Standard 3, diverse learners. A teacher must understand how students differ in their approaches to learning and create instructional opportunities that are adapted to students with diverse backgrounds and exceptionalities.

The paper below was written for an education and diversity class as a part of teacher licensure.  In this class and subsequent, similar classes, critical pedagogy was put forth as a teaching approach well suited for urban classrooms where students may benefit from a critical analysis of the power structures that surround them, and action they may want to take to change decision-making systems.  This paper provides background information for such endeavors.  To go further with this topic, an example of student-initiated change could be featured.    

Reflective Response

History and Schooling of African Americans

What unites Du Bois and Baldwin, writing 50 years apart from one another, is their fight against oppression, and their contention that black unhappiness could fuel change.  Spring (2010, p. 62-63) notes that Du Bois sought to develop black leaders who would promote and protect the social and political rights of their community and struggle to transform the status quo.  According to Spring, Du Bois wanted blacks to feel the unhappiness brought on by their relegation to an inferior position in society, and fight for change.  Fifty years later Baldwin powerfully implores,

        

“…if I were a teacher in this school, or any Negro school, and I was dealing with Negro children, who were in my care only a few hours of every day and would then return to their homes and to the streets, children who have an apprehension of their future which with every hour grows grimmer and darker, I would try to teach them—I would try to make them know—that those streets, those houses, those dangers, those agonies by which they are surrounded, are criminal.” (Baldwin, 1963, p. 5)

DuBois and Baldwin lead us toward Critical Pedagogy, originally influenced by Paulo Freire, that advocates for a revitalized citizenry.   According to Critical Pedagogy citizens confront issues through public forums and social action.  Critical Pedagogy puts forth the belief the democratic social contract ensures that people have the right to freedom from oppression (Ellsworth, 1994, p. 302-305).

Weaving Critical Pedagogy into elementary school teaching today may be a tall but needed order.  One can’t help but ask if the federal No Child Left Behind Act that has focused elementary literacy pedagogy on decoding (e.g., identifying the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and telling what parts of the story cause the action and what parts are the effects of action), is a mind-numbing, dumbing-down of the curriculum that inadvertently allows little time for deep reflection and critical analysis.  But the elementary school teacher could make time to ask about readings: “What parts of our text advance our freedom?  What parts indicate domination and coercion?”  Student discussions would define terms and allow young people to reveal themselves as the natural philosophers that they are.

Woodson states that, “The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worthwhile, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples” (Woodson, 1933, p. xiii).  One way to counteract this feeling may be by introducing all students, and especially African- American students, to readings that refute this notion.  Last year the fifth grade class I worked with read the book entitled, African-American Inventors that featured agricultural chemist George Washington Carver and mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Banneker.  Children (and the adults) learned that Banneker fine-tuned the prediction of solar eclipses, and that Carver came up with 300 ways to use peanuts, among other discoveries.

Bill Green’s Race and Segregation in St. Paul’s Public Schools, 1846-69 is a fascinating, dichotomous look at our local selves.  As Minnesotans we continue to struggle to successfully include black students and students of color successfully in our educational systems.  However, unlike many U.S. urban school systems, St. Paul and Minneapolis still have some schools where black and white and other children of color go to school together.  In 1849 the new Minnesota territory “…declined to exclude black children from being educated with white students” (Green, 1996-97, p. 140), but five years later restricted blacks from living in certain areas of St. Paul.  In mid-19^th century St. Paul, Green highlights the paradox: blacks and whites should not mingle, but black children should be educated so they can become contributing members of society.  After the Civil War Minnesota was the only northern state to grant black suffrage by popular vote.  In 1869 the state of Minnesota forced St. Paul to end school segregation, but societal prejudice kept black children out of the schools they had the right to go to.  Our current quest to decrease the black-white test score gap and improve graduation rates for African-American and other students of color befuddles us.  How is this best done?  By reviving black-run schools that Spring references? (p. 64).  But then we worry that these schools will be funded inequitably.       

Bibliography

Baldwin, J.  (1963).  The negro child—His self-image, p. 3.  The Saturday Review, December 21, reprinted in The price of the ticket, collected non-fiction, 1948-1985, St. Martins, 1985.  Retrieved from, http://www.richgibson.com/talktoteachers.htm.

Ellsworth, E. (1994). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy, pp. 300-356.  In L. Stone (Ed.), The education feminism reader.  New York: Routledge.

Green, B. (1996-97).  Race and Segregation in St. Paul’s Public Schools, pp. 139-149.  In Minnesota History Quarterly, winter.  St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society.

Spring, J. (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality (6^th ed).  Boston: McGraw Hill Higher Education.

Woodson, C. (1933). The mis-education of the negro.  Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.