Teaching Working Class Kids
June 12, 2008
Doug, over at Borderland, writes at the end of the year with his 6th graders about class and social reproduction, about weariness, and about decompressing on his bike. He writes:
As Eduwonkette pointed out back in November, structural issues are problematic for practitioners because we can’t tell kids, “Forget it. The deck is stacked against you. Give up.” But if we simply tell them, “Work hard. Be nice,” we risk losing credibility and setting them up for disappointment when things don’t work out as well as we’d like, even if they did work hard and act nice. However, since we know it’s their best option, that’s what we tell them to do. We teach compliance with a system structured to favor some over others.
How, then, to navigate this chasm that is also called the “achievement gap?” It becomes a fascinating issue in diplomacy, psychology, politics, and strategy, and it holds promise for new areas of teacher inquiry.
Indeed it does.
On Being Curious
June 9, 2008
Mike Rose, one of my favorite writers about the education of first-generation college students (and much more) has written an interesting post on a recent Atlantic Monthly article by a faculty member frustrated by the lack of preparation among many of his freshman composition and humanities courses.
Rose writes:
The professor doesn’t come across as a bad guy, and he frets over the grades he must dole out. But what is so frustrating to people like me, certainly to those who told me about the article, is that the professor seems clueless about alternative ways to engage his students in the humanities and help them become more effective critical readers and writers. Nor does he seem to grant them much experience or intelligence that could be brought to bear on core topics in the humanities.
I share this deep frustration with the “cluelessness” among the well-educated middle class, while poor and working class people shoulder (and internalize) the blame when things go awry in school.
Rose writes that the stance of such educators is one of “shock or dismay or cynicism rather than curiosity and engagement.”
In an culture in which even enlightened, educated, and otherwise liberal educators rationalize away their own professional frustrations by inferring that the students before them are not entitled to even be in their courses, how do we spur our colleagues to the most basic level of curiosity about students from backgrounds very different from their own?
Special Journal Issue on Class in Education
June 5, 2008
The journal Equity and Excellence in Education has published a special issue on Class in Education, guest edited by Felice Yeskel of Class Action.
From the press release
The editors and contributors hope to provide an economic and social context for the necessary discussions on class in education, the definitions of class, an overview of how class defines education and how education defines class, the invisibility of class, and new ways that class should be considered. “Class is the elephant in the classroom, impacting students and teachers alike but little acknowledged and rarely talked about. This special issue makes an important contribution to the ongoing effort to fulfill the promise of equal education for students from all backgrounds,” says Dr. Yeskel.
You can find the full press release here.
And I’d welcome feedback on my article …
