Out of Touch Schools: What We Can Do To Make Education Relevant

    It's easy for me to say that I enjoyed this reading better than the Cameron from last week, but I really do like what Winn and Johnson have to say about culture in schools or in reality what amounts to a homogeneous culture where teachers and administrators tell students that their rich backgrounds don't account for much if anything at all. If student values align with white middle class values, then there are no problems, but outside of those bounds there emerges all this unspoken tension. A lot of students don't see themselves represented in the culture of their school and this essentially throws them off the track because why should they care if their school isn't interested about them and their perspective? 

A point that struck me was when they said, "If you're a teacher who accepts the achievement gap, then you may attempt to fill your African American and Hispanic students with the knowledge that will afford them access to specific skill sets, canonical knowledge, and dominant language practices," (Winn and Johnson, 11). What this amounts to is a whole lot of nothing if the student doesn't believe that those are the things they need to know to get ahead in life. If they view it as something that the educational institution is pushing on them to get the test scores up (because those are all major factors in testing achievement) they're going to buck against what they're being taught because they know it's not real. 

In the APA (American Psychological Association) article that I just linked in above talks about how there are so many ideas about what constitutes valued knowledge. Western cultures prize speed of recall and there are many resources that formal schooling offers that are largely unavailable in some countries. What is taken for granted is that this is normal. That practical knowledge takes a backseat to other kinds of cleverness. That is just wrong and it's unhealthy to teach kids that there's only one way to be smart. Rural Zambian parents talk about chenjela (cleverness) and tumikila (responsibility), which makes up the whole picture of a person's abilities. There can of course be many subdivisions of intelligence but I think these two words simplify it to a finely tuned point: That there is a communal aspect that often gets overlooked. I have known plenty of people who are so smart, but because they're so arrogant and mean spirited no one wants to be around them and they're ultimately very miserable because their whole sense of self-worth hinges on outshining other people.  

These two images are a representation of what humanity is. There's the very obvious sort of clinical definition where everything is broken down into pieces and functions and that can be a bit scary and difficult to understand. Then there's something else. It's a really hard to define quality, but it's that special thing that happens when we connect to material or to each other. Our mission as teachers is to get beyond that skeletal concept that the curriculum tells us we're required to teach and find the heart and soul. We don't do that by making education inaccessible. 

I love the idea of pairing a classic poem like Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Grand Master Flash because there's room for both. If there isn't room for it in a school yet, then we've just got to make that room. Shakespeare is a frequent name drop on syllabi due to being an dead white dude and everyone thinks that dead or old white dudes are very important and deserve all the attention, but I don't think that's why his work should be taught. If you're going to teach Shakespeare, teach is plays and poems because he was a maverick with language. He took the culture he saw around him and captured an essence that we now look at today and find deep meaning in. He shaped the world that he lived in and I want to see what diverse offerings my students can bring to the table. It's all good and valued.  

To conclude these thoughts I'm going to leave you with the song Wings by Macklemore. This whole Nike controversy makes me think of this song and it's also just a really amazing bit of art.