The misconceptions that drive inequality

In our current school society boys are often seen as being instigators and trouble makers due to established stereotypes. However, those who are African American tend to be treated with resentment and hostility, which has caused some to question their place in the educational system. Our practices of labeling students and tracking them has resulted in the achievement gap and has widened it in some cases based on skin color. African American Males are either seen as criminal (320) or as an endangered species (323), something which has hampered their educational abilities. The thing is that our status quo is something which needs to be reexamined as it currently is discriminatory and simply wrong in how African Americans are treated in the education system.

African American males are not in fact the "naturally naughty" people which labels have described them as, rather it is the issue with our system which has caused them to be seen in such a way. We must as a society attempt to change these misconceptions in order to grow and eventually offer the same educational opportunities to students regardless of color or creed or language, a daunting task, but none the less a necessity.

Restrictions of Education

Overall I thought that the readings for this week were of great importance as educators in an urban environment. In Particular, I was interested by the Enora Brown article and how it dealt with institutional practices which to this day restrict the educational opportunities of many within society. The everyday racial divisions which occur in our society range from a difference in textbook and supply ability due to funding all the way to institutionalized forms of security, which depict students as criminals within the school environment. These differences have caused students to not be able to obtain an education that meets the standards of other schools even within the area, this is especially true under the restrictive funding of No Child Left Behind, but I wont get into that now. The thing is that in order to bring about reform in the educational system, we must find a way to remove these institutionalized differences within schools that are often based on a students race and economic status. Also how can we as teachers best open our classrooms up to be a forum through which students can voice their opinions on these issues?

Social Action

In our group we are researching the concept of how as teachers do we motivate students to become socially aware, and hence active within the real life issues that plague them on a daily basis. My own personal research has led me to a strategy of using critical reading in conjunction with classroom discussion in order to build the context behind these issues, and then using what they have learned in the classroom to move outside the walls of class, and take the information out into the community. By removing the learning process from the confines of a classroom, I feel that students can obtain a better understanding of the everyday situations that people are forced to undergo, and accordingly provides them with perspective of the problems within society.

Following the process of going out into the community, the students can then return into the classroom setting, and share their personal experiences, gaining further insight from the experiences of their classmates, creating a community aspect to the learning activity, and also allows students to share their own personal beliefs about how we could possibly move towards a solution of the problem in question. This I feel is a very important action and would potentially lead to a more involved aspect of a curriculum by getting a point across through actual action.