Education is Politics

Shor’s article, Education is Politics, raises multiple questions and viewpoints about education through three quotes. The first quote that stood out to me was, “People are naturally curious. They are born learners. Education can either develop or stille their inclination to ask why and to learn”. This is a powerful quote because I have seen this happen in my own education experience. One teacher or one curriculum or one class can affect how someone views themselves, the world, a subject etc. If the teacher/curriculum/class is interesting or empowers a student enough, it can push them to pursue something they thought they wouldn’t before. The same can be said for the opposite circumstances. One bad experience in a class that someone was looking forward to can affect their thinking. They can question whether this path is right for them or if they really want to put themselves in a situation to get an outcome that seems to be at the end of a long, dark tunnel. I myself have questioned myself on my career path or decisions based on bad experiences. ‘Is it really worth it? Will I be happy doing this for the rest of my life?’. Questions like this can haunt you and its only positive experiences that can bring you back on track.

        The second quote that stood out to me was “Student participation and positive emotions are influenced by the teacher’s commitment to both”. If a teacher is not committed to getting students involved in their own education and make it a positive experience, it can push them in the wrong direction, away from education. It can also make them view themselves in a negative light, where they think they aren’t worth it or that they simply can’t do anything because they aren’t smart enough to do it. Students need encouragement to succeed, do their best and even go above and beyond what is expected of them.

          The last quote that stood out to me was, “Changing power relations in the classroom through problem-posing reduces the need for students to resist learning. More students can embrace education without fear of boredom or a cultural invasion by an elite, remote curriculum.” I love this quote because it connects back to a student’s love of learning. If you allow a student to figure out a problem on their own, using their own creative avenues, they are more encouraged to think outside the box and not conform to rules or regulations that can make everything uniform. It’s important, especially in elementary school, for a student to feel like they can express themselves and create their own individualities. Utopian societies have their ups, but the can get boring if everyone is exactly the same. So it’s a teacher’s job, and a parent’s as well, to encourage students to think outside the box and embrace new ideas never thought of before.

     This website is actually dedicated to empowering education, following the ideas that Shor has come up with. http://empoweringeducation.org/.

Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

      Kliewer’s article, Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome, really got me thinking about how educators, and society in general, truly treat individuals with Down Syndrome and three specific quotes stood out to me.

      The first quote that stood out is, “We will not recognize the diverse contributions of those who wear obscuring labels until we move our focus from the disability and look for the complexity and individuality we take for granted in ourselves. Only getting to know a person in all his or her multifaceted individuality can cause the "huge" disability [spread] to magically shrink and assume its real proportion-only one small facet of a person.” This stood out to me because it points out a flaw that many people have; they cannot or will not, look past a person’s disability to see their true potential. I have a friend who has a wheelchair and he has to work extra hard to prove to people that he can do something just a well as someone who does not have a disability. He has had a wheelchair for the majority of his life so he has grown accustomed to what he can and cannot handle and he often tells me that he wishes he could prove that to others. He’s double majoring, works in a hospital and is involved in multiple organizations both on and off campus. And yet he still has to wait for people to see past the wheelchair before they see all of his accomplishments.

       The second quote that stood out to me gave me a goal to strive for as a teacher myself in the future. “Shayne, however, did not see Isaac, or any of her students, as defective. In her classroom, which contained 6 students clinically identified as disabled (3 with Down syndrome, including Isaac) and 10 students considered nondisabled...”

This specific quote shows how a teacher should treat students with and without disabilities. All students should be treated as equal, and by doing so a teacher will be setting an example of how they should treat each other equally. It’s also important to remember that all students learn differently so it’s important that the teacher is flexible in her teaching.

        The last quote that stood out to me connects to the first quote I picked; “Now we know that people with disabilities can learn and have a full, rich life. The challenge is to erase negative attitudes about people with developmental disabilities, get rid of the stereotypes and break the barriers for people with disabilities.” Like I mentioned earlier, it’s important to be able to look past a person’s disability and see them for their accomplishments as a person.

        This video is incredibly inspirational and highlights how people why people should be treated the same, disability or not (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M--xOyGUX4). This video also does the same (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cA3t1HW1Ow).

          The National Down Syndrome Congress (http://www.NDSCcenter.org/) offers more information on Down Syndrome and offers ways in which you can help.

Literacy with an Attitude

    Patrick J. Finn, the author of “Literacy with an Attitude”, argues that our nation has developed two different types of education, an empowering education that leads to positions of power and authority through powerful literacy, and a domesticating education that leads to a fundamental literacy, which leads to a more productive and dependable individual. Finn claims his argument as a matter of justice. According to him, powerful literacy is the education children deserve because it fosters critical thinking about complex ideas and prepares young people to consider multiple perspectives and their own interests as they make life decisions. He also claims that one’s social class affects the aims and means of education. He found that poor, working-class students received functional literacy that taught compliance, while students from privileged backgrounds were taught powerful literacy that promoted independence and leadership.

     Finn requires his readers to reconsider the purpose of school in a democratic society by linking the aims and purposes of education with empowering and critical literacy, literacy with an attitude. While he provides examples of teachers and programs in public schools that engage in empowering and critical literacy, he emphasizes that the responsibility is on each of us to contribute to the promise and future of our public schools. We can do this by becoming teachers who empower their students through powerful literacy, by being parents and concerned citizens who engage with one another and with educators about the aims and purposes of public schools in a democratic society. His article ultimately asks us, “What is the society we envision for our children?” 

This link gives a short summary of the book and offers information about some of his other books. (http://literacywithanattitude.com/)

Becoming Something Different

    In “Becoming Something Different” by Fairbanks, Crooks and Ariail, readers are introduced to Esme Martinez and her journey through education with her peers.

     Upon reading this article, I immediately see connections between the Rodriquez article and the Kozol article. In terms of Rodriquez, Martinez is developing her English language proficiency all through middle school. She finds herself getting frustrated when she is not able to display her feelings and ideas on certain matters but she was grateful for any help she received. At home, Spanish is the dominant language, but that doesn’t stop her English illiterate parents from trying to help her. Throughout all these, Martinez saw herself as increasingly American while her father enforced certain rules that wore among the traditional Mexican practices and beliefs. This connects to Rodriquez because although she comes from a strong Mexican background, her education and her school environment is drawing her more into an American lifestyle, and not so much Mexican. She doesn’t even recognize herself as Mexican, instead she calls herself American. She speaks very little Spanish outside of home and attributes her improving grades to her improving grades to her improving in English proficiency.

      This overall connects to the Bozol article and the impact of institutions on individuals. Esme goes to a school that is teaching her how to speak, read and write in English, which has affected the way in which she views herself and the way she wants to live her life. She only considers herself a good student because of her difficulty with English, but when that improves, so do her grades. She believes that by improving her English proficiency, she is getting smarter, which better impacts her life both in and outside of school. The institution of ESL classes affects Martinez and the direction in which her life is going. A teacher at the same high school Martinez attends describes the ESL program  and its impact on the school’s students at http://larryferlazzo.com/Positiveimpact.html.  

Between Barack and a Hard Place

   After viewing “Between Barack and a Hard Place”, I couldn’t help but think about some of the things the speaker brought up and its relation to the readings.

    For example, Johnson’s article basically states that those who have white privilege are blinded to the fact that they have white privilege and they may never realize it. It took Tom Wise, the speaker, years after college to look back and realize that for the first 7 or 8 years of his schooling, he was treated differently than his friends and peers of other races.

   He goes on to tell an anecdote of a teacher who treated him differently because of his association with black children. This teacher disliked the two races mixing in terms of friendship and Wise was one of those kids that went against her beliefs. This connects to the Kozol reading and its main idea of the impact of institutions on individuals. The teacher was the older generation who had been teaching for a long time, back when segregation was still prominent in society. The institution of segregation left lasting impacts on society that still existed in 1979, when Wise was in fifth grade. Although segregation was long gone by this point legally, the institution still existed and affected not only children of color, but also those that were their friends. But at the same time, as Wise points out, once his teacher leaves, those institutions still exist, they just might not be as obvious. They still exist today, in which different institutions affect people differently.

    The last reading that I will point out in connection to Wise is Delpit’s ‘Silenced Dialogue’. Wise claims that if you have a white sounding last name on your job application, even if you aren’t white, you have a 50% better chance at getting called back for an interview than someone with a black sounding name, even if the qualifications are the same. As Wise points out, “Being suspected of blackness gives you a leg down while being suspected of whiteness gives you a leg up.” People of color are even quoted higher interest rates, even though their credit history is functionally the same. Larry Elder talks about race and its impact on finances in his article http://www.creators.com/opinion/larry-elder/blacks-banks-and-institutional-racism.html as well as CNN Money http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/09/real_estate/zillow-mortgage-white-black/index.html. This connects to Delpit because people of color are ultimately being silenced to a certain degree because of the color of their skin. The difference in your chance of getting a job interview should be based off of your qualifications, not your skin tone, and yet it happens. The same with interest rates, mortgages, loans etc. Even back when Wise was in school, he talks about how he wasn’t a very smart student, and yet he remained in the upper level classes and never moved down while the kids of other races, who were better students, always remained in the lower level classes and never moved up. The fact that race gets in the way of a person’s education and lively hood isn’t right, and yet it continues to happen because people are slow to change and are slow to realize what is really going on in our society today. Racism is like smoke and mirrors, we can easily be blinded from it and led to believe that it no longer exists. 

Sex Trafficking

     This past Thursday, I attended a seminar on Sex Trafficking and Children, hosted by Carol Simensky. She spoke about sex trafficking on an international level and how its definition is different than what people think it is. By law, it is the recruitment, harboring, transportation and holding of anyone or someone under the age of 18.

    One individual Simensky introduced us to was a woman she called Sara. She was forced to be a servant in a family friend’s household after she was brought to the U.S believing she could have a better life. She was isolated from the outside world and abused for four years before running away. She was 13 when this all began.

    Simensky claims that these types of things occur because people want to get to a better place, often economically better, which leads them to agree to things that they normally wouldn’t agree to. They are told they will be able to send money back home and get their family out of poverty, and any family that says ‘no’ are seen as a bad family for turning the offer down. If accepted, people/children will find themselves in an unknown place, threatened, not knowing where they are or anybody, or even the language. This occurs around the globe and does not have to cross borders.                                                       

           

     Simensky belongs to Ecpat USA, an organization dedicated to helping children, who are 18 and under, who were once victims of sex trafficking. Originally based in Thailand, Ecpat is currently in 75 countries, fighting to protect basic human rights.

     The presentation brought up several points that connect to readings we have discussed over the last few weeks. S.C.W.A.M.P, Johnson and McIntosh can all be grouped together under the 1^st connection. All three articles discuss white privilege, and how a person’s background, race, class etc. affects how they are treated. Sex trafficking you can say, is the lack of white privilege. It does not discriminate against gender, age, ethnicity, income or sexual orientation. Instead those involved, the pimps, look for the most vulnerable kids; abused, foster kids, low income etc. This will increase the chance to convince them to join their ranks in hope of a better life. In an interview a Pimp admits, in reference to a former girl, “she was raped so many times, we might as well pay her for it”. Pimps also focus on recruiting attractive people base on physique, youth and beauty to attract more clients and business. These pimps will play the part that the victims need, whether that is a father figure, first lover, or even just a friend. According to a survivor, they would be given something that they never had before, “like a dream come true”.

     The second connection I see is from Delpit’s article, Silenced Dialogue. In Delpit’s article, people, usually women are silenced because there is not much expected of them. Sex traffic victims, especially the women, are silenced by their pimps and their circumstances. They are cut off from their family and friends, silenced from their old life, and controlled by their pimp. A survivor, Katherine Owens, tells her story and talks about how pimps would treat girls so well that the girls would feel like the pimps were entitled to their services. Once the victims realized they were being used, regardless of the emotional attachment to them, the pimps would do whatever it took to keep the girls under their control. When Owens tried to leave, she not only had to escape her pimp, but also his dog that was set to attack her. The pimps would control their victims so much that they would take away their rights to make their own decisions and to control their own actions. They were even expected to turn all their earnings over to the pimps, taking away any financial freedom they might have had.

     The third connection I see between the readings and sex trafficking is through Kozol’s article and the impact of institutions on individuals. Until recently, most states allowed children as young as 10 to be arrested for prostitution. It is universally derived for these children to be considered bad and there is confusion if the child is entitled to protection or to keep them criminalized. By criminalizing them, it just confirms what the pimp said about them, (‘you’re a bad kid, no one else cares about you but me etc.). Sara, who I mentioned earlier, was warned to stay away from the police because they wouldn’t care about her and would send her back home, which led to her avoiding them when she ran away. A judge claimed there is no effective way to respond to these situations in a five-minute hearing, so it’s easy to send them to a detention center. Although it gets them off the streets for a while, it is only an illusion of a solution. The institution of law enforcement has either terrified victims or made it so they are treated no better than how the pimps treat them. Only 19 states has, as of recently, passed state laws to help trafficking victims.

      If you would need to report any knowledge of sex trafficking, call 888-3737-88. If you want to learn more about the issue or learn how to help, visit www.ecpatusa.com, www.witness.org, or www.ngocstip.com. 

In Service of What?

 

 

   In the Service of What?, readers learn about service-learning, schools and their relationship to one another. This link gives more background on Service Learning and how one can impact their community http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/svclearn.pdf. When reading, three quotes stood out to me. The first quote is from Mr. Johnson, a teacher who gave his 12^th graders a service-learning project. He claimed, “By finding and engaging in community service activities…students would interact with those less fortunate than themselves and would experience the excitement and joy of learning while using community as a classroom”. I believe very strongly in this quote because I think the best means of education is firsthand experience. Sure you can donate money or items that those who are less fortunate need, but you won’t understand what they are going through unless you see it for yourself. By physically going out into the world and actually working with others, you can see the world through their eyes. This I feel makes your emotions towards them more real, more understanding, which can compel you to continue helping others.

       The second quote that stood out to me was, “much of the current discussion regarding service learning emphasizes charity, not change”. This quote really makes me think about how students are going about helping others. There is absolutely nothing wrong with volunteering, I encourage it and enjoy doing it myself. But is volunteering the best way to help others? Would it have more impact on others if we came up with actual plans and followed through with said plans to help others? For example, Habitat for Humanity is known for helping those in our community that are homeless and one method to help is by building homes for them. They not only have volunteers to help but they also have plans on how to help them. In this article, one classroom comes up with the planning process to help others but they don’t do any physical work towards helping. I think planning is only part of it, the same with physically volunteering. If you keep volunteering with no plan, where are you going with this volunteer work? What’s the goal of said volunteering?

       The last quote that piqued my interest was that “educators may miss important opportunities if they disconnect the act of service from a critical examination of the setting in which it occurs”. I like this quote because if one focuses so much on the setting, one can lose focus on why they are examining the setting. Examinations of the setting will help with the cause because you can understand the situation more. But if that’s all you focus on, you can forget why you are helping in the first place. You start thinking more with your head and not as much with your heart. Service Learning appeals to a person’s emotions and its not the same if you are emotionally disconnected from it.

     If you are interested in learning more about Habitat for Humanity, I highly encourage you to visit their website! http://www.habitat.org/