2.15.2014

It's not about self-esteem

From Gloria Ladson-Billings, 2006:

"Our supreme reliance on individuals means that we look at students as individually responsible for their success in school. We lack complex understandings of how individual, family, community, school, and societal factors interact to create school failure for some students. It is much easier to explain students' failure by looking at something internal to the students than endemic in this thing we call school culture. Self-esteem is liberally sprinkled throughout American English. Every talk show host, every talk show guest has uttered the word. 'I overate because I had low self-esteem.' 'I allowed my partner to abuse me because I had low self-esteem.' I eagerly await the day when someone says, 'I overeat because I am surrounded by food ads and fast-food outlets that sell nothing but high-fat, unhealthy food, and as a poor person it is more difficult to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and take time to prepare them.' Or, 'I was abused by my partner because he's a jerk who has decided to work through his own shortcomings by taking advantage of me. The society says he should make a certain amount of money to take care of his family. He doesn't make it and I am a constant reminder of his failure but I'm an okay person.'"

Preach on. Say why problems really exist. Think about why it's not your fault. Or why it is.

From: 
Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). It’s not the culture of poverty, it’s the poverty of culture: The problem with teacher education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 37(2), 104–109.

2.14.2014

Milking Bees

Learn something new today!



From my amazing friend and former Bien Rican, Kat!

2.12.2014

Burning Questions

I'm in a seminar on democratic education this term. It deals with 1. What is education, done democratically? and 2. What is education in a democratic society?, among many, many other questions.

Monday night's class tasked us each with writing for 5 or so minutes our answers to the following questions:

Where does your orientation to justice come from?
and
Where does your citizen consciousness come from?

The responses were interesting. But I'm not going to tell you about them until you do this yourself. Really think about it. Write it down. What influenced you? Where did you learn about justice, and what does it mean to you now? What does it mean to you to be a citizen, a part of civil society, and why do you feel that way?