The documentary "Precious Knowledge," by Ari Palos and Eren Isabel McGinnis, focuses on a small group of Mexican-American students and treachers in the Tuscon Public School District of Arizona and the curriculum of the ethnic studies program (Raza) they are enrolled in, and attempts by white lawmakers to eliminate the program.
The most recent US Census (2010) lists the Hispanic population of Tuscon Arizona at just over 42%, almost three times the national average. Yet according to the documentary, the traditional high school curriculum did not provide more inclusive educational opportunities. And similar to what we read in Rios and Galicia Smoking guns or smoke & mirrors? (2013), Mexican-American students in Tuscon High School felt as if they were being pushed out of school, even though they wanted to be there and knew how important it was to finish their education. In fact, one teacher stated that close to half of all Hispanic students had dropped out of school. To reach the Mexican-American students in their school district, Tuscon High School established an ethnic studies program with typical courses such as writing, history, and math, using concepts and examples steeped in the traditional ethnic culture of Mexico. Enrollment in the Raza program proved to be a gamechanger for the students involved. Participants felt connected to and proud of their heritage, and empowered to take control of their education. Students in the documentary can be heard making statements such statements as, "I hate when I can't be here," and "I want to go to school now!" Recalling the writings of Grace Boggs, a community-centered vision inspired the educators and administrators to make critical changes in favor of the student population. These changes offered tangible evidence of success, too. Test scores of students enrolled in Raza courses were higher than students not enrolled, additionally ethnic studies studies enjoyed a 93% graduation rate. Unfortunately, not everyone in Arizona supported the Raza program, most notably Superintendent of Schools Tom Horne, and Senator John Huppenthal, both older, white men of professional status. Horne's arguments were fringe-based racial fears that hinged on the concept of "ReConquista," in which Mexicans would rise up and re-conquer the land that had been taken from them by the United States. Horne argued that because the curriculum was based on the writings of Marx and Guevara it was anti-American and Communist, and the Raza focus on Mexican culture was ultimately racist. Yet he couldn't understand the ultimate irony of an educated, middle-class white man representing the pinnacle of the public eduational authority suppressing an educational curriculum based on and about the local marginized population of students, even though it had proved to increase attendance, retention, and graduation of that marginalized student population. Likewise, Sen. Huppenthal also exhibited incredible tunnel-vision that focused almost soley on the fact that one book in the entire curriculum, Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was Marxist in nature. In fact, Pedagogy argues for a transformative education, similar to Dewey, but based on a critical framework. Huppenthal agrees to attend one of the Raza classes, yet afterward stated that although the students were intelligent, articulate, polite, and engaged in the class, that it was most likely staged for his benefit. It feels as if Huppenthal entered the classroom with his mind already made up. Both men argued that America is great, provides opportunities for everyone, and that all citizens are equal. But if that were true, why would even high school students recognize the fallacy in that statement?
It is impossible for just one history or literature course to cover everything about the United States in depth. Most curriculums offer little mention of Hispanic/Latinx, or other races and ethnicities, in their course content. Thus, ethnic studies courses allow students to discover diverse experiences of different ethnic groups within the United States, and basic knowledge that all citizens can use. Perhaps if Horne and Huppenthal had the opportunity to learn from ethnic studies courses, they would not have been so blind to the concerns of the Raza students. Precious Knowledge showed us that students found education to be more rewarding and relevant once they were allowed to engage with materials related to their personal sense of cultural and racial identity. Ethnic studies provide support and a fundamental knowledge about the histories, experiences, and artistic expressions of groups that are not often discussed, and ultimately benefit all students, not just "ethnic" students.
Monday, October 22, 2018
Educational Equity, Discipline, and the School to Prison Pipeline
This weeks readings Messy, Butch, and Queer: LGBTQ Youth and the School-to-Prison
Pipeline (Snapp, Hoenig, Fields, and Russell, 2015) and Smoking Guns or Smoke & Mirrors?: Schools and the Policing of Latino Boys (Rios, Galicia, 2013) both focus on issues of equity and discipline among students of marginalized populations, LGBTQ and Latino students respectively.
In Messy, Butch, and Queer, Snapp and colleagues interviewed LGBTQ-identifying students, adult advocates, and one straight ally, primarily choosing to interview participants who identified as minorities to capture intersecting identities. Through interviews, the researchers discovered that students who exhibited gender or sexuality identity outside the norm faced discrimination not only from students, but faculty and administrators as well. Students reported selective enfocement of PDA (public display of affection) among same-sex students, in comparison to the larger percentage of opposite-sex students who engaged in acts of PDA in greater number and magnitude than the LGBTQ students. (p. 65)The youth in the article discussed several occasions in which they had experienced bullying from other students, but educators and administrators failed to support the reporting LGBTQ students by diminishing the acts against them, "It wasn't meant to be like that...you're ebing a princess." (p.64) And should LGBTQ students defend themselves or each other, they are maore likely to receive stiffer disciplinary action than the bullies. (p.69) Reading through the participant stories, I was filled with such anger that people who would consider themselves educators would treat students in this manner. It was, therefore, unsurprising to me to discover that students who identify as LGBTQ are at greater risk of being pushed out of their education and more likely to be incarcerated. Smoking Guns or Smoke and Mirrors usesthe critical framework of Anyon's social stratification reproduction and applies it to a post-manufacturing economy. Rios and Galicia examine the public education experiences of Latino youth living in zero-tolerance schools, in the school to prison pipeline. Apart from the participant interviews, the realest statement of the article stated
"Since schools have the power
to package, construct, label, and deem students as troublemakers and
offenders, they often become a launching pad from which young people are
catapulted into the criminal justice system. Schools have the power to determine
the life-course outcomes of marginalized young people." (p. 57)
The underlying issue Latino students expressed are implicit biases. Their teachers, educational administrators, and the police, have treated the participant students as though they have already done something wrong. Although the students haven't engaged in criminal actions, they are being disciplined by school officials at greater rates for minor infractions, and treated by police officers as if they have already transgressed the law. (p.59) I found the usage of threats by school administrators to report undocumented students to ICE, as well as eliminating students' ability to use the Boys and Girls Club after school reprehensible. These actions further contributed to the participants' forced removal from their community, and greatly incresed the risk that these students face incarceration. (p. 60)
This week's readings made me incredibly angry on behalf of the students. That feeling of marginalization experienced by students of color and LGBTQ students is something that educators should strive to educate non-marginalized students about in order to eliminate or reduce discriminative behaviors. In the case of discrimination by faculty or administrators, I strongly believe it is necessary that any laws supporting and protecting the students should be fully enforced, by litigation of necessary. However, under the current administration, I cannot imagine such litigation will make much of a difference. Moving forward, it might be the responsibility of the individual communities to support marginalized students, but what can those students do if their communities do not support them?
The acquisition of language in spoken or written form provides a fundamental connection to an individuals social world. This connection can sometimes be recognized through regional accents, dialects and languages. The readings this week focus on some of the languages and dialects spoken by students in American schools, other than Standard English.
In Lomawaima and McCarty's text When Tribal Sovereignty Challenges Democracy: American Indian Education and the Democratic Ideal, the authors establish an understanding of an educational framework based on diversity, democracy, and sovereignty based on the critical pedagogies of Friere and Giroux. As Lomawaima and McCarty so eloquently stated, "These words...are not simple abstractions or lexical tags. They carry whole domains of human experience...they are built of the backs of human lives, human stories, and personal, individual reality." (p. 284) In their examination of "the struggle between tribal aspirations and federal constraints on American Indian education," (p. 282) Lomawaima and McCarty begin with the colonization of Native American children through educational removals that placed them into boarding houses beginning in the late nineteenth century. Meant to "civilize" Native American children and assimilate them into an appropriate social status within the white-controlled world, education in the boarding school was highly racialized and forbade the usage of native languages and religion.Traditional Native crafts were acceptable, as they provided a form of vocational training that allowed for economic engagement. These examples support the authors' argument of the policy regarding American Indian education as a series of attempts by the federal government to support or suppress the various aspects of Native American life it considers safe vs those it considers dangerous.
THE AMERICAN INDIAN: GOVERNMENT EDUCATION
Lomawaima and McCarty move on the discuss the value of sovereignty in education, pointing to the success of Native American students enrolled in community-controlled schools. Students enrolled in bilingual education outscored those in English only curricula, and reported higher levels of confidence, pride, interest in learning, and retention. Perhaps more important than the testing outcomes of students is the survival of Native languages in the face of the historic atrocities by the federal government in its attempt to colonize or exterminate entire nations of indigenous people. The ability of Native Americans to retain their own languages allows them to retain the sovereignty of self-determination against the dominant culture.
Similarly, Alexandria Neason's article How Hawaiian Came Back From the Dead examines the resurgence of indigenous language in educational settings in post-colonial Hawaii, and the conflict that results from dual concerns for maintaining a traditionally marginalized culture while retaining the ability to benefit from engagement within the dominant cultural economy through the use of English language. The struggle of traditional language versus English language is shared through stories of parents Like Samuel, forbidding the native language when his son Herring Kekualike Kalua skipped schooling in English. The generational repercussions of this linguistic trauma are evident when we are introduced to his daughter Kamomi, who never learned the native language, and expresses regret when discussing her inability to fully experience the hula, "Without understanding the Hawaiian-language words and chants tied to it, dancing hula is like memorizing a song in a foreign language." That regret led to support of her daughter's desire to receive a Hawaiian language education that embraced all aspects of traditional Hawaiian culture, while simultaneously worrying about her daughter's economic future.
The final reading, What Should Teachers Do, written by Lisa Delpit, considers what the appropriate response to student usage of Ebonics in the classroom educators should express. Like the previous authors, Delpit underscores the importance of cultural identity tied to linguistics and the inherent oppression such cultural identity and language receives from the dominant majority, again with a recognition that deviation from the dominant dialect leads to negative economic outcomes. Delpit provides readers with the example of a valuable exercise used with her (presumably cultural majority) students that shows how second language acquisition creates obstacles to thought formulation and expression of thought, which allows future teachers to consider the perspective of their students. (p. 32) I think the most salient point of Delpit's article is that educators should not confuse new language acquisition with reading comprehension, perfectly summing this concept up, "...the teacher proceeding to correct the student's Ebonics-influenced pronunciations and grammar while ignoring the fact that the student had to have comprehended the sentence in order to translate it into her own language (emphasis added)." (p. 37)
Ultimately I believe there are several concepts to be extracted from these readings, starting with ideas of meaning-making. Words have meanings, and words have power. The usage of words informs how individuals perceive, and are perceived. We see through the readings, and historically, how the colonization of marginalized people is not just restricted to their bodies, but also their minds, intent on changing the very ways in which they think. How colonized people thought/think has/is influenced/controlled by the dominant/oppressive culture, by law or other less official methods. And as we have heard from the marginalized people themselves, an ability to express through their linguistic preference affords them agency and self-determination, a more true meaning of what that individual is trying to express.
