Eliminating Ableism in Education & Examined Life Argument

Thomas Hehir's Eliminating Ableism in Education

    In Thomas Hehir's Eliminating Ableism in Education, Hehir presents the argument that disabled people are regularly forced to confront and overcome difficulties in both everyday life and in a classroom setting. This is not because of their disability, but rather because of the way that society treats disabled people as defined by their disability. This argument is supported in Hehir's work by the transcribed accounts of disabled people, such as the account of one mentally disabled student. The student's mother recalls asking her child's teacher what they were learning in science, only to be informed that special education students were not learning science in favor of fine motor skills. Hehir highlights this as indicative of how schools teach students with mental disabilities: it's all centered around that disability. Furthermore, the education of the mentally disabled has been perpetually plagued by low expectations that leads educators to give less effort to disabled students relative to their neurotypical peers, which makes their learning an even greater challenge than it already is under the standardized form of schooling they face. This is supported by studies described in Hehir's work, which note that in schools where mentally disabled students who were given a focused education covering subjects akin to what their neurotypical peers were learning, there was a sharp increase in mentally disabled students that passed state tests. 

    This argument is also seen in the video "Examined Life: Judith Butler and Sanaura Taylor", in which we follow a conversation between Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor, the latter of which is afflicted with arthrogryposis and uses a wheelchair. Together, they discuss various societal perspectives of able-bodied people versus disabled people, such as the false notion that abled bodied are radically independent and capable and disabled people are completely helpless and how society is designed to make disabled people further disadvantaged. 

    I think the detail that society furthers the disadvantage of disabled people through its lack of consideration for them is a really interesting one, and I’d like to further discuss and flesh out that idea and define some ways that societal expectations of a person’s ability provide further disadvantage to disabled people.

    Attached here is a Hyperlink to an article further discussing how society holds back disabled people: https://epicassist.org/the-biggest-barrier-for-people-with-disability/

Tongue Tied Reflection Blog Post

 

Tongue Tied, by Richard Rodriguez
 

            In Tongue Tied, this week’s assigned reading, Richard Rodriguez reflects on his experience with language surrounding his education, and how the treatment of Spanish and English in his life led him to misconceptions about the roles of the two languages. 

While I have been fortunate enough to never personally struggle with the loss of my linguistic identity, I am in a position now where I have begun to observe it in others. The first people that came to mind when reading about the author’s account of how he was confident speaking Spanish and would’ve been encouraged by his teachers or peers speaking it (and how being the only student whose first language was Spanish made him feel isolated from everyone else) are two of the middle school boys that live on the dorm I work at. Their names are Jeronimo and Mauricio, and they both come from Mexico. They’re both sweet kids, and are doing well socially from what I observe, but there’s no denying the identifiable drop in their voice whenever they speak with me or other staff. I hear them excitedly talking to each other in Spanish often, but they mostly keep to themselves and their other Spanish-speaking friends outside of light casual interactions with other students. However, there is one student who's been making an effort to learn Spanish, and I’ve noticed Mau and Jero opening up to this student far more than anyone else I’ve seen in my almost year of knowing them. It’s heart-warming to see, and this week’s reading has helped me to understand exactly what they’re feeling when they see one of their peers making the effort to communicate with them on their terms.

However, this reading has also enlightened me to exactly what they’re feeling living in a place where they’re feeling out of place on even a simple linguistic level. The segment of the reading about how Richard lost his escape from English when it began to invade his home was heartbreaking, and I’m keenly aware of how few people on campus and even in the dorm can speak with Mau and Jero in their native language. With this in mind, I am going to be more conscious of how I communicate with them, and though it’s difficult to dedicate time to learning a language while juggling work and college, I would like to pursue learning Spanish as a means of being able to speak with and bond with these kids on their terms. 

Coming into class after reading this, I think a point of discussion we should spend time with is ways to accommodate students who have a language barrier like this, when we (unfortunately) are not familiar with the language and do not have the time or resources to effectively learn the language. I’d love to know if there’s more I can be doing to effectively communicate with these kids, and if there are resources out there to make learning a new language on a tight schedule easier that I might be missing out on.

Attached here is a hyperlink to an article further discussing the struggles students with a non-english first language often face in educational environments, and some ways schools might be able to combat them: https://www.concernusa.org/story/language-barriers-in-classroom/

Literacy With An Attitude - Extended Comments on Vanessa's Blog

Literacy With An Attitude by Patrick J. Finn

        In Vanessa’s blog post discussing quotes of particular interest from Patrick J. Finn’s Literacy With An Attitude, she highlights several quotes that I found particularly interesting and worthy of discussion. This blog can be read in conjunction with hers, and I will be responding to each of the quotes she chooses to highlight and her takeaways from them as they appear. I will assume the reader has already read each point before reading my responses.

Quote One: I really like the point Vanessa makes here about how it’s odd that topics like civil rights are a discussion often avoided most in schools that would benefit most from these discussions. There's a common trend I’ve noticed in working-class schools of classrooms made up of mostly students of color, and a white teacher instructing them (this is also supported by a study linked below). This absolutely could lend itself to the avoidance of conversations that would greatly benefit the students: the teacher, in ignorance of the disadvantages they’ve sidestepped by simply being white, doesn’t think to or value the importance of having these discussions in the classroom. We’ve previously discussed in readings such as Delpit’s about how the cultural barrier between white educators and students of color can make it difficult for white teachers to adequately meet the needs of students of color, further supporting this theory. This, paired with the stigma around students of lower economic (or working-class) status that suggests they learn at a slower rate than their wealthier peers can create an environment where the conversations about the disadvantages certain groups have in the world are being avoided in the places they are most relevant.

Quote Two: Vanessa’s second quote was something that I found really interesting, and I found her connection to be even more so. I strongly agree with the assertion that relationships between educators and students is one of the most important factors in properly understanding where a student is at in their skills and how they’ll effectively improve on their weaknesses. The strengths of students are only practiced by them (and the weaknesses are only worked on) when they feel as though their efforts are being observed and acknowledged, and when students are put down for their struggles, it can become really unmotivating to try anything. I absolutely have noticed an increase in poor relationships between students and teachers over the years, and while it may just be my increased exposure to the behind-the-scenes of educations that is leading me to see this more often, it is really disheartening to see from people who are meant to be fostering these student’s paths to achieving their aspirations.

    Quote Three: While I absolutely agree with the sentiment that teachers shouldn’t be trying to control students, per se, and the students being challenged to do so here are absolutely being asked to do something well beyond their pay grade, I feel that there is still a responsibility on the teacher’s end to maintain structure and focus for the students. This is likely what was meant with the phrase “kept control of the class”, even if it was worded poorly. I’m very anti-authoritarian in educational roles and all aspects of life, but having been put in a position of authority over students a number of times, I’ve come to understand that students when left too much to their own devices can be ineffective. I think the difference between letting students run free and outright ordering them around, however, is understanding how to help channel the student’s ideas, interests and energy into their learning.

Hyperlink: https://www.axios.com/2022/01/23/teachers-schools-students-diversity

Video Analysis Links

Classroom Tour Notes: Link

Precious Knowledge Notes: Link

Beverly Daniel Tatum's Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race proposes the argument that everyone, by virtue of living in a society built upon prejudice, harbors prejudice within them through no intent or true fault of their own. This is enforced through the segregation between racial groups that prevents people (mostly prominently, white people) from having an authentic understanding of the culture and people of other racial groups. This has been perpetuated through systematic oppression designed to keep people of color out of white neighborhoods and social classes for centuries. As a result, white people are led to draw their expectations of people of color through their portrayals in the media they consume. An example of this Tatum provides in his writing is that of preschoolers tasked to create a drawing of Native Americans. The preschoolers created drawings of men and women wearing feathers and face paint, and wielding tomahawks. Many were portrayed as aggressive. Tatum clarifies that this isn’t an attempt to vilify preschoolers, or label them as prejudice, but it’s a clear indicator of how early on-set the foundations of prejudice are.

Tatum asserts that if we are to combat this, white people must become conscious of and opposing to the systematic oppression maintaining the segregation of this country. He acknowledges that one of the biggest hurdles in this is convincing white people, who do not witness the alternative to their own privilege due to the very segregation in question, that there is still racism and racial issues in the modern day. To combat this, Tatum pushes for education of racism, such as in the class they lead, or the class we are currently taking. This is supported by the example of preschoolers drawing stereotypes of Native Americans: when asked, many of the students cited Disney's Peter Pan as their basis for what a Native American is like. Personally, I feel that this introduction to how systematic racism works and permeates is the most accessible to white people that we have encountered thus far. The preschooler example is handled in a way that allows defensiveness at the mention of race to be put aside, but is still focusing on a subject as shocking to us as preschoolers being prejudiced that it allows us to properly understand the weight of what is being discussed. Additionally, I believe the assertion of the biggest challenge in fighting systematic oppression is convincing those benefiting from it that it’s a problem that exists is an understated one. We often see discussions of race in current day media, but very rarely is it portrayed in a way that allows understanding by those not experiencing or witnessing it. It’s an important part of eliciting change in these systems that is often overlooked or unacknowledged, and I appreciate that a piece like this brings light to it in such a meaningful and effective way. Hyperlink: https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41235-021-00349-3

Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace Quotes and Analysis

Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace, the subject of today's analysis.

        During my reading of Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace, a text that discusses the difficulties of childhood growing up in a city as segregated by both race and class as New York, a number of quotes stood out to me as particularly interesting for a number of reasons.

        The first of these quotes comes from the very first page, in the paragraph that details: “Brook Avenue… whose 48,000 people are the poorest in the South Bronx. Two thirds are hispanic, and one third black. Thirty-five percent are children. In 1991, the median household income of the area according to the New York Times was $7,600.”

Homeless children in New York City, as photographed by the New York Times.

This quote stuck with me for a number of reasons. First, the revelation that thirty-five percent of the people living in brutal impossibly low poverty are children. This isn’t a new facet of New York or even our national culture, but it’s difficult to try and actually imagine what thirty-five percent means, so I did the math. At 48,000 people, thirty-five percent is 16,800 children who don’t have enough money for food or a proper jacket or to pay their bills. That is an insane number to wrap your head around. According to Medium.com, you will only personally meet 10,000 people in your entire lifetime. For most people our age, you could likely look back at every person you’ve met in your life, and for every one of those people there are two children living in poverty in just Brooke Avenue, in the South Bronx in New York City in the United States. When you begin to realize the weight of poverty on our youth and the epidemic it truly is, your stomach begins to turn. It’s a horrifying thing to grapple with.

The second thing I realized is these kids are broken down into two-thirds hispanic, and one-third black. Now, as I’m sure you’ve done the math, you’ll come to realize that’s a complete fraction. While I’m sure there is some overlap in the two-thirds and one-thirds for kids of mixed races, this still implies that white children are so rare in this neighborhood that you could feasibly assume every single resident of this neighborhood is a person of color. This is a stunning illustration of the results of systematic oppression, and reinforces the idea that even in discrimination towards class rather than race, people of color are most certainly still at the disadvantage.

I also figured out what $7,600 is adjusted for inflation today: $16,758. Ignoring for now the stunning rise in inflation over just the last thirty years, this is far too low for a two person household working in New York City. For reference, I, as a 19-year-old working Wednesday’s and alternating weekends make $10,000 per year. This means that I make more than half what two families together in New York City make at the age of 19 at a part-time job. 

With all of these things in mind, I am brought to my next quote, and my personal favorite of any of our readings thus far: “There are children in the poorest, most abandoned places who, despite the miseries and poisons that the world has pumped into their lives, seem, when you first meet them, to be cheerful anyway.”

This quote sums up everything we’ve been processing so far about the horror these children have been forced to endure for their entire lives through poverty. If you weren’t able to fully process before that these are real children suffering through this every day, this is the line that will remind you. Furthermore, though it’s unrelated to the text, it reminds me of what I love so much about kids, and why I want to work with them so desperately. They are creatures designed to seek out the good of the world. This isn’t to say “oh, their situation isn’t so bad”, or “oh, there’s always light in the dark” or whatever, because sometimes things just suck and this situation these people are in really, really, really sucks. But a child's happiness and love for the world is something that needs to be fostered, and it’s important to me that kids growing up like this have the opportunities to be reassured of that. This is what being a teacher is about to me.

Finally, my third and final quote from this piece is a reminder that the government has caused this problem and continues to perpetuate this problem. “...a former cocaine addict who now helps addicted women and their children, she tells me that more than 3,000 homeless families have been relocated by the city in this neighborhood during the past few years, and she asks a question I will hear from many other people here during the months ahead. ‘Why do you want to put so many people with small children in a place with so much sickness? This is the last place in New York that they should put poor children. Clumping so many people, all with the same symptoms and same problems, in one crowded place with nothing they can grow on? Our children start to mourn themselves before their time.’”

These lines serve to remind us who caused this modern day horror: our own leaders and politicians, who would rather segregate all of the poverty and drug addiction and illness into a section of the city to fester rather than work to resolve systematically. This is why, immediately before quoting the woman, Kozol notes that she is a former cocaine addict who now helps addicted mothers to get clean. It is the people, not the government, who take care of each other. 

This is why these pieces are so important. People in power need to be reminded that the people they’re seeing as problems to be sectioned off and ignored have lives, and families, and futures that are being spoiled before they have the chance to try and shape them. Government leaders need to be reminded that these people- these children- are their responsibility, and they need to stop leaving them behind.

Identifying and Exploring the Argument of Lisa Delpit's Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

    

Lisa Delpit, Author of Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom.

    The argument presented by Lisa Delpit in her work Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom is that the needs of children of color are not being met in the classroom because a dominantly white education industry insists on teaching students of color with the same curriculum, context, and tools as white students. She asserts that this way of teaching is flawed, because it falsely assumes that people of color will have the same opportunities, assets, and history at their disposal as the white students for which the education is being crafted. As we have previously discussed in last week’s reading, this is systematically false due to the disproportionate amount of people of color living in low-income neighborhoods, the daily prejudice that people of color must overcome in all facets of their lives, and the various cultural background differences between people of color and white people. Delpit asserts that the best thing educators can do for their students of color are a) to hear, not just listen to educators of color who can earnestly speak about and work with the struggles and differences of students of color, and b) to acknowledge and teach about these differences and disadvantages, rather than ignore them and both set students of color up for failure while also allowing more generations of white students to move on to their lives with ignorance of the bias and advantage they carry. 

    It’s not difficult to see why students of color’s needs have continuously failed to be met in education settings. As previously mentioned, like with many fields, education is largely white-employed, and educators are inherently going to be biased. This can be minimized through self-awareness and self-reflection, but it doesn’t allow these white educators to properly understand or address the experience of students of color, ensuring that they are unable to adequately address the needs or challenges of students of color. Additionally, the continued segregation of schools through social and economic classes goes hand in hand with systematic racial oppression, as low-income schools are disproportionately filled with students of color. This means that while middle-class white students receive modern technology and more experienced educators that have relatively easy access to materials and resources, students of color often are left to make do with little to no tech in an age that demands proficiency with it, and educators that are struggling to make do with their classroom resources. The disadvantage of students of color in classrooms is supported by various studies, such as one in 2016 that found students with lighter skin tones were more likely to be accepted to or attend higher education (Ryabov, 2016). The same people behind that study also asserted that educators may have unconscious biases towards students of color with more classically euro-centric features, and a later study supported this when it found that students of color with darker skin tones sustained lower GPAs than students of color from the same racial groups with lighter skin tones (Thompson & McDonald, 2016).

    A point I'd like to share in class is the role personalized learning could play in resolution of this issue. I'm a big believer in and a big pusher of personalization on every possible level of the education structure, and I believe that personalizing education to better address and fit the experiences, differences, and needs of students of color would be a massive step in the right direction when working to make education a more fair environment for all students. 

    However, I also recognize that by asserting this and interjecting my own ideas to resolve this issue, I am inadvertently doing the same thing so criticized in the piece we've just read. While I believe my ideas of personalization in classrooms is a strong one that could do a lot of good for students of color, I will heed these ideas to actual educators of color who have the experiences and knowledge of what it's like to be a student of color, so they have the space to meet the needs that the education system failed to meet for them not so long ago. 

Hyperlink