WebLog VII: Education in a Multiculture Society

Article "Education in a Multicutlural Society: Our Father's Greatest Challenge" by Lisa D. Delpit

Lisa Delpit’s article and her five aspects of Multicultural Education relate to Landson-Billings models of Academic Achievement, Cultural Competence, and Sociopolitical Consciousness.

I think how Delpit claims African American children respond better to explicit directive instructions better than implied directive seems to be a big generalization. Maybe she is right but I’m not sure, she did not report any studies done on this topic, only two students’ statements supporting her claim. I just think it’s hard to generalize how a complete race responds to implied or explicit instructions.

Delpit expresses, “Educators must have knowledge of children’s lives outside of school so as to recognize their strengths.” This definitely relates to Ladson-Billing’s statement “Cultural competent teachers take responsibility for learning about students’ culture and community.”
I also like how Delpit used the word “atrophy”. She said student’s intellect will suffer from atrophy if the focus of instruction is on low-level thinking because teachers believe African Americans cannot think abstractly. This relates to some of my work and discussions with teachers. I have heard many teachers tell me “I only teach what they are tested on, any other information will just confuse them.” And other teachers said “These kids can’t read out loud in class, because it will take to long, and they cannot be expected to do any homework because they just won’t.” Like Delpit I think this is terrible because how are you ever going to know what students can do if we/teachers never challenge them.

WebLog VI: Caanan Chaps 3-5

I am currently pre-student teaching at Euclid Central middle school. My classes are about 95% African American, I have some exposure and experience working with a minority race. Ladson-Billings claims that “the current performance of some students of color suggests that education is not a priority for them.” The book is stating that minorities perform lower in school because it is not a priority for them. I agree because lower class minority students have parents with very little education levels. Parents are the first role model to any child. When a child has parents that did not attain a higher education the student does not view education as a priority. My students are Euclid Central seem to be the same way. Most of the students at Euclid Central test poorly on exams and through parent conferences I learned that my students with better grades usually had parents who graduated from college or attended college for a year or two.

Students and all citizens should have cultural competence of their surrounding communities. At Euclid Central the students asked many questions about my culture, being a young Caucasian college student. My students have never been exposed to many people outside their race and they were very shocked that I liked similar music, food, and similar hobbies and extracurricular activities. I think students need to be exposed to all cultures. This will only help eliminate students’ misconceptions about people from different races, religions, socioeconomic classes, and languages.

Sociopolitical consciousness can be learned best through service learning projects, integrated units, or themed projects. As a Social Studies teacher I can find many service learning projects to help students better understand their government. I observed a teacher have her students write to their congressman. The students could write to their congressman about any topic they wanted to learn more about. The students were really interested and learned a lot about the law making process and also how to conduct a formal letter. World history is a very hard subject to grasp for younger students. Students have trouble trying to relate the lifestyle of an ancient Egyptian to their lifestyle in the year 2007. I think projects that reenact ancient lifestyles helps the students connect ideas. Sociopolitical consciousness can be obtained through service learning, integrated units or themed projects. These activities benefit the students because a variety of learning strategies are addressed and it is a hands on project which will grab the students attention.