social justice

What is social justice? Is it justice that the CEO's of big corporations get richer while millions of children worldwide starve to death every year? Is it justice that in the US we build prisons based on how many fourth grade black boys are in special education? Is it justice that many poor inner city youths have to join gangs to feel that they are listened to and cared about? Social justice should be about everyone getting a fair shake not about rich white men getting richer and making the rules while poor minorities get poorer. Social justice should be about all students having the same chance to learn about all societies and cultures not just about what Euro-American upper class males think we should learn about.
This is a link to a Video done by Bono of U2 about the issues surrounding social justice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHlnUBKX18I&feature=related

Stereotypes and risk

Today we discussed the stereotype threat that the A&K readings covered. The stereotype threat is very real. It can either put pressure on a student to preform above the grade to prove the stereotype wrong or will decide not to really try because they have always been told they can't.
I kind of understand how they feel, I was in foster care where everyone thought there was something inherently wrong with me. I had to work twice as hard to prove to the teachers I was not a bad person. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGEUVM6QuMg This is a link to a video that has Dr Steele in it talking about this threat,

Racism today

In class we took the voting Louisiana voting test. If a class of 10 college seniors and the professor can not pass it how were blacks who were not allowed an education supposed to be able to? That was the point at that time. It was not about being able to vote competently it was about keeping blacks from voting period. This is a link that talks about the test and the voting tax. http://specialcollections.tulane.edu/PolyEph/Poll.htm
Another subject for discussion in class was what makes race? There is no one true test of race therefore race is a conundrum. What really makes us who we are has nothing to do with the colour of our skin or our ancestry. Stereotypes and racism need to be eradicated. I liked the way Mr Smith de-constructed race in the wu reading, it made his students really think about prejudiced and stereotyping people. The question of who is qualified to teach about racial issues was also brought up. I am not sure there is a right answer for that question.
In the A&K readings the failure of Brown V Board of Education was discussed. We spoke on how moving students out of poor areas did not help and maybe we should reverse the process and move richer kids into the poorer schools might help. We discussed different ways in which to make school funding and resources more equitable. We did not come up with a solution but we had some good ideas.

different is not always so different

This week in class we discussed racism in schools and different ways to combat it. Starting children learning about and being aware of racism at an early age may help combat the belief that different is bad. I liked the me pocket idea that was brought out in the WU readings. I also got a taste of what students whose first language is not English go through. I tried very hard to understand Kerri's instructions but just couldn't. When I asked her to translate she said no. I felt really stupid. One thing we touched upon but was not a main focus in class that I would like to explore further is Gardener's theory of multiple intelligences. This theory is important for teachers to understand so that they can build curriculum that will help all their students learn. Here are a couple of links that explain the theory and have some links to tests like the one we did in class.
http://www.businessballs.com/howardgardnermultipleintelligences.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/mi3/howardgardner/

In class we talked about tracking and bi-lingual education. Bi lingual education should start in kindergarten and continue throughout all of the student's education. I agree that language learning needs to be both in English and in the language most spoken in the area the student lives in but I also feel that Spanish is the second largest language spoken in the U.S I feel that Spanish is an important language to learn. I feel that all classrooms should be immersion classes. We need to start with our youngest students so that when they are ready for the working word we will already have bi and even tri lingual teachers. Many teachers that are not bi-lingual are no longer at a viable age to try to be fluent in a new language.
I think tracking if used correctly could be a helpful tool. The problem is that we track these students then just leave them there for the rest of their school career. We need better ways to access their learning levels, so that we can give them the help they need to reach their full potential.
Many schools in the biggest poverty areas receive the least amount of money to help their students achieve the same level of education that is needed to compete in the world today. The graph on page 4 of the Skeeter and Grant readings show how unequal things still are for those that are considered the minority in this country.
How student learning is assessed Skeeter and Grant page 20 covers how student learning has become assessed in only a very narrow specific way. I feel that the way we assess students today is wrong an multiple levels. If a student does not do well on tests or even does not feel well on the day of the test he or she will be labeled at a lower learning scale than students who do well on tests and may feel fine that day. here is a clip that states how I and a lot of other parents and educators I have spoken with feel about standardized testing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWv34fQUwd0&feature=PlayList&p=83643E38C4A75F22&index=57

Week 1 racial experiences

The films we saw today brought up many important points. We do not think about how one sided our thinking and learning is. Like I stated in class when I took a Latin American class it shook a lot of my beliefs and the things I thought I knew. Micheal brought up something that I think we all aspire to when he said he does not want to be known as a black man but instead a man. America as a culture needs to get rid of the qualifiers that we use. In the film when Victor blew up, it was understandable, unfortunately though it reinforced the stereotype of the angry,violent black man. Dr Massey once told me that stereotypes are the brains defense against information overload. To stop stereotyping and racializing people, we have to consciously retrain our brains to think in a more individualist way. We need to wait to get to know someone before we judge them and judge them as an individual. As Adichie states in her speech we learn about one dimension or view of the world and do not think to question what other points of view there may be or how someone who sees the same event from a different framework may view it differently than we do. Schools and textbooks have much the same problem they teach from one point of reference and never question how other frames of reference may see the event differently.