China, Columbine, and Consuming Kids

Visit by Lee Feigon

Coming in a few minutes late, I missed the introduction. I found myself surprised to hear such positive comments about Mao Tze Tung. It was interesting to me to hear that he had such a positive impact on the spread of education in rural China. However, I also kept thinking back to the books I have read that detail how horrible it was for the average person in China in 1949, and how many tried desperately to get out of the country. However, what bothered me most was the display of White privilege by this man who seemed only concerned that his children got the education they needed. He knew he had it and could provide it for them, and made sure to do so. Sometimes attitudes come through in more than the words. His attitude made me feel both uneasy and offended. I actually wondered what he was doing talking to doctoral students in social justice. He didn't appear to be an example of it to me.

Columbine

I had never seen the Columbine footage we watched. It is hard to believe that people called for more and more closed circuit monitoring after watching how ineffective the system was at preventing the tragedy. This just seems to be the prevailing attitude of the public: if something seems like it should work but doesn't, do more of it. This applies not only to the current interest in investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in surveillance systems, as Torin Monahan wrote, even through there is never enough money to buy books for or fix the facilities in lower income areas, but also to continuing to follow the dictates of NCLB which has failed to close the achievement gap and has actually made education worse for the students it was supposed to help.



Consuming Children

I remember begging my mom to buy Maypo hot breakfast cereal when I was young because the commercial made it look so delicious and wonderful. She finally bought it, and I didn't like it at all. That was my first introduction to the fact that everything advertised on TV wasn't as wonderful as the advertisers said it was. So now, not only are the kids getting myriads of mixed messages about what to buy and how to look, but they are also getting the conflicting messages about, on the one hand, "being cool" as depicted on TV, and on the other hand, (but not nearly as effectively) doing well in school. Considering that many students are babysat by the TV, it's no wonder they have little interest in doing well in school. It's not necessary. All they need to do to have a happy life is buy the right stuff so they will fit in with the right people. It's too bad the commercials don't remind them that they need a good education to get a good job in order to pay for all the stuff they're supposed to have to make them happy.

In Response to Against Schooling

In Response to Against Schooling: Education and Social Class by Stanley Aronowitz


Today I had the opportunity to address the concept of elite while going over some new spelling words with my 8th grade class and at the same time expand their understanding of critical literacy. The "fill-in-the-blank" exercise in their spelling book designed to strengthen the students' understanding of the words had a sentence much like this: The cream-of-the-crop is called the ________. Elite was the correct answer.

When we were going over the answers I stopped on that example and told them I was troubled by that statement. I said that sometimes we refer to top athletes as elite because they have earned that title through years of hard work and dedication. However, we sometimes refer to the wealthy members of society as the elite. I asked them if having money made anyone better or smarter or more valuable than anyone else as the phrase "cream-of-the-crop" suggests. I asked them if the rich students going to expensive, fancy private schools in the East that are designed to prepare them for universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are actually any smarter or "better" than they are. We had a short but interesting discussion. I'm glad I had a chance to make that point.

I told them that what we just did is called Critical Literacy, and it is very important that they begin to notice misrepresentations such as that in their reading . They need, to become aware of biased, bigoted, and/or racially prejudiced statements and bring them to the attention of others because literature is full of those types of statements. I explained that most of them had been taught that those were "normal" ideas that were just accepted, but that they should challenge them.

Giroux and Freire

Critical Theory and Educational Practice - Giroux

I find myself both in agreement and at odds with particular aspects of the Frankfort school. I agree that simply using a positivist view of life results in a stiflingly narrow epistemology and really is not representative of the fullness of life. I do agree that historical consciousness, especially as related to the funds of knowledge of particular groups of people, is an important aspect of critical thinking. However, I believe critical thinking can become so abstract in its ontology, that it results in negating the ideology of more conservative people. It's important not to delegitimate the paradigm to which people ascribe because to do so will potentially result in their becoming defensive and closed to a transformative dialectic. I personally ascribe to the thought that by first validating the position from which people begin, the resulting dialectic is conducted within an arena of safety through which people can "try on" new ideas at their own pace.

From Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Freire

Emulating Freire is one of life's challenges. I find that one of the greatest challenges in creating dialog with my "resistant" students is finding that place within our contemporary culture that I can use as a stepping stone. Their lives, although similar in ways, are also very different. It's a constant learning experience for me as the teacher.