the Hispanic students from the teachers with regard to language practices. Eva reported her California school “allowed” them to speak with each other in Spanish. Fortunately, at the very least, Eva’s Des Moines school embraced the Hispanic culture and heritage. Eva said they would have class parties and celebrations for the Mexican holidays. Thus, my central topic emerges. Because of my academic background in bilingual education, my experiences as a bilingual learner, my bilingual teaching experiences, being a minority student in the U.S. and my home life is rejected by the curriculum, school, and teachers; I think I have a pretty solid understanding of how the U.S. Mexican legal immigrants feel. It is important for every student who walks through the classroom door to feel respected for WHO THEY ARE, AS THEY ARE. So I would like to propose the following: how can we create a school curriculum which infuses bilingual education for U.S. Mexican youth as well as respect and promote the culture of the home in the school and community at large? Professional Praxis Statement With regard to U.S. Mexican youth and bilingual education practices, the topic that constitutes the core and heart of my professional praxis statement is that of multicultural and bilingual curriculum infusion, which is a methodical process of integrating cultures into the mainstream curriculum. A part of a person’s culture is their language, which has been largely ignored as part of a person’s culture by the school and community. As I will show in the review of literature, to deny a person to speak and learn about their native language in school is, in essence, denying that person’s existence. Therefore, it should be obvious that the role of a person’s native language shapes their personal and cultural identity and experiences and cannot be neglected by the school. In this respect a bilingual education in all schools is called for as part of a multicultural curriculum infusion. Before proceeding further, I would like to reintroduce the three themes and discuss how they have emerged in relation to my praxis statement. Theme #1, benefits of a multicultural curriculum for all students irrespective of the ethnic composition of their communities, relates back to the main topic by demonstrating why it is so important for each child to see her/himself reflected in the curriculum and for children of the agent group to be prepared to act respectfully, intelligently and comfortably in our ever growing pluralistic society. Theme #2, benefits of being bilingual and the most optimal age bilingual education should begin relates back to the main topic because we are trying to create an environment within the school to promote growth and understanding for all children. Part of this growth includes the ability to speak more than one language. Because Spanish is the second most used 31 language in the U.S., I promote the use of Spanish and English as the two official languages for bilingual education in the United States. According to research, bilingual education should begin at the onset of formal schooling. Theme #3, how to infuse multicultural/bilingual practices into the mainstream U.S. public school curriculum relates back to the main topic by offering the reader concrete examples and scenarios to create workable and realistic models for a multicultural/bilingual infusion process. In addressing the benefits of multicultural curriculum, I will first discuss why we need a multicultural curriculum and will then move on to what a multicultural curriculum entails. Theme #1- Benefits of a Multicultural Education What we see and are taught in our school curriculum is a form of conditioning. This can also be called a hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968), which subconsciously teaches what is expected from us, and what is considered to be “normal.” People who conform (consciously or unconsciously) to what is deemed “normal and accepted” looses a sense of pride for her/his culture as they are rewarded by being accepted into the dominant culture and suddenly viewed as a “normal” person. There are four terms which broadly describe the assimilation process forced upon immigrant students. Two of the terms are coined by the same author, Gibson (1988, 1995) and they are subtractive acculturalization and replacement acculturation defined as taking away or replacing one’s culture. The third term is called subtractive schooling which is derived from a three year ethnographic study conducted by Valenzuela (1999). Valenzuela explains subtractive schooling as a process by which schools "subtract resources" from U.S.-Mexican youth in two major ways. First, the school ignores the grounded definition of education in Mexican culture, which believes in a student’s progress as part of a caring and respectful relationship developed between the student and teacher. Second, subtractive schooling embraces policies and practices that take away the culture and language of the Mexican students. A fourth term, deculturalization, is defined as “the educational process of destroying a people’s culture and replacing it with a new culture” (Spring, 2004, p. 3). Spring further describes the deculturalization process as a form of cultural genocide. In the book Improving Schools for Latino’s, (Valverde, 2006) discusses how the acculturation process in schools causes psychological harm to Latino students when they are taught to believe their home language and culture, even the food they bring to school (burritos, tortillas, enchiladas, etc.) are devalued and they develop a sense of shame for being “different.” This way of systematic learning is devastating to all involved. As a result of the assimilation/deculturalization process, according to Valverde (2006), Mexican Latinas have three options: conform (accept), resist (with adoption), or reject (drop out). One way to help solve this problem is when “Multiethnic and multiracial children see enough images of themselves and their families to learn that they and their families are normal” (Wardle & Cruz-Janzen, 2004, p.151). James Banks, a leading expert in the field of multicultural education states, “A curriculum that focuses on the experiences of mainstream Americans and largely ignores the experiences, cultures, and histories of other ethnic, racial, cultural, language, and religious groups has negative consequences for both mainstream students and students of...minority groups” (2005, p. 242). According to Tetreault (1987), it is important to educate all students for a complex, multicultural, multiracial world, by including the perspectives and voices of those who have, traditionally, not been included. All students benefit, and in doing so, some are even inspired to further explore the multicultural issues presented in the classroom. An example of further exploration to benefit all students would be that of including Spanish/English bilingual education in all schools across America. The following is a definition of multicultural curriculum and common benefits authors regard as outcomes of a multicultural curriculum infusion. James Banks a leading Multicultural theorist and author, describes multicultural education as having, at a minimum, the following three attributes: an idea or concept, an educational reform movement, and a process. “Multicultural education incorporates the idea that all students…should have an equal opportunity to learn in school” (Banks & McGee Banks, 2005, p. 3). Banks further describes how some students have better chances of learning than others due to school structures which benefit those from the cultural majority. “An education that is narrowly define as academic achievement and testing will not prepare students to become effective citizens who are committed to social justice…..The world’s greatest problems do not result from people being unable to read and write. They result from people in the world – from different cultures, races, religions, and nations – being unable to get along and work together 33 to solve the world’s problems...” (Banks and McGee Banks, 2005, p.5)
Koppelman and Goodhart (2005, p. 292), describe multicultural education as being “based on a commitment to pluralism; its guiding purpose is to prepare students to be active participants in a diverse, democratic society.” Gorski (2003), another prominent member in the academic arena of multicultural education, also believes the underlying goal of multicultural education is to affect social change; through the transformation of self, schools and schooling, and society. A final description, by Gollnick (1980), describes the goals of multicultural educations as promoting; strength and value of cultural diversity, human rights and respect for those who are different from oneself, alternate lifestyle choices, social justice and equal opportunity for all people, and finally, promoting equity in the distribution of power among all groups. In addition to what the above authors mention as benefits of a multicultural curriculum, I would argue that part of this cultural validation should include embracing the language of the home in school as well. Anzaldua (1987, P. 58), supports this by stating, “repeated attacks on our native tongue diminishes our sense of self. The attacks continue through-out our lives.” Although Anzaldua is referring to Chicano Spanish versus formal Spanish, we are still able to gain insight into her psyche about how it feels to speak a language that is not valued by others or seen as “inferior.” I propose, when there is a dominant language for students, such as Spanish, which is not reflected as part of the curriculum, this is an unspoken way of telling “them” your language is not valued, therefore you are not valued. In conclusion, I believe bilingual education should be included as part of the multicultural curriculum infusion. Theme #2- Benefits of Being Bilingual and Optimal Age for Second Language Acquisition. Due to having bilingual children, and struggling myself as an adult to become bilingual, I fully support the belief of many bilingual theorists (Bailystok,1997; Cazden, 1975; Johnson and Newport, 1989 &1991; Krashen, 1973; Krashen, Long & Scarcella ,1979; Lane, 1979; Lenneberg, 1967; and Penfield, 1964) that bilingual education should start at the onset of formal education. The first and second languages are of no consequence to the benefits of being bilingual, as long as there are at least two languages. For the purpose of this paper, I will be referring to Spanish and English acquisition. Before describing the benefits of being bilingual, let us first understand how the brain works with regard to language learning. For the youngster, exposure to new words develops the cells in the auditory cortex to discriminate between sounds. Before puberty, most children are able to learn any language without the accent of a foreigner. “After puberty, the connections begin to disappear, and the potential cells used for language development are usurped by other more aggressive cells for other functions” (Jensen, 1998, p. 34). Neuronal loss and synaptic pruning make the acquisition of language, and especially second language acquisition, more difficult with each passing year. As a matter of fact, between the ages of two and ten, children have far more synaptic growth than adults (Berko- Gleason, 2001). According to surveys conducted by Altman (1980) and Larsen- Freeman and Long (1991), age is the number one influence of individual learning differences in language acquisition. On average, children are more successful than adults when faced with the task of learning a second language. For the young child, bilingual language immersion is what I consider to be the best technique for bilingual curriculum integration. For the adolescent learner of a second language, (for the purpose of this paper, the L2 is English and the L1 Spanish) I believe the following research is helpful in deciding how to implement the school curriculum with respect to teaching ESL and language of instruction for regular courses. In 1978 the Bradford Project was conducted to test how far mother-tongue teaching would speed up the English acquisition process (Fitzpatrick, 1987). Students in 51 schools across five states were sampled. The study came to the conclusions that: the students’ mother tongue is the most effective language of instruction; rapid transition to classes taught only in the students’ second language does not allow for satisfactory development of the students’ linguistic and cognitive abilities; the second language can be taught effectively if half of the students’ classes are taught in that language. This project concluded with the belief that a bilingual/ multilingual program integrated into the regular curriculum gives the best results. Now that we have discussed how the brain works in relation to language learning and have also discussed learning strategies depending on the age one begins to learn a second language, let us now discuss the benefits of being bilingual. Bilingual education theorists (Cummins, 1976; Diaz & Klingler, 1991; Gulustan, 1974; Imedadze, 1960; Renolds, 1991; Vygotsky, 1962) believe there are benefits to being bilingual. Cummins (1976) describes three probable cognitive advantages to being bilingual. The first being that “bilinguals may have wider and more varied range of experiences than 35 monolinguals…” and also suggests the added stream of experiences from knowing two languages, and probably cultures, creates greater modes of thinking. A second benefit is that bilingual children may be more flexible in their thinking due to the ability to switch between their two languages. Third, it is proposed bilingual children are better able to compare and contrast nuances and meanings. Vygotsky (1962) suggested bilingualism allows a child to “to see his [sic] language as one particular system among many, to view its phenomena under more general categories, and this leads to awareness of his [sic] linguistic operations” (p. 110). As for social benefits, Reynold (1991) believes that bilinguals are more capable of adapting to different environments because of their experiences with navigating the two languages and probable wider social and cultural exposure. Reynolds also suggests bilinguals have an easier time putting language tasks and free resources in order when dealt with more difficult linguistic demands. It is also believed bilinguals have more control over metacomponets and that this system may be more evolved and efficient than that of monolinguals. Metacomponets execute, control and monitor the processing of information. The previously mentioned paragraphs are just a few benefits many authors have attributed to being bilingual. It has been my experience that being bilingual often allows for greater global opportunities and employment as well. One can clearly see how beneficial it is to know more than one language, and exposure to a second or multiple languages should ideally start from birth, but at the very least should begin with the onset of a formal education. Now that we have discussed the benefits of being bilingual and having a multicultural curriculum infusion, it is a good idea to discuss how to start and implement a multicultural bilingual curriculum. Theme #3 - How to Infuse Multicultural and Bilingual Practices into the Curriculum. Multicultural theorists have presented common themes which cut across the different scholars recommendations. Many have created models allowing us to name and identify our school climate and have given us steps to identify where or at what level our school currently stands with regard to the multicultural infusion, or lack thereof. Let us begin this section with steps that can be taken to infuse Mexican culture into the curriculum. First, the school climate should be assessed using Sonia Nieto’s Model for Moving Beyond Tolerance in Education (1994). When school structure, policies and curriculum represent only the dominant culture, this is called a Monocultural climate. This is the lowest level of tolerance, and a school system should strive to never function at this level. The second level of Nieto’s model is that of tolerance: This is when differences are endured, but not necessarily embraced. Although this is better than the first level, a school should still strive to give their students more socialization power than only being able to functioning at a tolerance level. The third level is that of supporting diversity, from the aspect of the “salad bowl” vs.“melting- pot” theory. That is, instead of wanting everyone to blend together, as in the “melting pot” theory, students should be seen as together, but separate and distinct, like vegetables in a salad bowl. While they all work well together, each vegetable retains its own distinct flavor and color. This level of Nieto’s model is that of acceptance, but we should still strive for more. Respect is the next level and implies admiration and high esteem for diversity. If a school can make it only to this level, it is my opinion they will turn out successful students. However, optimal growth is considered at the final level, which is that of solidarity, affirmation, and critique. It is believed the most powerful learning happens when students, parents and faculty work and struggle with one another, even if it is sometimes difficult and challenging. Conflict is not avoided, but rather accepted as an inevitable part of learning. Once the school is able to determine at which level they are functioning, they need to determine what steps should be systematically taken until the school is functioning at minimally the level of respect, but should strive to function at the highest level of solidarity, affirmation, and critique. The atmosphere of the school should be taken into consideration when considering how to get to level five. If it is a hostile environment, too much change too fast could have a negative effect. In this case, it may be a good idea to go through each level, letting the community find comfort, and then move to the next level. To achieve Nieto’s ideal school community of solidarity, affirmation, and critique, we will transfer over to the ideas of Banks (2005) in which he suggests the following must occur: First, teachers should integrate multicultural content (Mexican culture) into the curriculum and 37 environment, this step is called content integration. Second, teachers need to help students understand, investigate, and determine how the implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives, and biases within a discipline influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed within. This is called the knowledge construction process. Third, teachers will work on prejudice reduction, by the teachers using lessons and activities to help students develop positive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Fourth, if needed, teacher will modify their regular teaching practices to facilitate academic achievement of members from the minority groups. Finally, it is important to empower by examining the current school culture to identify and eliminate practices of privilege for the agent group, and create more balance for those of the target groups. (Banks & McGee Banks, 2005, pp. 3-25). In order to give ideas on how to achieve the above mentioned school culture and practices, we will look to James A. Banks — Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform Model — Four levels of Integration of Multicultural Content (1993) as well as Sonia Nieto’s model — Moving Beyond Tolerance in the Classroom (1994) for creating a positive school environment. However, I would suggest Bank’s Four levels of integration would correspond with Nieto’s levels by skipping level one of Nieto and going forward from there. An example would be Banks contribution approach corresponds in achieving Nieto’s level of tolerance.
James A. Banks — Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform Model — Four levels of Integration of Multicultural Content (1993). Level 1: Contribution Approach - Focuses on heroes and holidays and discrete cultural elements. Rarely teaches the meanings and importance of these cultural elements. The mainstream curriculum remains basically unchanged. Level 2: Additive Approach - Adding concepts to the content, themes and perspectives are added to the curriculum without changing the structure and purposes. However, “ethnic” content often comes from the perspective of the mainstream, which can cause pedagogical problems. This creates problems for the teacher, there is often student confusion, and community controversy. Level 3: Transformation Approach - Structure of the curriculum is changed to enable students to view concepts, issues, events, and themes from the perspective of the ethnic minority group. Level 4 : Social Action Approach - Students learn how to critique the curriculum regarding important social issues, and how to take actions to help solve them. The goal of the school would be to function at the fourth level of Bank’s model (1993), which is also congruent with Nieto’s final level of critique, solidarity, and affirmation (1994). Again, if dealing with a hostile school environment, it may be a good idea to move through each level systematically and not move on to the next level until a certain level of comfort is felt. To promote feelings of self efficacy for the entire student population, the school will identify which category they fall into on the Grant and Sleeter model (2003) and the goal will be to have a school running at the Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist level. Take notice of the similarities between this model and that of Banks (1993), and Nieto (1994). The suggestions from all three models should be used together paralleling the order of each model, to make each level grounded.
Carl A. Grant and Christine E. Sleeter — Approaches to Multicultural Education (2003) 1. Teaching the Exceptional & the Culturally Different: To equip students to fit in (assimilate) and function in a traditional role as required by U.S. society. 2. Human Relations Approach: Promotes feeling of unity and tolerance, and focuses on the attitudes and feelings students have about themselves and each other. The Curriculum addresses similarities, differences and contributions of the groups of which the students are members. Also, information is provided regarding groups other than what is represented in the school and for whom stereotypes are held. 3. Single-Group Studies Approach: Studies of a single group to raise their social status. Curriculum focuses on the oppressions and achievements of said group. 4. Multicultural Education Approach: The goal is to reduce prejudice and discrimination against oppressed groups and consciously work towards equal opportunity and social justice for all groups. To do so requires a total reform of the curriculum and school. 39 5. Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist Education: To prepare future citizens of the world to reconstruct society to better serve the interests and equality for all people. Students learn social action skills by promoting democracy within the school as they learn to analyze circumstances of institutional inequality in their own lives.
Example of a Successful Multicultural Curriculum Integration A perfect example of a community once against the Mexican immigrant population, functioning at Nieto’s monocultural level (1994), and has changed the curricular practices of the school system, is that of the Georgia public schools. This district provides the perfect example to map against my three themes ultimately allowing for a school district to evolve from being monocultural to infusing a multicultural bilingual curriculum. Neal and Bohon (2003) have stated Georgia had the greatest number of counties in America, twenty-five, that had a 50 percent or greater increase in the number of immigrants in the 1990s. Because of this, I have chosen to focus on the educational changes, with respect to a multicultural and bilingual infusion in the state of Georgia. Due to booming economic conditions in construction, poultry processing, and the carpet industry, many immigrants are drawn to Georgia (Butler, 1998; Gettleman, 2001). These jobs provide steady, year around work, creating permanent residency for the immigrant population. According to a newspaper article, Hispanic population Will Overtake GA Blacks, by Joan Stroer (2006), the Hispanic population of Georgia has grown to 600,000. In the book Education in the New Latino Diapsora (2002), chapter three focuses on the discriminatory practices directed from government officials towards the Hispanic population. One such person was Newt Gingrich who strongly supported and advocated the “English Language Empowerment Act of 1996” (H.R. 123), which attempted to declare English as the official language of the government of the United States “asserting that English was ‘at the heart of our civilization,’ whereas language diversity would lead to its ‘decay’”(Wortham et al., 2002, p. 46). Gingrich was also “a strong supporter of a 1996 House initiative to allow states to deny schooling for children of illegal aliens and to block federal welfare benefits for American-born children of illegal aliens” (Reuters News Service, 1996). Linda Schrenko, the first elected State Superintendent supported by the Christian Coalition, became “driven by a seemingly hostile or, at best, facile understanding of the challenges and needs of immigrant, language minority, and Hispanic students” (Taxel, 1997, p. 421). As you can see, government officials are working very hard to keep Georgia and the Georgia public schools at Nieto’s first level – monocultural (1994). “During the October 1998 Migrant Education Retreat, the State Title I Director repeatedly denied the assertion that some Georgia school systems were violating Federal civil rights protections of Lau vs. Nichols by not providing any specialized instruction for Englsih language learners. This was despite the fact that Georgia State Department of Education data indicated that 32 school districts in Georgia had English language learning students, but no ESOL program.” (Wortham et. al, 2002, p. 49) Finally in 1999, the tide began to turn with the introduction of the Board of Regents Hispanic Pilot Project, coordinated by the University of Georgia's (UGA) Office of International Public Service and Outreach. This also became a consortium project carried out by UGA, North Georgia College and State University, Georgia Southern University, Dalton State College, and Gainesville College. In November 2000, the Board of Regents decided the consortium was to implement pilot programs that would (1) increase the number of K-12 personnel qualified to teach English as a Second Language; and (2) encourage more Latino youth to pursue higher education in the University System of Georgia (USG). The following funds were appropriated: For the fiscal year of 2001, $375,000; 2002, $275,000; 2003, $261,250; and 2004, $258,500. As you can see, the most money was invested the first year as a way to get the program off the ground. All information about the Hispanic Pilot Project and programs can be found at: http://www.uga.edu/hispanicproject/account0803.html (October 10, 2006).
The goals of the project are to:
1. Increase the educational attainment levels of Georgia's Hispanic population. In doing so, this corresponds with Grant and Sleeters (2003) approach to multicultural education by teaching the exceptional and the culturally different and Banks (1993) suggestion for teachers to modify their regular teaching practices to facilitate academic achievement from members of the minority community.
41 2. Increase the numbers of Georgians with bilingual (Spanish-English) abilities; With this one act, of increasing the number of all Georgian’s bilingual abilities, the schools in this aspect, are functioning at Nieto’s (1994) level of solidarity, affirmation, and critique as the community at large struggles to embrace and become English and Spanish speaking bilinguals. Only with regard to language, I would place this act at Bank’s (1993) transformation approach and Grant and Sleeter’s (2003) Single-group studies approach.
3. Support campus-based initiatives, academic exchanges, and pilot programs that are responsive to the needs of a Georgia student body with growing Hispanic representation. Although I would like to share the incredible programs that are happening with relation to promoting professional careers, academia, and higher education success, I will only focus on the integration of bilingual curricular infusion and the steps which have been taken by the school and teachers alike.
During 2001, a Web-based endorsement series, also a part of the Hispanic Pilot Project, was created to increase the number of ESOL-certified primary- and secondary-school teachers in Georgia. University instructors were taught how to teach the following courses online: Language and Culture in the Classroom, ESOL in P-12 Settings, and First and Second Language Acquisition and Development.
The University of Georgia’s Department of Language Education in conjunction with the Office of International Public Service and Outreach, offered up to 150 educators throughout the state the opportunity to take three course ESOL endorsement. The funding for these classes was made available through a grant sponsored by the USG Board of Regents. The purpose of the program was to maximize the number of teachers qualified to teach ESOL learners in Georgia schools. The program began in September 2002 and ended in August 2003.
Fall 2002, 137 primary- and secondary-school teachers enrolled in the online ESOL endorsement courses. This endorsement series continued into the spring and summer of 2003. Another three-part series of endorsement courses began in fall 2003.
For more information on implementing bilingual education programs in school, a composite list has been made of schools around the U.S. that have had success. Each school is listed with a link which provides details of that school’s bilingual program. This list was compiled by “Portraits of Success.” A joint project of NABE (National Association for Bilingual Education), Boston College, and the Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University from 1996 to 2000. It was a national effort, supported by a number of experts in the field of bilingual education, to develop a database on successful bilingual education. To view the database, go to the following website: http://www.alliance.brown.edu/pubs/pos/ (November 11, 2006).
Another part of this program was to promote the U.S. Mexican youth in attending college. As I mentioned in the beginning of my first theme, often a school’s curriculum leaves behind those of the minority culture, as it is tailed to the cultural preferences of the majority. When this occurs, more often than not, the success of U.S. Mexican youth becomes marginalized by way of language and cultural barriers. According to Valenzuela (2002, p. 1), high stakes testing often results in “marginalizing children, their languages and cultures; and “gaming” the system such as by retaining children in grade or relegating them to test-exempt status….” When this happens, chances of the minority student achieving success in the future are diminished. Let us now look at what is being done in Georgia to combat the inequalities and unfairness of high stakes testing, which are again, demonstrating Banks (1993) idea of teaching to modify regular practices to facilitate academic achievement of members from the minority group.
Specific programs to assist Hispanic students with the Georgia High School graduation test and statewide standardized tests include: Assisting middle-school students with English writing skills; A mentoring program matching college students with middle- and high-school students; Two programs to educate parents and students about the benefits of graduating from high school and the resources available to them in higher education; Two campus-based programs that encourage students to pursue careers in nursing/health care and family and consumer science fields after completing degree programs at USG institutions.
The above mentioned includes classes for: Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, and Writing. The teacher works with 10 to 15 students for eight weeks (each in fall and spring) and uses the Passing the Graduation Test in Georgia review books with the students. The material is also supplemented with the Georgia High School Graduation Test software provided by Dalton State College. The software is used, at least once a week to provide practice questions
43 similar to the ones on the test. After the eight weeks are over, the students rotate to a different teacher in another subject area as the process repeats itself.
Let us look further into the success of other projects happening in Georgia. In the town of Dalton, The Georgia Project is being implemented as a cooperative effort between the town, schools, and Dalton industry to promote a cultural exchange between Monterrey, Mexico schoolteachers and Dalton schoolteachers. Erwin Mitchell, a Dalton attorney who chairs the Georgia Project stated, ''Because of the very nature of the student body that was coming, it would be essential to have someone who understands what those children are thinking and feeling, we said the only place to go is Mexico.” (www.onlineathens.com/stories/021799/new_0217990011.shtml)
A similar teaching exchange happened this past summer with 14 teachers from Blufton High School as they spent “three weeks of study and cultural immersion at the Universidad Internacional in Cuernavaca, Mexico” (The Beaufort Gazette, July 17, 2006). The teachers stayed with host families and formally learned Spanish and Mexican culture for six hours a day in the classroom. The teachers spent the rest of the day and evening mingling with the natives of the land, visiting museums, learning how to cook, salsa dance, and learned more about the home life and culture of their Mexican students. Practice Statement The Coleman Report (1966), a very famous study, states that for the minority group, curriculum infusion “facilitates the quests of marginalized ethnic and cultural groups for a sense of empowerment, efficacy and social equality. When this happens, there is a positive correlation of academic achievement for the minority student” (Coleman et al., 1966). The best practices I would suggest, which have immerged from the literature are: 1. Teaching should not only focus on reading and writing but should also prepare students to successfully interact in our ever changing multicultural, multilingual world. This can be best accomplished by deferring to the suggestions of Nieto(1994), Banks (1993), and Grant and Sleeter (2003). 2. It is important for all students to be able to see reflections of her or his heritage and culture reflected in the curriculum. 3. Bilingual education should begin at the onset of a formal education. If a child has bilingual exposure before reaching puberty, they will be able to more easily reach fluency in a second language, and/or have success in learning multiple languages and the “wiring” of the brain becomes grounded for the acquisition of acquiring more than one language. We all want to see the academic success and emotional fulfillment of our students. The practices mentioned in the review of literature can help a person implement such programs in their school or classroom. If a person feels funding is needed to help implement such programs, please see a list of funding resources found in the appendix. CONCLUSION In doing this assignment, I have learned there are many new books such as, User Friendly Schools for Latinos (Ricken & Turk, 2006); Improving Schools for Latinos (Velverde, 2006); and Improving Schools for Language Minority Children (August & Hakuta, 1997) to name a few, that will give step by step instruction for implementing a multicultural bilingual curriculum infusion that is congruent with what I deem to be sound advice from researchers whose views I support. It seems the people of Georgia are taking appropriate steps for their Spanish speaking population, and encouraging the non-Spanish speakers to become bilingual. Teachers are striving to embrace the culture and language of their Spanish speaking students, thus creating a more caring and multiethnic learning environment in which the students are succeeding. “When school personnel realize they are part of the problem (for not knowing the Spanish language, the tongue of those they are to serve), then and only then will they become a part of the real solution” (Valverde, 2006, p. 88).
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(1987). Rethinking women, gender, and the social studies," Social Education, 51/3, 170. Valenzuela, A. (2002). High stakes testing and U.S. – Mexican youth in Texas: The case for multiple compensatory criteria in assessment. Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, 14, 97-116. Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S. Mexican youth and the politics of caring. Albany: SUNY Press. Valverde, L. (2006). Improving schools for Latinos: Creating better learning environments. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Wardle, F. and Cruz-Janzen, M., (2004). Meeting the needs of multiethnic and multiracial children in schools. Boston: Pearson Education, Ltd. Wortham, S., Murillo, E. & Hamann, E. (2002). Education in the new Latino Diaspora. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.
Artifact #4a HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES -584 Classics of Educational Philosophy Rousseau’s Emile 49 Question: It is said by many, that Rousseau was an advocate for women’s rights and equalities. He was considered to be a “rebel” of his time. Do you think this is still true in today’s world? Do you believe the language he uses throughout the book to be sexist or gender neutral? Do you believe Rousseau’s use of the pronoun “he” is meant to include all persons or just males? What is a “hidden curriculum?” How is this relevant to today’s current educational practices? Do you believe Emile has a hidden curriculum? Justify your reasons and give examples.
I believe Rousseau’s insights to the differences of behavior between men and women are brilliant. Very few humans are able to reach to the depths of her/his soul to understand the pure innocence of our feeling without the tampering of what has been ingrained by society, be that of the church or social surroundings, as to what is love, what is proper, what is innocent, and what is evil. Second, after the ability to access these deep, hidden, and stifled emotions, it is rare for one to be able to articulate this knowledge into the language of which (s)he has been exposed. For it is true, we are limited in our knowledge by the words to which we are confined. We are also limited by our experiences in life.
Who is to say the person who marries as a virgin (like Sophie and Emile), has been sheltered by parents, has never known heartache and pain is better off and nobler than the prostitute on the street? For isn’t it (s)he who has learned to survive, to know the ways of (wo)man, what pleases her/him? Is the prostitute being manipulated and used or the manipulator who is using? In the holy sanctity of marriage, is the husband being used and manipulated by the wife, and/or the husband uses and manipulates his wife? Are we innocent and pure because we are married and live by the ways of the “good book?” as stated in Book IV, p. 331. I have yet to witness a pure and holy relationship between a husband and wife. As for the prostitute, it is a business transaction. One pays to receive certain services, the services are provided, and the proprietor is paid. Has either hurt the feelings of the other? Did one person in the business transaction deal in a deceitful manner? I pose the following question: was this a proper and ethical business transaction, which communicated respect between the two parties?
Now let us ask ourselves, who is more righteous, the married couple or two people involved in the business transaction of sex? We want experienced teachers for education of the mind, why should it not be the same for the body as well? The greatest pleasure is derived from the uniting of two souls and ultimately from the chemical reaction produced by an orgasm. If not properly educated, and shown how to achieve this task, a man could live his life without ever knowing the satisfaction of pleasing his wife, and his wife would never know the bliss of this generous gift given to us by G-D. To deny this is to deny our G-dliness. It has been suggested by some religious scholars, that when we die and are being judged by the creator, the number one concern from G-d is if we were fair in business. Not “did you have relations with a prostitute?”
Let us look at the life line of King David, for he was born out of a prostitute/customer union. Tamar was married to a son of Judah, who died while they were married and had not given her a child. According to the law at that time, the brother of the deceased was responsible for giving the widow a child in the absence of his brother. He too died, and the third brother refused to fulfill his responsibility. One day Tamar knew her father-in-law, Judah son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, was going to visit a nearby town. She ran to the gates of this other town and dressed as a prostitute. Judah, seeing the prostitute, (keep in mind, this is a great and holy man from the family of Israel), decided to “know” the prostitute, whom he did not recognize as being his daughter-in-law. Judah was not able to pay her what she wanted, so she told him to come back the next day, but as a guarantee, he should leave his signet ring and cane with her as collateral. True to his word, Judah returned the next day, but could not find the prostitute. He asked the towns people about the prostitute by the gates of the city, but nobody knew who he was talking about. A few months pass, and it is discovered that Tamar is with child. Believing she had an affair, Tamar was sentenced to be stoned to death. When Judah approached Tamar to ask who the father of the child was, she stated the father was the man to whom the signet ring and staff belonged. Judah then announced to everyone that she was correct in what she did, and he was in the wrong for withholding a child from her. Now, what would Rousseau say about this story? How is it the King of the Jews was born from such an illicit affair? What would the teachers of Sophie and Emile say about the story of Judah and Tamar?
One must confess, it is sex that drives us, male and female alike. Plato knew this (although suggested only men are susceptible to this power/drive), and so does Rousseau. However, we must now differentiate physical pleasures of sex and the uniting of two souls. 51 We do not long for the prostitute with our soul. It is merely a business transaction. The purchase of a particular physical pleasure. What about the person for whom our soul desires to share all of the senses, known and unknown? Is it possible for a relationship outside of marriage to be pure or is it with, what is considered, sin? As for the purity, I say there cannot be any ulterior motives other than to connect with the yearning to join the one soul to the other. This is the point of view of the married person. However, it is evil for the person who is without a spouse and for the spouse of the person with a lover. It is evil because feelings are hurt, and to purposefully deceive and hurt the soul of another person, is the greatest of all evils. I can now come full circle to the original question.
When a woman does not see herself in the writings of the masters, and is only considered for a chapter or two, and the audience being addressed is “he,” “mankind,” “his,” etc. does not she feel she is being excluded, and are her feelings not hurt?
This is part of a hidden curriculum, which continues to keep women as a minority, even though we are greater in number than men. It is from this language we have subliminal thoughts that women are inferior to men. Is the female prostitute inferior to the man who is having to pay for sex?
Who are the major philosophers? Are not the majority of them men? Do women not have the same insights and potentials? I say yes. Do we often assume that since the material we read is directed towards a male audience (even though we say these masculine terms are supposed to be gender neutral, I argue they are not.) and is written by males, that women are incapable of such logic and in-depth reasoning. Although it is not written that a woman is not as intelligent as a man, sometimes omitted information can have the same effect. For instance, many African American authors are omitted from many high school literature courses. Do you think this would lead children to believe they are not reading materials written by African American authors because they do not exist? Or are the materials simply being omitted? It is a fact that students interviewed came to a conclusion that because they had not read literature by African American authors, it does not exist.
The same can be true for female philosophers. Yes, there are some, but I beg to insist that the average person does not know who these women are. I cannot name one, because readings from a female philosopher have never been offered in any of the philosophy courses I have ever taken. We have heard the names, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Dewey, etc. Do you believe it is possible that many people will believe there are not any major female philosophers? In this day and age, it is somewhat illogical to believe there are not any major woman doing the same work as men, but where are they?
It is mostly men teaching in the departments of philosophy, and these men continue to choose books for their students to read that are written by men about men. Women do not see themselves, and when a student does not see her/himself, there is a moment of disequilibrium. As women, we must remind ourselves that these masculine terms, and audiences are supposed to include women too, that these terms are supposed to be gender neutral. Well I am here to tell you they are not! They are offensive to me, because I have been taught to think and not accept the world as it is and something I cannot change. There is something called the power of one...who was Plato? Who was Dewey? Who was Hitler? They were each one single person, who influenced the world to a great degree. How we think, how we act, how we teach. Why should I not think I can do the same? Because I am a women, and there haven’t been any other women who have made such a huge impression? Do I need to act as Sophie to have my opinion respected or would I gain the same respect with the same opinion if I were a prostitute, or an adultress? I say my opinion counts, no matter what profession I have or life I may lead. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if not now, when?
I say today is the day my influence, as a woman, starts. It may be subtle, and it may be small, but I am hoping for a ripple effect to continue. I ask of you, a teacher of philosophy, to include female philosophers in your reading lists.
I ask you to use truly gender-neutral terms.
I ask you to discuss this issue with your students.
I ask you to write your commentaries using the using gender-neutral wording, and even challenge yourself and students to try on a new pair of shoes. They may not fit, they may be uncomfortable, but try them anyway! Another example of omission is the following question; how many men do you know of in the department of Women’s Studies? Is it because they are not allowed, do not have the interest 53 or desire, or do not see themselves in this position and therefore believe it is not something for them in which to be involved? Maybe a male taking a teaching position in Women’s Studies would feel emasculating to him?
I see many men as oppressors of women. There are active oppressors who engage in sexist and oppressing behaviors, such as having all male employment with the exception of secretaries and my father is one of these people. He and my mother believe it is a “mans” job to install car stereos and work with tools. Women should be housewives, teachers, and secretaries.
There is passive oppression as well. This is a person who is not making any overt efforts to oppress women, and may not act sexist, but acts as a bystander as he hears other men make sexist comments and does not react, or passively allows for the status quo of male dominancy in the area of Philosophy to continue and does not say or do anything to change these patterns.
There are very few men who are actively anti-oppressive and actively anti-sexist. These men are taking actions to promote equality for women, which could include allowing women into positions of authority or even as simple as including women philosophers into the philosophy curriculum.
It is important to note that all men benefit from oppressive and sexist behaviors. This promotes false feelings of superiority, which I think, in the end doesn’t help anyone. Is a man truly happy with a woman who is subservient to him? Is Emile truly happy and satisfied with a woman like Sophie, and is Sophie truly happy and satisfied with a man like Emile? Perhaps they are simply puppets playing the roles and having the emotions they were taught to express and suppress.
REFERNCE
Rousseau, J. (1979). Emile or On education. New York: Basic Books. Artifact #4b HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES -584 Classics of Educational Philosophy Dewey’s Democracy and Education
Question: From the book, Democracy and Education, is there a specific theory or topic of discussion that would apply specifically to the teacher (for method) and learner (for acquisition) of a second language?
We must first begin to answer the question how Dewey would support the teaching and learning of 2L (second language) by defining why 2L is necessary and if so, how important 2LAD (second language acquisition development) is in relation to education and life in general.
Dewey states (1944, p.38), “language represents the physical conditions that have been subjected to the maximum transformation in the interests of social life...by it we are led to share vicariously in past human experience, thus widening and enriching the experience of the present....so significant is it of a liberal share in what is worthwhile in life that unlettered and uneducated have become synonymous.” According to the importance Dewey has placed on knowing language, it is arguable, if a person finds her/himself in a foreign land, then it would be just as important to know the language of the natives so one can be educated, enriched, and have the ability to share life and life’s stories with others, thus enabling the “foreigner” to strengthen bonds with neighbors and friends. The ability to create bonds with other people in the form of friendship, love, and belonging, according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, allows for individuals to move to the higher levels of the hierarchy such as intellectual achievement and self- actualization, thus creating a link to the importance of 2L for education.
55 Before examining the importance of 2L for educational purposes, let us first look at the significance of language as stated by Dewey, in relation to the need of language for survival in our modern world.
To secure the basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter, one needs the modern mode of exchange called “money,” in the English language, to fulfill these needs. In learning a 2L, I have witnessed the correspondence of the need for survival to the rate of learning/acquisition. Those who are less motivated by money and can physically survive without knowing the native language of the land, often do not learn the 2L as fast as those who need to know the 2L for physical survival.
I believe the number one driving force to learn a 2L, as an adult (not child) is for survival. The second motivating factor is for the feeling of belonging with a specific group. The third motivating factor is for self-enrichment, knowledge or education, which according to Dewey, is gained through an “active and constructive process” of listening and sharing of ideas, not just telling and absorbing information. Language can be deduced to purely physical constraints, “it almost seems as if all we have to do to convey an idea into the mind of another is convey a sound into his ear”(Dewey, 1944, p. 14), but this is not the argument being brought to fruition.
I contend our feelings, perceptions, and knowledge about our world is confined to the words we possess, which should be considered as more than merely a “sound into the ear.” For the adult learner of a 2L, learning a language for “pleasure” and to gain a greater understanding of the universe and self, I have found where Dewey, further into the book, supports this ideology as well. “the more that is taken in, the greater capacity there is for further assimilation. New receptiveness follows upon new curiosity, and new curiosity upon information is gained” (Dewey, 1944, p. 208).
For instance, when we read or hear the word “heaven”, most of us limited to the English language may conjure an image of the sky and clouds. However, the word for heaven (sh’mi yam) in Hebrew has a literal translation of “those waters.” Now here is where this becomes really interesting. For years I have had a reocurring dream that I am in water and it is very difficult to breathe, and then I meet a man, and when we are together, touching one another, we can breathe underwater.
It says in the Zohar, interpretations of the Kabbalah, that when a soul is sent from the heavens, it contains two elements: male and female. The male element goes to a baby boy, and the female element to a baby girl. If these two live just and pious lives, G-D will one day reunite them in marriage, even if they are at opposite ends of the world.
Once I knew the literal meaning, or the roots of the Hebrew word for heaven, my dream began to make sense. This person swimming with me must be my soul mate, and when I am with him I am able to breathe because we have made it back to heaven, or the realm of the creator. Knowing this word has expanded my horizon of my search for the meaning of life, after life, and when my soul feels quiet. When I can “breathe” I will know I am in the presence of my soul- mate and the life and after-life of being next to the creator and not sent back to this world again, has been found in this life time.
I could go on and on with Hebrew phrases that do not have an exact counterpart in English, but will stop here, as I am certain you understand the point I am trying to convey, which answers the first question I asked: How important is 2LAD to education and life in general? I will reiterate; I believe our knowledge is confined to the limit of words of the language(s) we know and are able to express.
It is also believed by many researchers our cognitive abilities, in general, are strengthened by knowing more than one language.
The child can learn an endless number of languages with little effort due to the fact that our brain is pre-wired to learn as many languages as we desire, and there is a center in the brain for this specific activity. However, if this area of the brain has not been accessed by the age of approximately seven, plus or minus two years, this area shuts down forever. Should the person desire or need to learn a 2L, this will happen in a different area of the brain which requires active participation of the learner. This brings us to our first question: the adult 2LL (second language learner) and method for the teacher and learner, with respect to the teachings of Dewey.
57 Adults experience synaptic pruning, and basically, the “raw material” just ain’t there! Thus, the adult, as opposed to the child, must play a very large role in consciously and actively constructing ways for 2LAD.
I created a memorization technique for the adult learner to acquire and recall vocabulary at a faster rate than without my method. I conducted this research for my master’s thesis, and was able to prove statistical significance. I will share this method with you, because the theory behind my technique relates directly to the teachings of Dewey. Unfortunately I had not read Democracy and Education when I wrote my thesis, otherwise I would have used the following passages to support my theory.
Concerning chapter 16, Geography and History and according to Dr. David Owen’s definition of history and geography, the two are the connections of human activity, which is precisely the foundation of my theory.
There was a keyword technique/method created by Atkinson and Raugh (1975) and later altered by Pressley (1977a) in which they gave the learner a keyword to connect the meaning of the foreign word to the English translation. When learning Hebrew, I couldn’t remember vocabulary until I practiced a word about 70 times. I became a struggling learner and “had to figure out ways to get out of this problem”
I had remembered something about a mnemonics’ device from my methods course and ran to my book to learn the technique. For me, the link word was just another word to memorize. Out of my frustrations came the belief that every person should create her/his own link because our connections of human activities are different and unique to each of us. To me, it is inconceivable to expect everyone to have the same feelings, experiences, associations, and intimacies with a word.
Dewey (1944) also suggests our experiences with activities, describable by words, changes with the times and learning new words are in essence learning new ideas (p. 207-208). According to Dewey (1944, p. 159), if you are going to teaching thinking, you don’t do it by teaching facts (keyword method), all learning is original (my method). These reasons support my theory and discredit the practices of Atkinson, Raugh, and Pressley. My 2LAD method parallels Dewey’s four steps of thinking. First, the 2LL looks at the foreign word and says out loud the first association that comes to mind, this is having an experience with the word being learned. This association can be in the 1L, the 2L or perhaps this is even a third or fourth language being learned. The association does not matter, what does matter, is that this association is specified to this person’s life experiences....NOT the experience of another.
The second step of thinking involves data, which is created with the recording of the association and next, the1L translation is given. Now it is up to the learner to create another link bridging the association to the meaning. This is the third step, which is thinking. I realize this procedure creates another link to be learned, but because our life experiences are so deeply embedded in whom we are, this first association will always come to mind when seeing the word (living experience, the present). I now realize I followed Dewey’s suggested four steps of thinking and the outcome (testing, step four) was phenomenal! One of my subjects, struggling to learn Hebrew, improved her score by 500% after learning my method!
The following is are examples of my research with relation to Dewey’s definitions of geography and history. “...geography and history supply subject matter which gives background and outlook, intellectual perspectives, to what might otherwise be narrow personal actions....” (1944, p. 208).
The Hebrew word to be learned was heatcarshoot (Hebrew transliteration), which means coagulation. One subject had a first association of “picnic,” saying that the words “heat” and “shoot” reminded him of deer hunting and having a picnic. Once he learned the word was coagulation, he was quickly able to draw a link from picnic, to deer hunting and the coagulation of blood. This man was from Texas, and geography and experience played a large role in his association. Had he been from New York City, I doubt he would have had the same experiences.
Another woman had an association of “hot car.” I told her the word meant coagulation and she proceeded to tell me a story about when she was working as a nurse, she would drive blood samples to another hospital and if her car was too hot, the blood would coagulate. Again, her answer is directly derived from the climate in which she lived, California, and history of
59 living in a time period where we take blood samples to hospitals and have the ability to drive in air-conditioned cars.
Incidentally, people who had been living in California within the last 5 years came up with a common association for heatcarshoot, that being “drive by shooting.” Again, this association is a direct link to the experience of a specific place, geography, and time in history. I doubt someone from Nevada, Iowa is likely to have the same association, which is exactly what Dewey proposes as well. .
My method is a living and breathing example of the methods of teaching and learning Dewey would support. I taught my students how to think, I taught a method, I did not teach facts. For future use, my students know how to teach themselves vocabulary of a foreign language.
REFERENCE
Dewey, J. (1938). Democracy and education. New York: The Macmillan Co.
Artifact # 5
RESEARCH AND EVALUATION - 680
Critical Issues in Interpretive Methodology
Theoretical Interpretations
Critical Theory includes many traditions, such as Hegemony, Knowledge Production, and Communicative Action, with a common goal of engaging in cultural critique as a means for the hope of creating a better world. Critical theory believes researchers should commit their work to the greater cause of “confronting the many injustices and oppressive practices that pervade contemporary societies” (Prasad, 2005, p.141). Hegemony “refers to the process whereby individuals become willing accomplices in their own subjugation” (Prasad, 2005, p.138). Hegemony also has a strong focus on understanding cultural processes.
Critical theory also employs the ideology of Freud’s psychoanalysis as part of the cultural critique by demonstrating acts of denial, regression, fantasy, and narcissism to understand “widespread alienation and ideological manipulation” (Prasad, 2005, p.138) as effects of the practices of the mainstream culture.
Another concept central to critical theory is that of ideology critique, which is when the ideologies of social life are systematically critiqued. “Within the critical theory tradition, ideology refers to all systematically distorted accounts of reality (Habermas, 1972) that both conceal and legitimate social asymmetries and injustices” (Prasad, 2005, p.139). The goal of critical theory is to create an awareness of injustices and domination happening within the government, and surrounding public policy, law, science, education, media, entertainment, managerial practices, and even within family structures. When employing an ideology critique, one would hope public awareness of said injustices and domination would cause the public to call for change in the consciousness and structure by those who hold the power causing change to actually happen.
Dialogue is a very important aspect of critical theory; for it is believed “the most useful and liberating forms of knowledge are those that are produced out of dialogues between multiple social constituencies” (Prasad, 2005, p. 141). Derived from the idea of meaningful dialogue is the social science methodology, participatory research (Freire, 1970), “which takes very seriously the involvement of research “subjects” in all phases of social inquiry-research design, information gathering, and implementation” (Prasad, 2005, p. 142). The critical theorist’s role is to question expert knowledge by replacing it with participative forms of knowledge creation and problem solving.
Habermas (1984) proposed that to communicate is to be human, and for a society to function properly there needs to be free speech as part of an ideal speech community. “In an ideal speech situation, all individuals have an equal right to enter the discussion, and there are no hidden motives or self-deceptions that might affect the process or outcome of these discussions 61 (Baert, 1998). In theory, an ideal speech situation ensures authentic representation, freedom of voice, and the rational evaluation of options” (Prasad, 2005, p. 147).
On the other hand, distorted speech occurs when any of the conditions of the ideal speech communication are not met and discursive closure is used as a way to silence the opposing view, “thwarting public explorations of controversy, and inhibiting genuine dialogue without giving the appearance of doing so” (Prasad, 2005, p.148). Discursive closure can take place during public announcements, board meetings, private meetings, workshops, employee counseling sessions, etc. In these situations, voiced opinions of alternative views are discouraged by the leaders in charge.
An instance of discursive closure took place when the parents of an eight year old boy reported that their son voiced his opinion to his teacher that he thought it was unfair he had to miss recess in order to make up an exam that had been given on the day he was gone from school for a Jewish holiday. (It seems that taking away recess is typically used by the teacher and seen by the students as a form of punishment.) “His teacher told him if you were Christian you wouldn’t have to make up the test in the first place.” In the instance of this conversation, the teacher was unwilling to hear the voice of an opposing view, and used discursive closure as a way to silence the opposing view.
In this next situation, the ideology of critique will be applied. The mother I interviewed reported the following about her three children, “The children are constantly told by other children at school, ‘the Jews killed Jesus’ or ‘You’re a crazy Jew, I’m going to be a Nazi when I grow up and kill you.” The father said, “We went to the principal with our concerns and he said, ‘Kids will be kids, they tease each other for everything. They even tease each other about pimples.’ We had to (emphasis on the word) convince the Principal this issue was bigger than being teased for pimples. After spending a considerable amount of time doing so, the principal finally said ‘Kids will be kids, and this is a Christian school. Don’t bring your Hebrew stuff here, it’s a small town and we don’t want it.’”
The principal has systematically distorted accounts of reality that both conceal and legitimate social asymmetries and injustices” He believes their town is Christian and there is not a place in their society for religious practices other than Christianity, and furthermore, the principal believes he speaks for everyone when he stated “Don’t bring your Hebrew stuff here, it’s a small town and we don’t want it.” The goal of critical theory is to create an awareness of injustices and domination happening within society, and in this instance within the specific realm of education. By writing this paper and presenting this information publicly, I am engaging in critical discourse in hope that public awareness of these injustices and domination will cause the public to call for change in the consciousness and structure of the educational administration of this town, and change would actually occur.
Another important component of critical theory is that of dialogue, for it is believed that through the process of dialogue some of “the most useful and liberating forms of knowledge are those that are produced out of dialogues between multiple social constituencies” (Prasad, 2005, p. 141). Not satisfied with how the situation had been handled by the principal, the father went to the Superintendent and described what happened. The two of them had a dialogue in which a new knowledge had been discovered. “The superintendent decided to file a complaint against the principal.” However the father was not satisfied with this resolution and questioned the expert knowledge of the Superintendent, in doing so, the father’s role became that of critical theorist, as he engaged in participative forms of knowledge creation in how to better handle the situation at hand. The father asked the superintendent to replace his original idea of filing a complaint against the principal, by suggesting to the superintendent “this situation better fell under the category of harassment, according to the written definitions within the protocol, then of a complaint.
The last incident I will report involves the son trying to fight against hegemony, which is when individuals become willing accomplices in their own subjugation with a strong emphasis on understanding cultural processes as well. Every year the elementary school sings Christmas songs at a Christmas dinner for the elders of the town. The boy understood it was an important part of the town’s culture to participate in this program; however, as a way to silently fight against the hegemonic practices of this town, he decided to wear his kippah (head covering) to the performance. According to the mother, “the principal asked him to take it off because it was making some of the people feel uncomfortable.” In the case Tinker v. Des Moines Schools, The Supreme Court decided that wearing a black armband to school as a sign of protesting the Vietnam war was acceptable under the students’ first amendment rights to freedom of speech. In 63 this instance, wearing a kippah to a Christmas program, sponsored by the public school would fall under this same constitutional realm. In this situation, the theory behind an ideal speech situation had been violated when the boy’s right to ensure authentic representation, freedom of voice, and the rational evaluation of options had been taken away by the principal in order to appease some of the elders of the town.
REFERENCE
Prasad, P. (2005). Crafting qualitative research: Working in the postpositivist traditions. New
York: M.E. Sharpe.
Artifact #6
RESEARCH AND EVALUATION– 680
Critical Issues in Interpretive Methodology
Ethnography
INTRODUCTION The conventional method of ethnography is the art and science of describing a group or culture through observations of daily life. Through these observations, the ethnographer should be able to identify routines and predictable patterns of thoughts and behavior. Different techniques are used during these observations; the following are broad and general descriptions such as: (1) Formal and informal conversations between the participant and ethnographer, ranging from structured interviews to small talk. (2) observations of daily behavior, either first hand, or through the use of recording devices. (3) Case studies, this would include in-depth interviews (Clough, 1992; Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw, 1995; Fetterman, 1989; Marcus, 1998; Shensul, LeCompte, Nastasi, & Borgatti, 1999; Stringer, 1997; Zou & Trueba, 2002)
Critical Ethnography
Critical ethnography takes the conventional methodology of ethnography and incorporates the tenets of critical theory in order to critique the culture (Thomas, 1993). The premise of critical ethnography is based on an assumption that culture can produce a false consciousness in which power and oppression become taken-for-granted “realities” “ideologies” and “paradigms”. Critical ethnography calls for a paradigm shift by going beyond a mere description of the culture by calling for a change of action through challenging the false consciousness and ideologies exposed through the research.
In the United States, the mainstream culture with the most influence and controlling power has been that of white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, values. For those who do not fit this category, often, feelings of marginalization and oppression are felt. Critical ethnographers try to generate insight as they explain events to gain greater understanding of these marginalized sections of society and their values.
Critical Ethnography in Education
My background is that of an elementary teacher, and because of this background and my anticipated dissertation research in social justice in the public schools, I am drawn to learning more about the theory and practice of critical ethnography in education, which is “the result of the convergence of epistemology and social theory” (Anderson, 1989). In as few words as
65 possible, let us succinctly delve a bit further into the meaning of the foremention definition of ethnography in education.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature and scope of knowledge and belief by analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to truth, belief, and justification. Epistemology also deals with the production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims by addressing the following questions: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?" (Eisner, 1991; Hatch, 2002; McLaren & Giarelli,1995).
Social theory is largely equated with an attitude of critical thinking, based on rationality, logic and objectivity, and the desire for knowledge through discovery, rather than tradition. Social theory strives to explain and analyze social patterns and large-scale social structures. Social theory attempts to answer the question “what is?” not “what should be?” (Game, 1991; McLaren & Giarelli, 1995; Spindler & Hammond, 2006).
Criticism of Critical Ethnography in Education
For many years, qualitative methods were not considered legitimate research by those from the quantitative camps. This change of paradigm started in the early 70s and I believe this change occurred as more women became professionals in fields that required research and fought to legitimize the validity of qualitative work. At a certain point, their voices and work could no longer be marginalized. Today, many educational researchers turn towards the practice of ethnography to legitimize the findings of their research.
Critical ethnographers must keep in mind that the perceptions of the informant are subjective to her/ his cultural perceptions of social reality (Anderson, 1989) and this is a serious consideration when critiquing critical ethnographic findings. However, we are often concerned about the perceptions and social reality of the informant and whatever their reality is to them cannot be changed and this is often what the critical ethnographic researcher seeks to discover. “Critical ethnographers aim to generate insights, to explain events, and to seek understanding. They also share with interpretivist ethnographers the view that the cultural informant’s perceptions of social reality are themselves theoretical constructs” (Anderson, 1989, p. 253). Therefore, the critical ethnographer is interested in systematically unveiling social injustice and feelings of marginalization by individuals and groups of people in hope of creating social change.
Another criticism facing the critical ethnographer is that of reflexivity, which is should be critiqued in two parts. First, through self-reflection and checking for personal bias. Second, through reflection on the dialectical process such as the research data, the informants’ commonsense constructs, the researcher’s constructs, the researcher’s ideological biases and finally, the structural and historical forces behind the social construction of the study (Jordan & Yeomans, 1995).
HOW TO CONDUCT A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY
Define the Problem
The first step to conducting critical ethnography in education is to identify a problem one wishes to investigate. Second, it is important to review past policies and strategies that are relevant to your topic. Third, try to find data that will support past policies and strategies that have not been successful in solving the identified problem. Finally, identify community and social factors leading to the problem(s). This could be from personal observations or supported by articles from professional journals. The problem is the motivation behind the research (Ogbu, 1988).
Theory Behind the Problem
If one would like their study to be taken seriously, it is imperative to ground one’s theory from a model or previous research. The theory or model, whether explicit or implicit, will help define the problem and how to deal with it (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). “The typical model for ethnographic research is based on a phenomenologically oriented paradigm. This paradigm embraces a multicultural perspective because it accepts multiple realities” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 15).
67 The concept of phenomenology was first introduced by Hegel in his book, Phenomenology of Spirit , published in 1807. This book describes Hegel’s account of the evolution of consciousness from sense-perception to absolute knowledge, which begins with an exploration of a phenomenon through a conscious experience as a means to grasp the absolute, logical, and the philosophical study of the nature of being, beings or a system that is behind a phenomena. This has been called a "dialectical phenomenology."
Today, phenomenology has acquired three philosophical meanings. The second meaning, called “transcendental phenomenology” is attributed to Edmund Husserl, mostly addressed in his unfinished works called The Crisis of the European Sciences (translated by Beimel, 1954), but first addressed in his book, Ideas ( Husserl, 1913).
Transcendental phenomenology first takes the intuitive experience of phenomena and tries to pull out the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience. Knowledge of this “essence” would only be possible by "bracketing" all of our current assumptions we hold about the existence of our external world (Carspecken, 1996). Husserl called this type of thinking a procedure and gave this procedure the name of “epoché,” which means “bracketing” or suspending all theoretical judgments and presuppositions regarding any and all perception. It is my understanding that this essence is constantly changing meaning through time and events we experience.
Martin Heidegger, a student of Husserl, expanded on Husserl’s philosophy of phenomenology by delving deeper into the basic structural features of both the subject and object of an experience to what he considered their “being,” which he called “ontology.” Heidegger believed "being” is the proper and sole theme of philosophy and phenomena is not the foundation of “being” because an appearance is “that which shows itself in something else,” while a phenomenon is “that which shows itself in itself.” Husserl believed “being” appeared as a correlate of consciousness, and Heidegger believed this was just the starting point (Carspecken, 1996).
However, one should know that Husserl believed ontological being and existential being as two entirely separate entities. Ontology is used as another word for anthropology, which is the study of the physical and social characteristics of humanity. Thus, we have come full circle, back to the simple idea that we will learn about phenomena through watching people and interpreting what we have witnessed, subject to cultural interpretation.
Very simply put, “usually, ethnographers use theoretical models indirectly linked to grand theories to guide their work” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 17).
Creating a Research Design
After defining a theory on which to base one’s research, a research design must be developed. This is typically seen as a “road map” in how to proceed with each step of the research at hand. The first of which is determining which methods and techniques are most appropriate to be used in the research. Second, one must determine how and where to select participants. Third, the researcher needs to figure out how to gain entry into the “site” or “field” where one wishes to observe or conduct interviews. Fourth, if interviewing participants, the researcher needs to decide what type(s) of interviewing will be most appropriate and what questions should be asked and in what manner. Fifth, it is useful for the researcher to have an approach in mind of how to facilitate the capture of data, and how the data will be analyzed.
Methods and Techniques
In ethnographic studies, usually six months to two years or more of observations “in the field” is required for credible understanding and interpretations of the community and culture of the community or people, and or the effects of the culture of the community on the people being observed and/or interviewed. Before going into the “field,” one must decide the “who” and “how” of the selection and sampling process. For example, I was searching for people of the Jewish faith who attend or attended public schools. In order to make contact with individuals, I conducted a google search of synagogues and temples in Iowa. I then contacted each synagogue and spoke with the Rabbi describing my research and gave background information on myself as well. I then e-mailed a description of my research, the interview process, my contact information, IRB approval and guidelines to the Rabbi or her/his staff. This letter was put in the
69 weekly and/or monthly bulletin. The Rabbis also agreed to mention my need for research participants during services as well. I also sent out an e-mail to all of my Jewish friends, and asked them to forward my message to all of their friends as well. People would usually send an e-mail, and we would set up a time and place to meet, or an interview would be conducted via the telephone or computer. I was able to acquire information for my research topic from over 127 people from 32 different States in the U.S.
If one is observing a group or community, (s)he must gain entry into the community, usually through invitation or permission from an individual or the entire group one wishes to study. The latter is especially true when working with children. More often than not, parental permission is required before a child can be interviewed. “The most important element of fieldwork is being there-to observe, to ask seemingly stupid yet insightful questions, and to write down what is seen and heard” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 19). To ensure authenticity and credibility, it is very important for the ethnographer to engage in cross-checking, comparing, member checks, and triangulation of the data before the information can become the foundation of a new knowledge base. When all of this is done, it is easy to defend authenticity of data when asked to produce documents of original research.
Interviews
According to Fetterman, “interview is the ethnographer’s most important data gathering technique” (1989, p. 47). If the ethnographic researcher is interviewing participants as a way to gather information, there are different methods to be used.
The first method is a formally structured interview. This is when the researcher has predetermined what questions will be asked of the interviewee and often these are not open ended questions.
When questions tend to be open-ended, and the interviewer and interviewee have interactive conversation, the interview is considered to be a semi-structured or in-depth interview. “In semi-structured or in-depth interviewing, the researcher needs to listen carefully to the participant’s responses and to follow his or her lead” (Esterberg, 2002, p. 87). In-depth interviews are useful when the researcher wants to explore a topic in detail or in constructing a theory.
Informal interviews seem to be the most common in ethnographic work (Fetterman, 1989), especially since they are often conducted in a field setting, in conjunction with an observation. Unstructured or free-flowing interviews tend to arise naturally, as opposed to forced questioning which takes place during the structured and semi-structured interview. Included in the genre of informal interview could be that of the expressive-autobiographical interview. This is where life histories are shared, and usually they are quite personal. Utmost respect should be executed, and it is also important for the interviewer to keep in mind “the individual is usually not completely representative of the group. However, how a key actor weaves a personal story tells much about the fabric of the social group” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 61).
Interviewing Protocol and Strategies
The first element of protocol is that of respect for the culture of the group or person under study. The second element is that of personal respect to the interviewee. This would include being mindful of the participants’ time, sensitivity to the subject and even personal space. To create a non-threatening rapport with the participant, it is a good idea to begin with simple questions embedded in the natural conversation. It is a good idea to create a healthy rapport with the participant before introducing potentially sensitive questions. “Sensitivity to timing and the participant’s tone is critical in interviewing - informal or otherwise” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 49).
Questionnaires
Misinterpretation and misrepresentation are common outcomes when answering and interpreting a questionnaire. It is possible the person writing the questionnaire meant one thing, and the person filling out the questionnaire interprets the questions as meaning something else.
71 The same type of misinterpretation can happen when interpreting the answers. Without an interactive dialogue, it is difficult to determine when this happens.
Member Checking
After the interview has been transcribed, it is a good idea for the researcher to submit the transcription to the participant to be certain the data was correctly interpreted.
Making Sense of the Data
The first step to making sense of the data is to first transcribe all taped data. Second, have a member check conducted with the data. Third, put the member checked transcriptions with the data from the field notes from that particular session/observation. One can then organize the data in chronological order or by topic. It is also important to keep multiple copies of the data.
The critical ethnographer may find it useful to map certain information. For instance, I remember seeing a program where a critical ethnographer in Africa wrote on transparencies the number of people with HIV in accordance with the location of their tribe. On another transparency she had marked which tribes practiced circumcision, and which did not. One day the two transparencies fell on top of one another over the map of Africa and the researcher by chance noticed tribes that practiced circumcision had lower HIV numbers of people who had contracted the HIV virus. This information later went on to scientists who conducted research in Australia and the U.S.A. with the HIV virus and tissue samples from the foreskin of the male penis. This was not the original intent of this woman’s research, she was a critical ethnographer, but this was something that emerged as a result of her mapping her data.
Flowcharts are useful when sequencing of events and/or activities are important to identify. Organizational charts are great when one would like a visual representation of a physical space. In these physical spaces, information can be added, and this could represent measures of change over time. This is particularly useful in the educational setting, such as a classroom.
Coding While conducting interviews, or reflecting on the interview after the session or the field observation session, theme will start to emerge in one’s mind. It is a good idea to keep a reflective journal and write down the themes you are noticing. After the data has been transcribed, the research will code the data. That is find common threads throughout all of the data. I have heard from peers, in order to quickly associate common themes among all of the data collected, they will choose a highlight color to represent each theme. When the theme emerges in the data, the wording will be highlighted in the color according to whatever theme is identified in those statements. After all of the data has been coded in this way, it is very easy to differentiate and reference common themes from among all of the date.
Triangualtaion
In validating one’s ethnographic research it is imperative to test one source of information against another “to strip away alternative explanations and prove a hypothesis” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 89). The heart of critical ethnography is the desire to prove the need for shifts in the current cultural paradigm. One of the best ways to gain credibility by skeptics is for the critical ethnographer to cite several sources. For instance, if someone verbally reports an event, it is a good idea for the critical ethnographer to research the event and try to find supporting information from several sources. This could include newspaper article, television interviews, documents, or other verbal first hand reports. “Triangualtion always improves the quality of data and the accuracy of the ethnographic findings” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 91).
ETHICS
When conducting an ethnographic study, one is emerged in the life and culture of the participant to discover what goes on in their lives “behind closed doors.” We want our participants to trust us enough to be willing to share intimate details regarding their lives and relationships with others. When participants give so much of their time, energy, and trust to the researcher, within proper limits, it is important for the researcher to give something back to them.
“Reciprocity is an ethical issue in any research effort, but is especially important when participants invest themselves in close relationships with researchers and trust them with sensitive information” (Hatch, 2002, p. 66).
73 For instance, when I interviewed Jewish participants, at the end of the interview I offered an Israel bumper sticker as a small token of appreciation. The financial cost was one dollar per sticker, which is not very much. Especially when considering the fact that some participants spent over an hour telling me their stories. Surely their time is worth more than a dollar. However, these bumper stickers had to be ordered from a special magazine, and for someone who is Jewish and living in Iowa, the significance of the bumper sticker is much more than its monetary value. I believe this was an ethical form of reciprocity.
When working with students, the researcher must be extremely sensitive to maintaining ethical behavior. The research should keep in mind the student is forced into being a captive audience member and also the pliable vulnerability of youth which can be easily manipulated and misguided. “A genuine effort should be made to help children comprehend exactly what their participation will mean, and a thoughtful attempt to assess their degree of agreement should be a part of the research design” (Hatch, 2002, p. 67).
Another obstacle which may plaque a researcher is observing illegal activity. If this is in the form of child abuse, or someone could be in danger, the activity should be reported. However, if one is trying to discover the underground world of raves and discovers many illegal drugs are being taken, as long as nobody’s life is in danger, the researcher should not report the activity. The goal of the research is to discover the truth about what happens at Raves to enlighten others. If the participants know the researcher will go directly to the police, it is very unlikely researchers will ever have permission to study this group of participants, including asking questions and taking notes.
Last thoughts about ethics should be given when considering how to end the research/ participant relationship. Traditionally, researchers came to an abrupt end in the research by just leaving the site, and never looking back (Reinharz, 1979). Ethically speaking, this is not being very sensitive to the participant who has rewarded the researcher with so much valuable information. The idea of a wrap up celebration of final debriefing would be a more positive and sensitive way to leave the relationship as opposed to just walking away. However, “when the expectation is that the relationship will continue, building in a session to plan future activities might be appropriate. The point is to signal both sides what will be expected of the relationship at the end of the study” (Hatch, 2002, p. 66). CONCLUSION
We have learned a wealth of knowledge about others and ourselves through the observations and finding of ethnographic research. Conducting ethnographic research is not an easy task, it is very time consuming and many mistakes of interpretation can made during the several stages of the entire process. It is also possible a participant is not being truthful, or is answering questions or acting in the way (s)he believes the observer wants her/him to act. It is also possible the researcher could pose leading questions to the participant as well, thus skewing the true essence of what should be an uninfluenced answer.
Ethnographic research is left open to much scrutiny, for this is research that does not come from a fill in the answer bubble sheet where everything is black and white. Sometimes it is nice to have research that is clean and concise, however, I prefer living in a more colorful world.
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75 directions. Review of Educational Research, Vol.59, No.3, 249-270. Beimel, W. (Ed). (1954). The crisis of the European sciences. Evanston, IL: Nowthwestern
University Press. Carspeken, P. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and practical
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educational practice. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Emerson, R.; Fretz, R.; and Shaw, L., (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago, IL:
The University of Chicago Press. Esterberg, K. (2002). Qualitative methods in social research. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill. Fetterman, D., (1998). Ethnography: Step by Step. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Game, A. (1991). Undoing the social: Toward a deconstructive sociology.
Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press. Hammond, L. (2006). Digging Deeper: Using Reflective Dialogue to illuminate the cultural
process inherent in science education. In G. Spindler & L. Hammond (Eds.), Innovations in
educational ethnography: Theory, methods, and results. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence
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school adjustment and performance. In R. Haskins & D. Macrae (Eds.), Policies for
America’s public schools: Teachers, equity, and indicators (1988, p. 127). Norwood, NJ:
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77 Artifact #7 RESEARCH AND EVALUATION - 580 Qualitative Research Methods Book Analysis and Critique Paper
The theme I chose, which is woven throughout the book School-Smart and Mother-Wise: Working-Class Women’s Identity and Schooling by Wendy Luttrell (1997), is that of splitting. According to Luttrell (1997, p. 9) splitting is the “breakdown of the whole person into parts of a person.” We are able to analyze how “tensions within an individual are translated into conflicts between individuals or groups and how both sets of tensions are expressed….” Luttrell uses the term broadly throughout the book to address issues of splitting with regard to “psychological, cultural, and institutional forces that divide objects, people, ideas, and feelings into oppositions in which one side is devalued and the other is idealized” (Lutrell, 1997, p. 9). With regard to the female psychological aspects of splitting, Luttrell believe this is a way for women to organize their understandings about themselves and their relationship with others. Splitting allows the woman to protect or defend themselves against adversaries, be that from people or society. Splitting is presented throughout the book, in the following themes: 1. Knowledge - Legitimate and illegitimate knowledge, school smarts vs. street smarts vs. mother wise (Luttrell, 1997, p. 10); Rational vs. intuitive, objective vs. emotional (Luttrell, 1997, p. 32). 2. Gendered Views of Knowledge - Autonomous (male) vs. relational (female), (Flax, 1987a, 1990); Intellect vs. emotion; affect vs. cognition; intuition vs. reason; autonomy vs. relatedness (Luttrell, 1997, p. 32). 3. Images of Womanhood - “Bad-self” (i.e. taking care of oneself, getting an education, speaking up, etc.) vs. “good-self” (i.e. taking care of others, subservient, nurturing, domestic, ability to suppress ones desires, wants and needs) (Luttrell, 1997, p. 49); Attractive vs. unattractive; clean home vs. dirty home (Luttrell, 1997, p. 52). 4. Social Positions - Valued and respected vs. devalued and a nobody, (Luttrell, 1997, p. 51). 5. Institutional Setting - Academic vs. vocational vs. kitchen practice vs. domestic help (Luttrell, 1997, p. 68). 6. Cultural and Psychological - Subject vs. object; false self vs. real self (Luttrell, 1997, pp. 87 & 88). 7. Maternal Relationship - Good feelings vs. bad feelings; blaming vs. not blaming; self- efficacy vs. failure (Luttrell, 1997, pp. 100-103). 8. Intellect - Desire to learn is internalized as being selfish, while care giving promotes a sense of pride (Luttrell, 1997, pp. 109-110). Splitting, within the institutional setting, is quite common throughout schools, with emphasis from the teacher and curriculum, intentional or unintentional. Often times, one side of the educational process is valued, while another side is viewed with less esteem. “Girls learned clerical or waitressing skills, while boys learned a skilled trade….school fostered this antagonism by splitting off as unequal ‘academic’ from ‘vocational’” (Luttrell, 1997, p. 86). Speaking of such instances in the school brings to mind an incident in my first grade classroom back in 1996, in Waterloo, Iowa. We had a guest speaker from the local hospital visit the class, and after her discussion she wanted to pass out nurse and doctor hats. When determing how many to leave of each, she asked how many girls are there in the class for the nurse’s hats, and how many boys were in the class for doctor’s hats. This was said in front of the classroom, so I replied by saying “I have a question. Can girls be doctors and can boys be nurses?” She of course answered yes, after which I proceeded to ask if the kids in the classroom could decide if they wanted to be a nurse of doctor.” As you can imagine, none of the boys wanted a nurse’s hat, but many of the girls wanted the doctor’s hat. When a person in a position of authority such as a teacher, or in this case a special guest, sends these sorts of unspoken messages of gender roles to the students, this can negatively affect immediate and longitudinal development. This form of splitting can also affect issues related to self esteem, worth, and value. What we see and are taught in our school curriculum is a form of conditioning. This can also be called a hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968), which subconsciously teaches what is expected from us, and what is considered to be “normal.” 79 An example from Luttrell (1997) is that of the Philadelphia women who tended to work as secretaries, nurses, and mothers, whereas the North Carolina women tended to be domestic workers. The Philadelphia women viewed their work as “domestic, subservient, nurturing - all the traits of ‘good’ womanhood” (p. 49). They felt a sense of pride as they were able to make judgment calls, and assert authority when making choices. However, these roles were limiting when they had to defer their knowledge to the men’s knowledge, acting in the role of boss or husband, “upon whom they were dependent and expected to be subordinate” (Luttrell, 1997, p. 49). However, the North Carolina women had a different set of splitting conflicts. These women of color, working as domestic helpers in white households, had fewer opportunities to achieve idealized images of woman hood, as did the women from Philadelphia. However, these women tended to view this work as what they did to earn a living, rather than defining who they are, as a person. Also, in North Carolina, women’s care giving skills were historically viewed as resistance acts within the Africa American community. Therefore, women holding these jobs, which often supported their families, saw their work as sources of power “and were more highly valued by both themselves and their communities” (Luttrell, 1997, p. 49). However, these women still struggled to defy the controlling images and myths about black women. Unfortunately, according to the accounts of Luttrell (1997), teachers are not immune to acting prejudice and judging students by their differences. “North Carolina women spoke with shame and humiliation…. How black teachers invoked the intimidation of color as they passed over darker skinned students or failed to encourage students whose parents were not professionals” (Luttrell 1997, p. 69). These teachers, possibly, unintentionally sent messages to these students of a devalued sense of self. As teachers, we need to be so very careful of how spoken and non-verbal message translate to our student population. For instance, in an article, The Cycle of Socialization (Harro, 2005), we learn how human beings tend to judge one another by our differences. Because each person is born into a specific set of social identities, we are predisposed to unequal roles in life and sometimes our children fall into the cracks of the dynamic system of oppression. Many more examples of feeling oppressed and judged by teachers are found in chapter six, Teacher’s and Their Pets. Women from North Carolina reported not having a choice about trying to be a teacher’s pet if they were dark skinned. “Teacher’s passed right over,” “looked straight through,” or “looked over the top of darker skinned children” (Luttrrell, 1997, p. 84). Reportedly, this was a prejudice which even came from light-skinned African American teachers. Accordingly, this would be a form of internalized oppression. Thus, the teacher perpetuates a system they were once a victim of themselves. Some women experienced splitting when they talked about knowing what to do to be the “teacher’s pet.” They felt they were giving up their true selves to fit in and be accepted by the teacher, as if they were playing a conning game, and it wasn’t the real person the teacher liked, but the false self. However, these women felt this was what needed to be done to have a chance to compete for the teacher’s approval and affection (Luttrell, 1997, p. 83). People who conform (consciously or unconsciously) to what is deemed “normal and accepted” by a society are rewarded by being graciously accepted into the dominant society and viewed as a “normal” person. The results of this systematic learning are devastating to all involved. (Wardle & Cruz-Janzen, 2004). Luttrell reports all women in the study held class based views and values regarding what constitutes knowledge. They defined knowledge from the splitting of common sense vs. schoolwise intelligence. Also, the women from North Carolina defined this even further by noting these splits are also racialized, that “living in white America requires ‘real intelligence.’ Black people who survive and/or resist racism do so because of their common sense or ‘real intelligence’ against white peoples ‘ignorance’” (Luttrell, 1997, p. 35). However, “Women in both groups from this study were drawn to commonsense and intuition because these forms of knowledge rest in women themselves (not in higher authorities) and are experienced directly in the world (not through abstractions)” (Luttrell, 1997, p. 32). Unfortunately, within this cultural context, “commonsense and intuition placed the women in less powerful positions in relation to men and in relation to middle-class professionals (men and women)” (Luttrell, 1997, p. 32) I chose this theme because I always complain how hard it is to be a woman. When my children are young, until the age of three, they are home with mama. I feel it is my obligation and privilege to raise them. It was sometimes emotionally devastating knowing my potential, while standing and doing the dishes for the 20th time that day…without thanks or we love you. However, after nine years I reached a point where I felt the kids would be fine without me as their primary caregiver. I believe I am nurturing a nonsexist atmosphere within my home as my children watch their father doing the daily domestic tasks and I am away “at work/school.” 81 While I feel I am independent and able to make my own choices, as a mother, I feel my choices are often limited and driven by what I think is best for my children as opposed to what I think is best for me. I suspect this view, what I will refer to as “martyrdom syndrome” was passed down to me from my mother. We, my brother and I, were her first priority and we knew it. She worked for 1 year selling real estate, and we went to a sitter, but never really liked not being home with mom, so she quit. Although, I think she suppressed her needs and desires too much, she was miserable half of the time. She and my father rarely went out, and everything they did was for us. Now, I think she is resentful for the loss of “what could have been” and “where she is now.” I think she acted in this way since her own mother worked, and she harbored feelings of ill will towards her mom for never being home. (My grandparents ran a fruit market together). Also, my grandmother was constantly with her group of friends, playing bridge, bowling, etc. I’m trying to find the right balance in my life, nurturing myself vs. my children. I suspect I am close to the equilibrium I desire, and these examples of splitting helped me identify my own accomplishments and downfalls, gain a deeper understanding of self, and where I would like to head in the future. REFERENCES
Harro, B. (2000). The cycle of socialization. In Adams et. al. Readings for diversity and
social justice ( 2000, P.19). New York: Routlege Falmer.
Jackson, P. (1968). Life in classrooms. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston.
Luttrell, W. (1997). School-smart and mother-wise: Working-class women’s identity and
schooling. New York: Routledge.
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