Blog Post #1: Alan Johnson

  “She also can’t go for a walk alone at night without thinking about her safety a lot more than I would - without planning what to do in case a man approaches her with something other than goodwill.  She has to worry about what a man might think if she smiles in a friendly way and says hello as they pass on the sidewalk, or what he’ll think if she doesn’t.  She has to decide where to park her car for the greatest safety, to remember to have her keys out and ready as she approaches it, and to check the back seat before she gets in.  In other worlds, she has to draw a tight boundary around her life in ways that never occur to me, and her being female is the only reason why.”

When reading this I think of institutionalized oppression, the facts above are just a part of the experience of being a woman.  Females are taught these things from a young age, to protect ourselves, because we believe and are told it is “just the way things are”.  An estimated 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male (more sexualized violent stats can be found here).  There is risk involved by being a woman.  When I was 16 I got mace in my Christmas stocking, I was going to be getting my license a few weeks later and my dad wanted me to be prepared, it was ingrained in me from a young age to be wary - to not dress like “I was asking for it”, don’t park in dark corners, never walk alone, etc.  Did my little brother ever get mace as a gift? No.  But, I never thought much of it, it was just how it is, until I took a gender and women’s studies class in my undergrad, and I got mad about it!  I never thought of myself as a feminist until then.  I wasn’t going to go burn my bra, but why should we have to live in fear and always be on guard, simply because we are born female, we have to control how we present ourselves to the world and be prepared for potentially the worst because men cannot control their impulses?  It was then I began to have a better understanding of privilege and oppression.  It is a privilege to be a man because they don’t have to worry about these kinds of things - and the statistics prove that.  

    I recently listened to a podcast (if interested in listening to this podcast, it can be found here) about a woman who was murdered by her husband in Greenwich, CT a few years ago.  She was white, very wealthy, from a very affluent family and grew on 5th Avenue in New York.  When she went missing, it made national news.  The FBI was immediately called in by local police to assist.  It was eventually found that her estranged husband had killed her, but what struck me is that I listen to these types of true crime podcasts all the time, and so many women go missing and are victimized, murdered, all the time, but it never makes national news, the FBI isn’t called in to assist.  This is clear example of privilege, of how being white and upper class has benefits and makes a difference with how society responds to you.  Privilege didn’t change the outcome for this woman, but her “belonging to a privileged category improved the odds in favor of certain kinds of advantages and preferential treatment”.  This woman was not a famous person, but because she was white, came from extreme wealth and lived in an extremely affluent area of the country, the response to her tragedy was completely different than those of lesser social class and even more so when compared to female victims of color.  “It’s important to be aware that we don’t have to be special or even feel special in order to have access to privilege, because privilege doesn’t derive from who we are or what we are or what we’ve done.  It is a social arrangement that depends on which category we happen to be ordered into by other people and how they treat us as a result.”  

Last year, I watched a special about the crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women in Montana (if interested in watching, information can be found here).  Indigenous women are victimized at much higher rates than non-indigenous women, but this is not making national news.  The series was developed by other indigenous women fighting for recognition, help and acknowledgment for their peers. The differences in the societal responses to situations like these means “we live in a society that attaches privilege to being white and male and heterosexual regardless of your social class.  If I don’t see how that makes me part of the problem for privilege, I won’t see myself as part of the solution, the default is to leave it to blacks and women and Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, lesbians, gay men, and the lower and working classes to do it on their own.  But these groups can’t do it on their own, because they don’t have the power to change entrenched systems of privilege by themselves.  If they could do that, there wouldn't be a problem in the first place.”  This exemplifies Alan Johnson’s argument that we cannot deny privilege exists, privilege that is connected to being white, male, heterosexual, etc, and this cannot be changed, the way society treats and responds to situations like this for those of oppressed and marginalized groups cannot be changed, unless dominant groups are involved in the conversation and the effort to remove these barriers. 

Blog Post #2: The 4 I's of Oppression

 Terms like  “racism”, “ableism”, “ageism”, “sexism” reference prejudice against social groups, and we can all think of examples of this, but something that I thought was really interesting about this piece and Luna Malbroux’s video, The 4 I’s of Oppression, is that it explains HOW these ideologies are “able to perpetuate in society and over time”, how these pillars are interrelated to work as a system and be systemic injustices.  “Oppression manifests itself in four overlapping and interdependent ways; individually as internalized oppression; socially as interpersonal oppression; it is reinforced through institutional oppression; and perpetuates across time and space as ideological oppression”.  Malboux explains (in her explanation, she used racism as the example of prejudice) these I’s together to create a system.  

 

When looking for more information and to try to deepen my understanding of it, I came across this website, linked here, which included the graphic below.  For me, these two graphics gave me a more in-depth understanding to kind of “put it all together”. Malbroux asks viewers to think about how the “I’s”  intersect with each other, the image below, the “Interlocking 4-I Model”, illustrates how interpersonal, institutional and ideological all can create internalized oppression, “the way individuals absorb belief systems that contribute to feelings of false supremacy or false deficiency within themselves in relation to others”.     

I can think of an example of this theory with the welfare system and low-income familes.   Ideologically those in politics/leadership roles, typically wealthy and white, the “socially dominant group” have a value system that the government should help those fortunate, minority groups, the poor - which sounds altruistic and great in theory.  It seems like “common sense”.  The interpersonal component to this is that when that group addresses, or talks about the minority group, the poor, the working class, it is a “we are here to help you”, sure, it may seem kind, but it also perpetuates the idea, the feeling that they are superior and need to help those “beneath” them.  My paternal grandmother was a single mom with four children, my grandfather was not involved and my father grew up in poverty.  His family received food stamps, government assistance and he still talks about the “government cheese”.  Due to his family’s financial situation he was involved in a summer work program “for poor kids” as he puts it, working at his high school cleaning, these are the examples of the institution - sure, these things were in place to help his family, but they separated him and other students like him from the others - like Malbroux states in the video, it manifested and reinforced the ideology that low-income, broken families were different, less than.  My dad always felt like he was treated differently because of it, he was “the poor kid”, the kid without a dad, a much less common thing in those days, where he grew up.  He experienced interpersonal oppression because they were low-income, because he did not have a father around, and therefore internalized those feelings and the belief system that he was less than, resulting in a “strong drive to over-achieve in order to feel valued”.    

Blog Post #3: "Colorblindness is the New Racism"

     “The White person has an everyday option not to think of herself in racial terms at all.  A key aspect of this unacknowledged privilege to avoid thinking of oneself as having a race is that whiteness operates as the normative foundation and reference for most discussions about race, race discrimination, and denial of equality”.  By not acknowledging one’s race, we are not recognizing an important part of someone's story.  I’ll admit, prior to reading this, the concept of “colorblindness” didn’t seem problematic to me, I thought it was being fair and unbiased to not be looking at another's race. I didn’t think that one wanted to be identified by their race, because in my mind, I am not, so why would they?  But I am not identified by my race only because white is the “normative”, the “default assumption”, a privilege afforded to me, that allows me to not have to think in racial terms..“Whites often aspire to colorblindness, believing that colorblindness promotes equality.  Most seek to emphasize that they are not prejudiced and hold egalitarian principles while still enjoying a status quo that advantages them relative to people of color.”   However, race is in fact a hugely important part of one’s identity, and acknowledging that is not racist, “whites fear creating the impression that they are ‘insensitive or prejudiced’.  It would be more helpful for everyone to notice the everyday presence of racial privilege and to think about how to combat it”, because “the failure to acknowledge racial reality in the United States reinforces and solidifies existing racial inequality and white privilege.”  

    Armstrong & Wildman promote the idea that it is okay to see race, to have what they term “color insight”, which “admits that most of us do see race and underlines the need to understand what racial awareness might mean” and says “ do not be afraid; notice your race and the race of others around you; racism and privilege still do affect peoples’ lives; learn more about the racial dynamic”.  Below is a video, by MTV “Decoded”, that breaks down how “colorblindness” is not the solution to end racism, and how it actually perpetuates systems of privilege and oppression, even if it is not overtly racist or unkind.  An example of how colorblindness perpetuates injustice and reinforces systems of privilege, racism and oppression (and also something I found really interesting while reading)  is that “U.S. jurisprudence and politics currently valorize colorblindness and race neutrality.”  “Colorblindness” was a term introduced to U.S. courts in the late 19th century in Plessy v. Ferguson as a “constitutional principle that would prohibit legally mandated segregation in public transportation”.  At that time, the Supreme Court rejected this concept and ruled in favor of Whites by allowing segregation.  “Colorblindness” only became an accepted and approved concept when “government programs that recognized race became perceived as disadvantaging white people”.    Allen Johnson wrote that “all of us are part of the problem.  There is no way to avoid that as long as we live in the world.  But we could also make ourselves part of the solution if we only knew how”.  Having color insight helps us to acknowledge and gain awareness of others' lived experiences in the, and that knowledge is power to facilitate change, and become a part of that solution.

Blog Post #9: Literacy with an Attitude

 

Reading Finn’s Literacy with an Attitude was like getting a cold bucket of water thrown on my head.  It was a startling reality because it’s true - and I know it’s true because I have lived it.  I am an embodiment of this.  I studied nursing, a field that requires study, like Finn put it, where we are “rewarded for knowing the answers, for knowing where to find answers, for knowing which form, regulation, technique or procedure is correct.”  I maintained the status quo, I grew up middle class, I stayed middle class.  Like the teachers of Finn’s middle class school, I attended state school, I live and work in the community in which I grew up.  I thought I made the conscious choice to do so, but if you think about it, our education may have groomed us to stay where we are.  My parents were products of the same system. 

 

If you asked me about my school and where I grew up, I would have said in a town where it is a mix of working and middle class.  My school certainly had those students who were resistant, defiant, the ones who seemed like they didn’t care, and then you had others, like myself, that were doing the work because, as my dad would put it, when I would stress about school, “it is a means to an end”, follow the rules, get it done, so we can get into college to get jobs to support ourselves.  My family, myself, my peers, are products of this system.  When reading about education in “middle-class” schools, I realized my education was just like this.  “The teachers in the middle-class school varied from strict to somewhat easygoing, but for all of them, decisions were made on the basis of rules and regulations that were known to the students.  Teachers always honored class dismissal bells.  There was little excitement in the school work, and assignments did not seem to take into account the student’s interests or feelings, but the children seemed to believe that there were rewards: good grades lead to college and a good job.”  As a child, and teenager, I had the assumption that if I worked hard enough, I could be whatever I wanted, but I always knew I wanted to do some sort of public service, a teacher, or a nurse, like the family tradition.  But I truly thought if I wanted more, this is America, and it was possible. “The dominant theme in the middle-class school was possibility.  There was widespread anxiety about tests and grades but there was a pervasive belief that hard work would pay off.  These students viewed knowledge as a valuable possession that can be traded for good grades, a good college education, and a good job.” When I think about what most of my classmates are doing now, most of us went to our state schools, like the teachers in the middle class school referenced by Finn, and work in the industries associated with the middle class, which, as Finn describes, are “ paper work, technical work, sales and social services”.  What this text describes, what Finn argues, is that your social class, the social class of your school and education, determines your social mobility.  As the title says, students get “an education appropriate to their station”.  “The working class were learning to follow directions and do mechanical, low-paying work in ways sanctioned by their community.  The middle-class children were learning to follow orders and do the mental work that keeps society producing and running smoothly.  They were learning that if they cooperated they would have the rewards that well-paid, middle-class work makes possible outside the workplace.  The affluent professional children were learning to create products and art, “symbolic capital,” and at the same time they were learning to find rewards in work itself and to negotiate from a power position with those (the executive elite) who make the final decisions on how real capital is allocated.  The executive elite children?  They were learning to be masters of the universe.”  So I think this begs the question, can the American dream truly be fulfilled?  A classist system is a system of oppression, and while we may not think that truly exists in American because in America, people theoretically have the ability have upward mobility, but the educational system, as it stands is institutional oppression - oppressing students from upward social mobility by preparing and teaching them “to stay in their lane”.

Blog Post #6: "Aria" & "Teaching Multilingual Children" (2nd Attempt)

My first post was accidentally deleted, so here is the 2nd version:

    After reading Aria, it seems to me that Richard Rodriguez promotes the necessity of an essentially immersive language experience.  Once English became the primary language at home, at the behest of his teachers, his English understanding and speaking abilities quickly and vastly improved, not only did it do this, it also gave him the ability to assimilate into American society, to not feel like an outsider.   However, this was at the expense of his “private individuality”, his home life and the special relationship he shared with his parents, his family, because to him, he associated speaking Spanish as a comfort of home, safety, familiarity.  When his English improved, and he was able to participate in the outside world, his classroom, American society, he truly began to feel like an American citizen, a feeling he had not had before due to his inability to speak the language.  However, the “special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then.  Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense, feeling of being at home; rare was the experience of feeling myself individualized by family intimates.  We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed.  No longer so close, no longer bound tight by the please and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.  Neither my older brother nor sister rushed home after school anymore.  Nor did I.”  To Rodriguez, the loss of individuality is a necessary evil that must happen, because the “value and necessity of assimilation” is worth it.  The ability to speak English gave him the ability to assimilate into public society, which therefore enabled him to achieve public individuality.  “Without question it would have pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered the classroom,  I would have felt much less afraid.  I would have trusted them and responded with ease.  But I would have delayed - for how long postponed?-having to learn the language of public society.  I would have evaded - and for how long could I have afforded to delay? - learning the great lesson of school, that I had a public identity”.  

    In Teaching Multilingual Children, Collier stresses the importance of allowing students to continue to use their home language while also teaching them English, and also teaching them academic content in their home language, because “academic language does not come to kids automatically just because they are in a dominant English-speaking locale.  Academic language is context-reduced and intellectually more demanding.  Context-reduced communication relies heavily on linguistic cues alone.  It involves abstract thinking.  It is what we think of when we speak about academic instruction at secondary and adult levels.  When language-minority students work academically only in the second language, it seems to take them from five to seven years to master commonly accepted age-grade norms in context-reduced aspects of English proficiency.  Furthermore, academic skills developed in the first language tend to automatically transfer to the second language.” Per Collier, it is often assumed that if someone can converse in English, then they can learn in English and be equal academically to their peers whose primary language is English.  “English-language learners who can chat comfortably in English do not automatically develop the academic language skills needed to compete.”  In this text, “seven guidelines are offered to better understand how teaching English to second-language learners can become an enriching experience while appreciating students’ different languages and life situations”.  The acceptance of code-switching, the alternate use of two languages, is encouraged by Collier, as it “is a display of the integrated and sophisticated use of both languages” and “might produce better academic results than a constant preoccupation with maintaining a single language”.     

I can understand the arguments of both authors, the pros and cons of each.  We know language immersion works to learn how to speak and understand a language - immersion programs are offered all the time to those seeking to learn a language.  Rodriguez, like Delpit, realizes the importance of learning the language of society, as it is part of learning the “culture of power”, which helps learners to succeed within that society and culture.  Emotions aside, if one wants to be successful in America, knowing English is going to help, and complete immersion will work - but at what cost?  For Richard Rodriguez, it came at the expense of his relationship with his parents, as the more he and his siblings learned English, the wider the divide between them and their parents became, as they seemingly lost touch of their own culture.  Collier counters this, providing a more inclusive option that embraces learning English while not diminishing home language and culture.  She stresses the importance of embracing home languages while also teaching English, and explaining how providing academic education in English while simultaneously teaching the language itself is a disservice, and extremely difficult for students.  She encourages educators to allow students to use their own language in the classroom, and to teach academics in their initial language, as it is easier for students to transfer that information to English.  This of course sounds ideal, but is it always possible?  When schools have a student population that speaks various languages, most probably don’t have the resources to be able to do this.

Blog Post #10: Eliminating Ableism in Education, Thomas Hehir

What is “ableism”? To help me get a better and complete understanding of what I was reading, I decided to read more about the term “ableism” before I delved into the text.  I found a great definition and explanation on the Center for Disability Rights website, which I have linked here: “Ableism is a set of beliefs or practices that devalue and discriminate against people with physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities and often rests on the assumption that disabled people need to be ‘fixed’ in one form or the other” (Leah Smith).   

3 Talking Points:

1.  “Applied to schooling and child development, ableist preferences become particularly apparent.  From an ableist perspective, the devaluation of disability results in societal attitudes that uncritically assert that it is better for a child to walk than roll, speak than sign, read print than read Braille, spell independently than use a spell-check, and hang out with nondisabled kids as opposed to other disabled kids, etc.  In short, in the eyes of many educators and society, it is preferable for disabled students to do things in the same manner as non-disabled kids.”

Disabilities don’t have to be seen as a negative, or as something to work against, it is actually a trait, like eye color, it is a feature that helps to make a person uniquely themselves.  Merriam-Webster defines “disability” as a physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person's ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typical daily activities and interactions.  For many people with disabilities, they are able to accomplish and do many “typical” and “normal” things, they just have a different way of doing so that works for them.  It is a social construct that gives “disabilities” a negative connotation.  One does not usually realize that they way they are, their abilities or how they do things are negative until society tells them it is, or creates situations in which their ability is a disability.  For example, if a student is dyslexic, and is only given reading assignments to learn content, they are likely going to struggle and their ability to learn will suffer, therefore creating a disability.  If taking the focus off of reading and finding another way that works for them to learn the content, their “disability” is not really an issue.  Different people have different ways of doing all kinds of things, to get to the same end.  In education we want to provide students with an education that will help them to lead full, rich lives and give them the ability to participate in society.  Not everyone gets to that end in the same way.  

1.  “Though research strongly indicates that students with LD [learning disabilities] need more intensive services in reading than their nondisabled peers and that they should receive this assistance throughout their schooling, focusing their special education program solely on learning to read is not appropriate.  For students with LD, this reflects the ableist assumption that special education’s role should be to change disabilities even if that is not fully possible.”

My husband, as a child, was “diagnosed” with learning disabilities.  He struggled with reading and required special education classes to help with this.  I didn’t know him as a child, but twenty-something years later, he still talks about how painful it was for him to be in those classes, and how difficult it was for him to get through the days at school.  His mom has reminisced with me about countless mornings of arguing to go to school and afternoons as a young child he would either come home so upset, crying and frustrated from the school day or take a long nap, mentally exhausted from school.  His dad would spend hours every night after dinner trying to help him with homework.  He hated school with a passion, he couldn’t enjoy learning because the days were spent trying to bring him to “standard”, to get him to be able to read and write and spell - things that just went against his grain. As Hehir states, “school time spent devoted to activities associated with changing disability may take away from the time needed to learn academic material”. However, if you gave my husband an engine he could take it apart and put it back together again with ease, he could build things and seemingly figure out anything, he aced geometry because “it just made sense”.  After reading this piece by Hehir, I can’t help but look at his experience in a whole new light, and if anything, feel angry for him.  I see how smart he is, but he will forever carry that negative thought about himself, that he was “dumb” in school because so much time was spent focusing on his learning disability, rather than, as Hehir puts it, encouraging “disabled students to develop and use skills and modes of expression that are most effective and efficient for them”.  Hehir talks about focusing on getting the content to students, instead of simply worrying about bringing their reading/writing/spelling etc, up to “standard” so that they can then learn the content, which in turn increases success.  “Special education should not mean a different curriculum, but rather the vehicle by which students with disabilities access the curriculum and the means by which the unique needs that arise out of the child’s disability are addressed”. 

2.  “Using the analogy of architecture, we often attempt to retrofit the child with inappropriate interventions after they have failed in school, rather than design the instructional program from the beginning to allow for access and success.  And, as is the case with architecture, the failure to design universally is inefficient and ineffective”.

I believe Hehir is referencing here to take a proactive rather than reactive approach when teaching.  As educators, we should assume that there will be different abilities and types of learners, and a one-size fits all approach is simply not best practice in education.  The goal should be to get students the content, not try to mold how they learn and THEN teach.  That is frustrating for the educator and a disservice to the students.  My background is in medicine, and every patient’s medical needs and physical health is different.  The route for patients to get to optimal health looks different for everyone, as every patient has different backgrounds, medical history, conditions and thus every patient has a different care plan.  Patients cannot all be treated the same, and neither should students.  As health care providers, we prepare for all different types of patients requiring care.  At a hospital for example, there are various tools and supplies available for all types of medical conditions and abilities.  A patient may not be able to walk, or eat or have the ability to use the bathroom, however staff are prepared to care for them, they do not assume that every patient will require the same level of care.  One could say that hospitals are “universally designed” with the assumption that patients of various abilities will be cared for, and education should be as well.  Educators should be prepared and be provided with the tools and taught skills to teach various types of learners.   

Argument Statement: Hehir argues that “ableist assumptions in the education of children with disabilities not only reinforces prevailing prejudices against disability but may very well contribute to low levels of educational attainment of education and employment”. He offers six components to address and promote change to ableist attitudes and actions within education: including disability as part of schools’ overall diversity efforts; encourage disabled students to develop and use skills and modes of expression that are most effective and efficient for them; special education should be specialized; move away from the current obsession with placement toward an obsession with results, promote high standards, not high stakes; employ concepts of universal design to schooling.

Connections: While reading this text, I thought about our discussions and other texts, especially Alan Johnson, about privilege, power and oppression. Ableist attitudes promote systems of power. If a disability is treated as something to be ashamed of, as something to work through, or against, it gives privilege, power and advantage to those who are not disabled, thus putting those with disabilities at a disadvantage, creating a system of oppression.

Teach Out Presentation Link

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dxSPl0hXpmlHfgu1Hj7iZaT--wHFH2U7z2POpY_N4v8/edit?usp=sharing