My take from reading your book is that you are advocating teachers to teach kids from generational poverty the culture of the middle class. While on the surface this seems to be reasonable because if they are going to move upward in “class”, they should know the norms of that class. But how do we ask students to assimilate into a class that they may deem as oppressive?
Your book leaves itself open to being characterized as stereotypical. Do you really believe that poverty is experienced by all demographics the same way? Are there not more differences between poor whites, African-Americas, Latinos, etc.? And shouldn’t we as educators be cognizant of these differences if we are to reach these groups of students?
I think that you asked some very thought provoking questions and both of which I would be very interested in hearing the answers to. I know that personally growing up my Grandfather would speak of the times that he grew up in and he felt that sense of opression because that was his personal experience. So to him it was hard to understand our relationship and dealings with the same people who oppressed him. Additionally race is a key component that we can't ignore and to assume that poverty effects all people the same way is a bold statement and one I believe to be inaccurate. Great questions!
ReplyDeleteI think your second question is very interesting. In fact, I agree. As a Black female, I remember reading this book initially with a class of mostly Whites. Being Black and having taught Black students, I knew that everything in the book did NOT apply to every student. However, sitting in a group of Whites who had little experience with Black students, it was frustrating to see some of them take the framework as "gospel". Every student is not the same and is not affected in the same way by their circumstance and this was extremely frustrating for me. When I tried to speak on this behalf in class, I felt like I was defending my race, when in fact that was far from the truth.
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