Hurray for Lipman!

I personally found the Lipman article extremely interesting, informative, and helpful in tying together some ideas.

On p. 370, she stated, "Although Chicago public schools are subject to surveillance and control by the state, patterns of racial subjegation are clear...These are schools where both students and teachers are disciplined by the routines and frameworks of standardized tests and external supervision."

The following are ideas I formulated as a response to reading this section:

Local neighborhoods have been stripped of their influence to do what’s best for their own, mainly minority Latino and African American, families by the federal regiment of punishments which result in promoting racism and classism. Racism exists because the tests are constructed to examine the acquisition of correct “White” English. If students cannot correctly identify sentences that reflect the correct use of “Standard English” they are assumed to be failing. Tests do not require students to think critically and reflect knowledge constructed from ideas expressed in passages. They simply measure skills in using correct grammar of a language that is in ways a “foreign language” to them. Answers to test questions reflect the constructed understanding of the test writers, from which the minority students are required to choose. If their own constructed meaning falls outside of the realm offered by the test writers, they are considered to be deficient in understanding. Pauline Lipman describes the frustration of Chicago teachers to educate the students from their own neighborhoods in creative, critical ways because of punitive testing policies. Yet one of the teachers comments that she is sure that the administrators of Chicago Public Schools are not putting their own children through this.

Classism is promoted through this testing process because it is differentiated by language acquisition and familiarity. Those whose cultural capital has been established by long-term, multigenerational residence in the United States so that their native culture has been delegitimized or extinguished through the process of assimilation demonstrate the attributes of the dominant Eurocentric power. In conforming to the dominant power, they are perceived as more educated, more cultured, and more desirable candidates for admission to schools and placements in jobs. Those who have not succumbed to the assimilation process are not perceived to have valuable ideas to contribute. They are seen as intellectually deficient. As such, they are not offered the jobs or educational opportunities that would allow them to bridge the economic chasm between classes. Their native cultures are not those valued by the dominant culture, so they are deemed “uncultured” within society (Lipman, 2009, in Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2009).