Thinking and Teaching With Purpose

Precious Knowledge is a documentary about the steps one school district took to inspire and teach students about their heritage, and the opposition they faced. It follows the teachers and students of the Mexican American/Raza Studies class at Tucson Magnet High School in Arizona. According to the 2010 US Census, the population of Tucson, Arizona, is 42.6% hispanic, compared to 18% nationally. Given these statistics, it is clear why an Ethnic Studies program would be desirable in this district. Teachers and students recognized a need for these students to see themselves in their texts and curricula, and this was not happening. The three students of focus in the documentary were Crystal, Pricila, and Gilbert. Each student expressed a desire to learn that clashed with the culture of their school. They felt pushed out, like education wasn’t for them even though they recognized the value of it. One teacher in the documentary stated that although ...

Our articles this week focused on two student populations that are often pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline . The case study “Smoking Guns or Smoke & Mirrors?: Schools and the Policing of Latino Boys” by Victor Rios and Mario Galicia outlines the issues faced by Latino students whose actions are scrutinized more closely than those of their white peers. They begin by recounting the story of four high-school students who were wrongfully accused of having a gun at a supermarket. “The white mother that witnessed the boys ‘grabbing whatever they could grab,’ panicked when she saw the boys in a conflict and apparently witnessed seeing a gun. She ran to the school to report the gun sighting to high school administrators. The school immediately reported the incident to local law enforcement and put the school’s students, staff, and administrators on lockdown until the investigation was over” (54). The boys in question had no idea they were even accused of a crime until they ...

Successful communication between people relies on comprehension of language. Whether spoken or signed, written or physical, human beings attempt to communicate with each other in ways that both parties can understand. When it comes to education, language plays a major role in student growth and achievement. As articulated in our three readings, there are a variety of ways that students can interact with language that will benefit them through their schooling years. In her article “How Hawaiian Came Back from the Dead”, Alexandria Neason explores how Hawaiian language immersion schools allow students to “never feel bound to the language of their oppressors. Instead, they could stand tall, unapologetically Hawaiian”.  There are still 18 thousand Native Hawaiians who speak the language, which was banned in 1893 after the monarchy was overthrown. People are not willing to let go of this important part of their heritage. This sentiment echoes those of the other minority st...

In the article “‘I Was Born Here, but My Home, It’s Not here’: Educating for Democratic Citizenship in an Era of Transnational Migration and Global Conflict”, Thea Renda Abu El-Haj discusses the experiences of several Palestinian American students. She describes the dichotomy between being American and being Palestinian, and how this sense of nationalism is complicated by their citizenship. The article is set in the context of Palestinian youth after the events of September 11,  2001. El-Haj begins by setting up her argument, and defining the imagined community: “ This idea of an imagined community references the ways that nations are ideologically constructed and reconstructed through discourse (e.g., media, public debates) and political practices (e.g., state policies, civil rights movements) as the boundaries of belonging are negotiated over time in relation to different groups of people” (288).  Oppressed groups are seen as less than ideal and do not have solid...

In our two articles this week, we consider how the educational system is designed to keep Black students marginalized, even as other minority students exist and yet are ignored.  It is eye-opening to look at the efforts put into rationalizing discrimination against Black people while putting other minorities on a pedestal (or at least not putting in the effort to keep them down). Michael Dumas, author of “Against the Dark: Antiblackness in Education Policy and Discourse”, begins by discussing an issue of  National Geographic  that imagines a future where whites are no longer the majority. The magazine’s article, “ The Changing Face of America ” by Lise Funderburg, depicts people of mixed race, and suggests that in the future it will be difficult to discern a person’s racial and ethnic heritage just by looking at them. Dumas quotes Funderburg, who writes, “‘perhaps we’ll be forced to reconsider existing definitions of race and identity, presumptions about w...

In this week’s articles, our authors explored different facets of being White, and the responsibilities of dealing with Whiteness in regards to privilege and intelligence.    In her article “My Class Didn’t Trump My Race: Using Oppression to Face Privilege”, Robin DiAngelo describes her experience growing up poor and white, and how this impacted her worldview as she moved into academia. She explored some of the “patterns of internalized dominance” (54) that Whites often share, which she discovered while reflecting on her past experiences. One that struck me was the idea that Whites often pretend that race is not important. White people tend to conflate the noticing of race with racism itself, and conversely think that if we don’t see race, racism doesn’t exist. DiAngelo argues that “If we don’t notice racism, we can’t understand or interrupt it in ourselves or others” (56).  This brings about the point that colorblindness, as it is often called, is ac...

Since the early 20 th  century, schooling in the United States has been compulsory, yet in public education, money has always been an issue. Just consider the modern day, when   Trump wants dramatic cuts to children's programs.   These cuts would take funds away from those underprivileged students who need it the most. The early days of education also saw a serious inequality in funding between black and white schools, which President Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to remedy through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  In “The Only Valid Passport From Poverty”, Dana Goldstein writes about how the “ESEA was all about ‘compensatory education’ for the 19 percent of low-income public school students falling behind in poor, largely black and Hispanic schools” (114).  This policy was helpful in integrating schools, and led to student improvement where it was successfully implemented. However, with the closing of schools, black teachers were disproport...