Jean Anyon - Social class and the hidden curriculum of work
"In the affluent professional school, work is creative activity carried out independently"
This was a novel idea for me. School for me usually involved worksheets, tests, and one-word right-or-wrong answers. I think this is why I still prefer objective testing styles over subjective ones, because this is what I am familiar with. I think that as a teacher it would be a great idea for me to show my students that I value their ideas and thought processes enough to want more than a one word answer from them.
"In the executive elite school, work is developing one's analytical intellectual powers"
Another foreign concept for me. Even in college I have had classes where the professor only cared if you could come up with the one correct answer, not the route you took to arrive there. I have actually had a college professor say to a student in a freshman psychology class "You're a freshman, you don't get to have an opinion yet"
"School experience, in the sample of schools discussed here, differed qualitatively by social class"
This is a main issue of this article. Unfortunately, it's obvious to everybody that schools definitely differ greatly amoung the social classes. This just serves as one more roadblock placed in the way of lower social-class and minority populations by the "culture of power". It is one more way that certain people are kept "in their place"
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Talking point 9
"I wanted to take other classes that interested me"
I think it's so sad that someone in this country can be denied an education that they want so badly.....denying educational opportunities to somebody because of their percieved inadequecies is not only unfair, but outright discriminatory. It would hurt noone to give people a chance, worst case scenario someone can be switched to different classes if the one's they are in are too advanced for them to handle. This is just another example of how children in our country become labeled and sorted into little boxes that there is no escape from.
"so what if you don't fit exactly like your supposed to? You know, it's not like I fit many people's idea of what a teacher is supposed to be like"
This is my favorite quote of the whole article.... imagine how wonderful our educational system would be if all teacher's thought this way in regard to all children!
"It's about all of us working together, playing together, being together, and thats what learning is"
This quote is so true. Education is not all about textbooks and standardized tests, it is about the learning experience, learning life skills, learning to work with other people, especially those who may be different from us.
This article was very interesting to me. I do have experience with people who have down syndrome, my sister-in-law has down syndrome and I have had the pleasure of attending many events with her that were specifically for people with down syndrome. One of the major things I have noticed is the huge differences amoung those with down syndrome, some are capable of living on their own, and some are not, etc. There is a huge range of capabilities amoung people who have down syndrome, which makes labeling them as capable or incapable at particular things impossible. Individuals with down syndrome have many abilities and qualities that would be a wonderful addition to any environment, especially a classroom. It makes me so sad to continously be reminded how narrow-minded and short sighted our educational system can be.
I think it's so sad that someone in this country can be denied an education that they want so badly.....denying educational opportunities to somebody because of their percieved inadequecies is not only unfair, but outright discriminatory. It would hurt noone to give people a chance, worst case scenario someone can be switched to different classes if the one's they are in are too advanced for them to handle. This is just another example of how children in our country become labeled and sorted into little boxes that there is no escape from.
"so what if you don't fit exactly like your supposed to? You know, it's not like I fit many people's idea of what a teacher is supposed to be like"
This is my favorite quote of the whole article.... imagine how wonderful our educational system would be if all teacher's thought this way in regard to all children!
"It's about all of us working together, playing together, being together, and thats what learning is"
This quote is so true. Education is not all about textbooks and standardized tests, it is about the learning experience, learning life skills, learning to work with other people, especially those who may be different from us.
This article was very interesting to me. I do have experience with people who have down syndrome, my sister-in-law has down syndrome and I have had the pleasure of attending many events with her that were specifically for people with down syndrome. One of the major things I have noticed is the huge differences amoung those with down syndrome, some are capable of living on their own, and some are not, etc. There is a huge range of capabilities amoung people who have down syndrome, which makes labeling them as capable or incapable at particular things impossible. Individuals with down syndrome have many abilities and qualities that would be a wonderful addition to any environment, especially a classroom. It makes me so sad to continously be reminded how narrow-minded and short sighted our educational system can be.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Talking Point 7
Whoops somehow completely missed doing this post last week, better late than never....I hope :)
While researching gender and education online, I did find that almost all of the results focused on higher education, there wasn't very much information on gender and k-12 education. what information there was seemed to focus either on single-sex classrooms or females and science and math classes. This website has links to many different articles, again, most of them focus on higher education but there is a lot of interesting information in them. Doing this reaearch has opened my eyes to a lot of things, before this assignment I would have said that I did not notice any differences in the education males and females recieved in the schools I attended as a child, once again my "lens" has been cracked and my eyes opened to things I never noticed before, such as the middle school I attended had both male and female students both take woodworking and sewing class, however the girls could somehow earn an "A" in woodworking by sweeping the floor and cleaning up the sawdust from the boys projects. If a female student did attempt a project of her own, the (male) teacher was right there, practically doing the whole thing himself. This class just keeps adding more and more things that we need to be aware of as we become teachers, I'm starting to feel like another knapsack is being added to my back, filled with all of the stuff we are learning in this course, and it is much heavier than the "white priviledge knapsack".
While researching gender and education online, I did find that almost all of the results focused on higher education, there wasn't very much information on gender and k-12 education. what information there was seemed to focus either on single-sex classrooms or females and science and math classes. This website has links to many different articles, again, most of them focus on higher education but there is a lot of interesting information in them. Doing this reaearch has opened my eyes to a lot of things, before this assignment I would have said that I did not notice any differences in the education males and females recieved in the schools I attended as a child, once again my "lens" has been cracked and my eyes opened to things I never noticed before, such as the middle school I attended had both male and female students both take woodworking and sewing class, however the girls could somehow earn an "A" in woodworking by sweeping the floor and cleaning up the sawdust from the boys projects. If a female student did attempt a project of her own, the (male) teacher was right there, practically doing the whole thing himself. This class just keeps adding more and more things that we need to be aware of as we become teachers, I'm starting to feel like another knapsack is being added to my back, filled with all of the stuff we are learning in this course, and it is much heavier than the "white priviledge knapsack".
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Talking point 6
The videos assigned to us this week were definitely interesting, I think I will try to find a copy of the book to read, but I think that it just reinforced some of the things we have already read about in this class rather than bringing up new issues. I definitely recognized some themes in the videos that we have seen before, such as "obliviousness" and the power that white people have in this country. Before taking this class, I honestly felt that race issues were not a problem in this country anymore, and now I realize that my feeling this way I was part of the problem. Obama is definitely a great role model for young people of color, it just offers another example to them of excellence in their race, but it definitely would be nice for them to have a wider range of role models in their everyday life, such as teachers, doctors, police officers, etc. I think it's sad that some people would use Obama to say that the problem is solved, when race is still definitely an issue when it comes to education, employment, the criminal justice system, and many other places. The statistics quoted by Wise on the video shocked me. I couldn't believe how many white americans still hold on to these negative stereotypes about black people. And if that many people admitted to these feelings, it makes you wonder how many more believe these stereotypes without admitting it.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Talking point 4
Unlearning the myths that bind us - Linda Christensen
"The messages, or secret education, linked with the security of their homes, underscore the power these texts deliver."
I never thought of it before, but by giving our children these books and movies we are giving our approval to the material and subtexts contained in them, giving them even more power in the eyes of our children. We are telling our children that we approve of the messages they are recieving.
"Many students don't want to believe that they have been manipulated by children's media or advertising."
This is probably true of students everywhere, nobody wants to view their childhood through a new "lens" and see that some of their favorite childhood memories might not be as innocent as they believed. As with other things in this course, ideas that hit "too close to home", make me feel the most uncomfortable. Especially when I begin to see that things that I have tought, said, or given to my children might not have been the best choice, it makes me question my effectiveness and capabilities as a parent, something that is definitely not comfortable.
"I'm not taking my kids to see any Walt Disney movies until they have a black woman playing the leading role."
Reading this article made my look at my children's shelf full of Disney movies in a whole new way. It left me in a difficult position. On one hand, I want to remove these movies full of obvious stereotypes from the eyes of my children. On the other hand, I have also grown up watching these movies, and they seem almost a part of childhood to me. For some reason, the thought of not allowing my children to see them makes me feel sad, almost as if they will be missing an important part of growing up. Intellectually, that doesn't make any sense, even to me, but for some reason I feel an emotional attachment to these movies. I am taking my children to disney world next week, and I almost wish I would have read this article after we returned, so that I wouldn't have to look at Disney world differently.
"The messages, or secret education, linked with the security of their homes, underscore the power these texts deliver."
I never thought of it before, but by giving our children these books and movies we are giving our approval to the material and subtexts contained in them, giving them even more power in the eyes of our children. We are telling our children that we approve of the messages they are recieving.
"Many students don't want to believe that they have been manipulated by children's media or advertising."
This is probably true of students everywhere, nobody wants to view their childhood through a new "lens" and see that some of their favorite childhood memories might not be as innocent as they believed. As with other things in this course, ideas that hit "too close to home", make me feel the most uncomfortable. Especially when I begin to see that things that I have tought, said, or given to my children might not have been the best choice, it makes me question my effectiveness and capabilities as a parent, something that is definitely not comfortable.
"I'm not taking my kids to see any Walt Disney movies until they have a black woman playing the leading role."
Reading this article made my look at my children's shelf full of Disney movies in a whole new way. It left me in a difficult position. On one hand, I want to remove these movies full of obvious stereotypes from the eyes of my children. On the other hand, I have also grown up watching these movies, and they seem almost a part of childhood to me. For some reason, the thought of not allowing my children to see them makes me feel sad, almost as if they will be missing an important part of growing up. Intellectually, that doesn't make any sense, even to me, but for some reason I feel an emotional attachment to these movies. I am taking my children to disney world next week, and I almost wish I would have read this article after we returned, so that I wouldn't have to look at Disney world differently.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Talking point 3
Dennis Carlson - Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community
This article was similiar to many of the articles we have read for this course, with many parallels between what the other authors have written. In this article Carlson frequently speaks of a dominant, "normalizing communtiy", which is very similiar to what Delpit called "culture of power". While I am not sure if some of the information in this article is current and applies today, there were a lot of interesting points raised in this piece.
"Normalizing texts systematically exclude and neglect the culture of those outside the norm for the purpose of ratifying or legitimatizing the dominant culture as the only significant culture worth studying"
A common theme that is beginning to emerge to me throughout all of the readings we have done is that the culture of power consistently reinforces it's power, not in outright ways, but by the exclusion of all else. The culture of power does not come outright and say it is preferable to be White, Male, Middle-class, Heterosexual, Christian, able-bodied, etc. because that would be unacceptable today, however it constantly reinforces these unspoken beliefs by exclusion of others.
"I have no comment, I'm not even going to get into this discussion. I'm going to keep my opinion to myself"
When a teacher uses this statement regarding gay issues in her classroom, it shows that gayness, as a cultural minority, still has a long way to go in this country. While I believe any teacher would feel comfortable discussing her personal viewpoints regarding race, gender, etc. the subject of homosexuality is still taboo in many ways, and unfortunately teachers are probably afraid to discuss the issue for fear of repercussions from the administrators, community, or parents.
"up to one-third of all adolescent suicide victims are gay"
This quote really shows how these adolescents are isolated and tortured by their peers because of their sexual orientation. Teenage years can be difficult enough for someone who belongs to the culture of power, but add confusion, humiliation, low self-confidence, and many other issues that are brought to many lgbtq teenagers these days and the poor kids don't stand a chance.
This article was similiar to many of the articles we have read for this course, with many parallels between what the other authors have written. In this article Carlson frequently speaks of a dominant, "normalizing communtiy", which is very similiar to what Delpit called "culture of power". While I am not sure if some of the information in this article is current and applies today, there were a lot of interesting points raised in this piece.
"Normalizing texts systematically exclude and neglect the culture of those outside the norm for the purpose of ratifying or legitimatizing the dominant culture as the only significant culture worth studying"
A common theme that is beginning to emerge to me throughout all of the readings we have done is that the culture of power consistently reinforces it's power, not in outright ways, but by the exclusion of all else. The culture of power does not come outright and say it is preferable to be White, Male, Middle-class, Heterosexual, Christian, able-bodied, etc. because that would be unacceptable today, however it constantly reinforces these unspoken beliefs by exclusion of others.
"I have no comment, I'm not even going to get into this discussion. I'm going to keep my opinion to myself"
When a teacher uses this statement regarding gay issues in her classroom, it shows that gayness, as a cultural minority, still has a long way to go in this country. While I believe any teacher would feel comfortable discussing her personal viewpoints regarding race, gender, etc. the subject of homosexuality is still taboo in many ways, and unfortunately teachers are probably afraid to discuss the issue for fear of repercussions from the administrators, community, or parents.
"up to one-third of all adolescent suicide victims are gay"
This quote really shows how these adolescents are isolated and tortured by their peers because of their sexual orientation. Teenage years can be difficult enough for someone who belongs to the culture of power, but add confusion, humiliation, low self-confidence, and many other issues that are brought to many lgbtq teenagers these days and the poor kids don't stand a chance.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Aria by Richard Rodriguez
This was an interesting piece to read, it was nice to hear from the perspective of the student rather than the educator. Some quotes that stood out to me:
1. What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right- and the obligation- to speak the public language of los gringos.
This quote seems to reinforce what Delpit says about teaching students the codes of the culture of power, even a young child recognizes that to be accepted and allowed to participate in the culture of power, you must learn the rules and codes of power.
2. Following the dramatic Americanization of their children, even my parents grew more publicly confident.
This is another example of how assimiliating to the culture of power can open up a whole new world for someone, a world where they may have previously been denied admission because of their ignorance of the codes of the culture of power.
3. Matching the silence I started hearing in public was a new quiet at home.
I thought it was sad that while the author was equipped with a new language to help him in the culture of power, his first language had to get pushed to the side, and he lost the closeness he once had with his family.
1. What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right- and the obligation- to speak the public language of los gringos.
This quote seems to reinforce what Delpit says about teaching students the codes of the culture of power, even a young child recognizes that to be accepted and allowed to participate in the culture of power, you must learn the rules and codes of power.
2. Following the dramatic Americanization of their children, even my parents grew more publicly confident.
This is another example of how assimiliating to the culture of power can open up a whole new world for someone, a world where they may have previously been denied admission because of their ignorance of the codes of the culture of power.
3. Matching the silence I started hearing in public was a new quiet at home.
I thought it was sad that while the author was equipped with a new language to help him in the culture of power, his first language had to get pushed to the side, and he lost the closeness he once had with his family.
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