Talking Point # 5 Schooling: Wrestling with History and Tradition

Premise:

• public schools
• diversity
• ideologies and myths
• white privilege
• poverty (school)
• bi cultural
• democracy
• equality

Argument:

Jeannie Oakes and Martin Lipton argue that school's society is constantly changing. The theme of American public schools is, democracy. However, there are four ideologies surrounding the myths that makes up American culture and schools. These ideologies are responsible for preventing society to recognize the possibilities of democracy. Even though society has not recognized yet , they are new teachers who are seeking these possibilities to enhance democracy in American public schools.

Evidence:

"Today, more teachers than ever...seek new ways to enhance the democratic tradition." (pg. 4)

"I did anything possible to make students realize that they have a voice." (pg. 5)

"I must try to create a democratic classroom, where students actively construct their own knowledge. Finally, I must be a teacher who helps students discover their possibilities and urge them to claim their role as transformed members of society." (pg. 9)

"Theodore Roosevelt...United Sates had room for only one language, English..." (pg. 11)

" student's language differences must not prevent them from learning academics comparable to their English-speaking peers." (pg. 12)

" four related ideologies-revolving around the myths of merit, scientific efficiency, competition, and progress--that characterize American culture and schooling and prevent society and schools from realizing their democratic possibilities." (pg. 18)

Comments:

This article was very interesting, especially the beginning. It gave me a brief history of education development. One thing I enjoyed very much were the short stories from first-year teachers. All the teachers that wrote their short stories had a theme in mind; "democratic classroom." This is a theme all the teachers keep in mind. However I believe some teachers interpret it wrong, especially the older teachers. Older teachers are accustom to to the traditional ways of teaching. However, new teachers are taught different methods to make sure every child is educated. New teachers are more likely to survive the rapid changes in school society because they are expose to these changes, early in their studies before becoming a teacher.

Talking Point #4

What is the Article About:

• secret education


• dominance of one's sex, race, class or country


• children's cartoon and media, influence children's view of the world


• the absences of "minority" group in the media


• misinformation about people different than us


• students realizing the misinformation

Argument

Linda Christensen argues that children are victims of the "secret education." Books and cartoons shape the way children view society, creating misinformation that can later affect society. We can stop this misinformation by introducing the true facts in schools through observations and critiques.

Evidence:

Children as victims of the "secret education"

" The 'secret education,'...delivered by children's books and movies, instructs young people to accept the world as it is portrayed in these social blueprints." (pg. 126)

"When we read children's books, we aren't just reading cute little stories, we are discovering the tools with which a young society is manipulated." (pg. 126)

"...Although these stories are supposed to merely entertain us, they constantly give us a secret education." (pg. 128)

Children influenced at an early age/ not accepting it

"The impact of racism begins early. Even in our preschool years, we are exposed to misinformation about people different from ourselves." (pg. 126)

"Many students don't want to believe that they have been manipulated by children's media or advertising. No one wants to admit that they've been "handled" by the media." (pg. 128)

Books and cartoons shape the way children view society

" Children's cartoons, movies, and literature are perhaps the most influential 'genre' read." (pg. 127)

" Indians in 'Looney Tunes'....we begin to imagine Indians as savages with bows and arrows and long black hair." (pg. 131)

" Have you ever seen a black person, an Asian, a Hispanic in a cartoon? Did they have a leading role...[w]omen who aren't white begin to feel left out ugly because they never get to play the princess." (pg. 131)

"Duck Tales...Uncle Scrooge and the gang teach children that money is the only important thing in life." (pg. 136)

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...teaches a false sense of violence to kids: fight and you don't get hurt, or solve problems through fists and swords instead of words." (pg. 136)

"Popeye... Americans are the best and conquer all others." (pg. 136)

Introducing the true facts in schools

"...I want students to critique portrayals of hierarchy and inequality in children's movies and cartoons. Then I want to enlist them to imagine a better world, characterized by relationships of respect and equality." (pg. 127)

"They are fueled by the opportunity to convince some parents of the long-lasting effects cartoons impose on their children, or to enlighten their peers about the roots of some of their insecurities... I provided them the opportunity to make a difference." (pg. 137)

Comments

New/old cartoons have affected tremendously the way children view society. I have a younger brother who watches a lot of cartoons. One of his favorite cartoons was Dexter's Laboratory. I always pick this cartoon because it's a perfect example of the meaning of misinformation. Dexter's mother is always in the kitchen cooking or washing dishes. As a matter of fact she always has cleaning gloves on. This cartoon teaches students that women's role is to be in the house cleaning or cooking. When that is not the case in today's society. Parent believe that when children are watching cartoons they are learning. However, this is not the case. Children are learning about the wrong society.

Talking Point #3 on Carlson

1) WHAT IS THE ARTICLE ABOUT:

Racism

Prejudice

Power

Normalizing community (whites, middle class, male, heterosexuals)

Abnormal community (blacks, working class, female, homosexuals)

mainly focuses on heterosexuals and homosexuals

School curriculum is linked to normalizing community

prejudice against homosexual teachers

avoidance of homosexual conversations in schools

no credit for homosexual authors and poets

2) AUTHOR'S ARGUMENT

Carlson argues that today's society is divided into the normal (heterosexuals), and abnormal communities (homosexuals). The normal community is viewed as the powerful community, while the abnormal is viewed as the sick powerless community. Carlson strongly believes that schools can play a major role in helping identify the abnormal community. However, school's community is strongly linked to the normal community.

3) EVIDENCE

The normal vs. abnormal community

"Within normalizing communities, some individuals and subject positions (i.e., white, middle class, male, heterosexual, etc) get privileged and represented as "normal" while other individuals and subject positions (i.e. blacks, working class, female, homosexual, etc.) are disempowered and represented as deviant sick, neurotic, criminal, lazy, lacking in intelligence, and in other ways 'abnormal.'" (pg. 233)

Schools playing a big role

" I want to suggest that public schools may play an important role in helping build a new democratic, multicultural community, one in which sexual identity (like other makers of difference including class, gender, and race) is recognized..." (pg. 223)

School's community linked to normal community

"...(1) the erasure of gayness in the curriculum, (2) the 'closeting' and 'witch hunting' of gay teachers, and (3) verbal and physical intimidation of gay teachers and students." (pg 236)

"... normalizing texts systematically exclude and neglect the culture of those outside the norm for the purpose of ratifying in legitimating the dominant culture as the only significant culture worth studying." (pg. 236)

"...a number of states explicitly prohibit teaching about homosexuality." (pg. 236)

"...major textbook publishers avoid gayness like plague. English literature anthologies still go out of their way to avoid acknowledging that certain famous writers were gay..." (pg. 236)

"...gayness...it is likely to be in the health curriculum, where it is associated with disease...'the first group in the Unites States diagnosed with AIDS were male homosexuals.'" (pg. 237)

"...gay teachers were to be fired because they too were understood as contagious...homosexuality...linked as threats to the 'American way of life.'" (pg. 237)

4) Comments

Schools today are linked by the normal community, especially when it come to heterosexuals vs. homosexuals. I never had a homosexual teacher (that I know of), and if I did he/she did a good job hiding it. Everything in schools from math problem solving (family theme) to conversations is linked to the normal community. There were many points in the article that were disappointing. For example, the quote from the guy who says " I think gay guys are just sick. How could they do that? It's wrong!'..." (pg. 238). Coming from a Catholic family, I was brought up looking at the gay community as something wrong and against my religion. Even though I was brought up believing this way, I never spoked negatively about homosexuals. Everyone has a right to live life the way they want it, it is not fair for others to discriminate.I believe homosexual conversations in schools are difficult (especially in high school) to habdle because students do not take the conversation seriously. Their mentality is not there yet to search for a solution to help recognize ones sexual identity. It is really difficult to place homosexuals in the normal community. There are many obstacles in between, especially religion. I do hope something gets done because homosexuals are not deviant, sick, or criminals, like posted on this article. Instead they are people like you and me that can see, hear, and feel the discrimination against them.

TALKING POINTS #2 on Rodriguez

1) Context/ Premise

• silence
• public language (English)
• family
• lost of individuality
• fitting in
• bilingual
• school
• public identity
• power

2) Argument

Richard Rodriguez argues that in order to be part of the public society (dominant society), one must accustom to this society. By becoming accustom, one looses its individuality causing a "silence" in the family.

3) Evidence

Importance of Dominant Society:

"What they understood was that I needed to speak a public language" (pg.34).

"In an instant, they agreed to give up the language (the sounds) that had revealed and accentuated our family's closeness" (pg. 35).

"For I was increasingly confident of my own public identity." (pg. 38).

Concentrate on Language and Customs:

"[T]he family gathered to practice 'our' English" (pg.35).

" I was obligated to hear my mother and father: 'speak to us en ingles'..." (pg. 36).

"I was required to attend a daily tutoring session" (pg. 35).

Lost of individuality causing "silence"

"...the special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then" (pg. 36).

" No longer so close; no longer bound tight by pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness" (pg. 36).

" The family's quite was partly due to the fact that, as we children learned more and more English, we shared fewer and fewer words with our parents" (pg. 37).

" The old Spanish words (those tender accents of sound) I had used earlier- mama and papa- I couldn't use use anymore" (pg. 37).

"...my father...[t]hough his English improved somewhat, he retired into silence" (pg. 37).

"...bilingual educators say that children lose a degree of individuality by becoming assimilated into public society' (pg. 38).

Aria by Richard Rodriguez, focuses on the transformation of a child in school who came from a different country. This story reminds me of my arrival to the United States. Like Richard I did not know any English and every time the teacher would call on me I would murmur because I was afraid of making a mistake. In order for me to fit in the public society, I had to learn English. My parents were aware of this and they were willing to do everything. However, they were not willing to give up their Spanish like Richard's parents did. My mother always said that a bilingual person was worth more and she thought Spanish was basically the last thing we had to remember our country.

I learned English by attending school, watching TV (especially cartoons), listening to my cousins' conversations, and reading. Although my Mother never spoke to me in English, she always checked my book bag for work and visit my teacher with the help of a translator to see where I stood with my grades. I did not have to give up my individuality in order to fit in. Today, I am part of both the public society and the Hispanic society and I am proud to say it.

Talking Point # 1 on Kozol

1) What is the article about?

• poverty
• children with fear, anxiety, and depression
• violence
• poor education
• poor hospitals
• encouragement of sex and drugs
• AIDS
• illnesses
• trapped
• Prejudice
• People with power not using it

2) Argument

Jonathan Kozol argues that in order to solve the problems of poverty, violence, and illnesses in South Bronx, the people with power should change their believes of poor people behaving irrational to, blind poor people trapped in a cage by evil people with power.

3) Evidence. Kozol had many good quotes to prove his argument.

• Poverty

HOMES:

"These houses in which these children live. Two thirds of which are owned by the city of New York, are often as squalid as the houses of the poorest children I have visited in rural Mississippi," (pg. 4).

"Some of these houses are freezing in the winter," (pg. 4).

SCHOOLS:

"...only seven of 800 children do not qualify for free school lunches. Five of those seven... get reduced price lunches, because they are classified as only poor..." (pg. 3).

" Have you read about George Washington? ' I don't even know the man,'" (pg, 9).

HOSPITALS:

" [T]he room is not prepared. The bed is covered with blood... either you wait for hours until someone cleans the room or else you clean the room yourself... why should a patient have to make her bed and wash her room?" (pg. 15).

"I had pneumonia. I waited in the emergency room two days to be admitted," (pg. 16).

• Violence

STREETS:

" I saw a boy shot in the head right over there," (pg. 6).

"... a mother was murdered and her baby wounded by a bullet in the stomach while they were standing on a South Bronx corner," (pg. 5).

HOMES:

"...South Bronx resident was discover in his bathtub with his head cut off," (pg. 5).

" The mother's boyfriend was 42 years old and he had AIDS as well. He raped the little girl right in her bed." (pg. 13).

• ILLNESSES

" Nearly 4,000 heroin injectors, many of whom are HIV-infected, live there," (pg. 4).

"Rates of pediatric AIDS...are high," (pg. 4).

"Asthma is the most common illness among children here," (pg. 4).

• PEOPLE WITH POWER BELIEVING " IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR"

" If poor people behave rationally..they would seldom be poor for long in the first place. Many social scientists today appear to hold this point of view and argue that the largest portion of the suffering poor people undergo has to be blamed upon their own behaviors, a word they tend to pluralize," (pg. 21).

• TRAPPED IN A CAGE BY EVIL PEOPLE

" I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher could call evil. Somebody has power. Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people-that is my idea of evil," (pg. 23).

"The point is that they put a lot of things into our neighborhood that no one wants...[t]he waste incinerator is just one more lovely way of showing their affection," (pg. 10).

ENCOURAGEMENT OF DRUGS AND SEX:

"Volunteers arrive here twice a week to give out condoms and clean needles to addicted men and women," (pg. 12).

4)

I agree 100% with Kozol's argument. The people with power are trapping these poor people by hiding their power. They are encouraging these people to continue having sex and consuming drugs, instead of providing useful information and medicine. What these volunteers are doing is increasing the number of people with AIDS.When I read about the waste incinerators I was disappointed because it's like the people with power continue to infect these people. Another thing that bothered me were the conditions of their homes especially the 2/3's that belonged to the government. This goes out to show how much the government cared. Instead of distributing heaters and blankets they should remodel these homes. I am very disappointed with what the people of power are doing. Instead of helping they are critizing these people without giving them a chance to change.

My full name is Maria Franchesca Moret. I was born on June 3 1988 in Guayama, Puerto Rico. At the age of 7, I came to the United States. It was difficult at first but I managed to overcome it. I graduated from Central Falls High School in 2006. My class rank was 9 and I was part of the RI Honors Society.
This is my second year at Rhode Island College. I've worked 2 straight summers with kids at a summer camp. I enjoyed this experience from beginning to end. Kids are really fun to work with. I am looking foward to tutoring kids this semester.
OH YEAH, if you are wondering what Gemela means....it means TWIN :)