Amanda C

White Women’s Education

My written piece was focused on every aspect that surrounded white women being the predominant figure in the teaching workforce and explaining the negative effects this can have on students. For my digitalized piece, I decided to take my topic in a slightly different direction. I made the main focus of my online piece to be specifically about white women teaching black boys and how there is little to no effort in changing this.

I found videos and images and chose the ones I found to be the most useful and added them to my piece in order to help further explain that the only issue being tackled is the underlying one. While it is positive that there is a demand to prevent the consequences of white women teaching black boys, there is no real push to get behind this issue and think of ways to shift the gender and race dominance. I found this in itself to be very powerful and wanted it to speak for itself: this may just be an unsolvable issue until there is enough education around it to make that push. Meaning that, until enough people are informed of how to combat the negative effects and take that action, there will be no effective way to push for more diversity within our future generations.

I decided to take out the aspect of Latinx students, considering that it was very small and related directly to the same consequences faced by black students. I also took out the paragraphs touching upon the systems in place to help current teachers change their negative habits, and those pertaining to legislative action. I chose to take out legislative action in particular because it shows that government officials see this problem and are finding solutions to fix it, but does not contribute to why this is an issue and how to fix it societally.

View at Medium.com

https://medium.com/@achip/white-womens-education-3e7b40c09482

Favorites

There is beauty in this change, the grace and balance found in asymmetry. In two creatures from different species of vastly different size using three legs to move through life: her lack, my excess, this pairing of three.
Lambeth, Laurie Clements “The Three-Legged Dog Who Carried Me”

I do agree that students need to hear and absorb and deal with ideas that aren’t similar to their own. It’s one of the ways to truly gain intelligence. How can you learn if you stay in a bubble of what you believe if you can’t understand the things you don’t believe? But, I also agree that the students, who pay insurmountable funds to attend college, should have some sort of say in what their campus does. And if they fight back on certain things that they don’t like, does that truly mean they are weak and ignorant—closing their eyes and ears to all things scary?
Jennifer R. “Scared Safe”

The Effects of Education From The White Woman’s Point of View

The article that I feel gives the best overall insight to my topic is entitled “Does Teacher Diversity Matter in Student Learning?” written by Claire Cain Miller. Miller wrote this piece for the New York Times in September of 2018 and the issues at hand are still very relevant a year later. The overall problem at hand that this piece discusses it the lack of diversity amongst K-12 teachers, and the impact that predominantly white women teachers has on students that do not look like them. Research has shown that students perform better and have a higher interest in school when they have “mirrors”, or people that look like them that they can relate to and use as role models. This includes teachers that are the same race as their students, as well as the same gender. In addition to this finding, further research has shown that teachers sometimes treat students differently based on their own backgrounds and stereotypes. Negative stereotypes can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, which entails that having low expectations for these students will eventually come true. These effects can last with these students and stigmatized groups long after these experiences take place. Overall, there has been no negative effects of having nonwhite teachers, both on white students and students of color, but there have clearly been negative effects of having mainly all teachers that look the same.

This piece will serve as the background for my essay in that it gives researched facts about the effects of this lack of diversity and why it is a problem. It covers both the race and gender issue and how they both affect students of the opposite race or gender. In addition to the issues it covers, it explains how this issue turns into bigger issues and how they can be prevented.

I think this piece is interesting to those who are both informed of the topic and not. Due to the fact that I want to go into the education field, I was aware of the lack of diversity among teachers, but not the outstanding effects that it has on the students. I feel that even for those who are not aware of this issue, it is easy to follow and the results are impactful to the reader.

Not So Little

When reading Solnit’s piece, I couldn’t help but feel some sort of childhood connection with the argument she was making. Her point in that some, not all, men have a distinct way in which they talk to women is one that I have noticed from an early age, but only recently hear essays and articles about.

I grew up in an immediate family of my two brothers and I, and an extended family of majority male cousins, both older and younger than me. I have always been spoken to by family and friends as the “little girl” of the family, even now that I am 21 years old. While I understand that some family members speak to me in this way because I am one of the only girls, I’ve noticed how this can carry over into how they converse with me on educated and opinionated topics. This viewpoint on me solely because I am a female has led male family members, my dad and older uncles in particular, to view my thoughts on certain topics as incorrect or lead them to feel as though I do not know what I’m talking about. While there are many topics that I do need educating on, I have mainly noticed their need to stop me and explain is largely when it comes to my opinions. As a way to keep peace, I do not speak out about how this form of speech impacts my decision to add to family discussions or the fact that I then feel my opinions are incorrect.

“Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men.”

I instantly connected to this quote and thought of my dad and how many of our important conversations went. Whether it be about topics from school, worldly issues, how to best budget my money while in college, or any other conflicting views, his side was always explained to me and my side was deemed incorrect. While this can also be blamed on the age gap and my dad’s need to share his wisdom from experience, he explains his viewpoints differently to me than he would to my brothers. The tone is much more childlike and gentle, but in a way that feels like that is the only way I will understand what he is trying to say. Rather than stating his side and having a conversation, he backs up his claim and explains why mine is wrong. With peers of my age group or slightly older, both men and women, I have never experienced this sort of conversation. I would not imagine telling my own father or peers of my age that their opinion or mindset on an issue is wrong and these are the reasons why.

I understand that in my dad’s eyes I will always be his “little girl”, however I think there comes a time where you can keep this viewpoint and also understand that I am capable of making my own informed decisions, without needing to have the logic behind it being explained. I’d prefer to have conversations where we can both have our opinions, share them with each other, and not have one side be right or wrong, as he does with many other people.

P.S. love my dad he’s a great guy

Learn Your Place

When watching debates, I tend to keep an open mind and hear out both arguments before agreeing with one point of view. However in this debate, I was able to decide pretty early on which case was most compelling. I felt that within minutes of his speech, Baldwin was able to convey that the truth behind this topic is only visible to those who have experienced it, and those that allow themselves to be aware of it.

“Is the question hideously loaded, and then one’s response to that question – one’s reaction to that question – has to depend on effect and, in effect, where you find yourself in the world, what your sense of reality is, what your system of reality is. That is, it depends on assumptions which we hold so deeply so as to be scarcely aware of them.”

Whether one chooses to accept or deny the horrible mistreatment of African Americans in this country comes solely out of if that person has benefitted from this injustice or not. Wealthy white men and women who have been able to live out the “American Dream” are on the opposing side of Baldwin’s argument, due to the fact that in their realm of society, everything has worked out. To the rest of society, it is clear that there has been major flaws in our nation’s history and need to be called upon. To be untouched by these problems or to turn a blind eye to them is entirely in correlation with how that individual views the world, and specifically, his place in the world.

Baldwin is also able to effectively create a sense of responsibility in the room for those who are on the opposing side of his argument. To further prove that the “American Dream” that certain individuals have achieved is only possible through the expense of African Americans, Baldwin breaks down in specifics how this “dream” came to be a reality.

“*I* picked the cotton, *I* carried it to the market, and *I* built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing. The Southern oligarchy, which has still today so very much power in Washington, and therefore some power in the world, was created by my labor and my sweat, and the violation of my women and the murder of my children. This, in the land of the free, and the home of the brave. And no one can challenge that statement. It is a matter of historical record.”

By speaking in first person, Baldwin takes something that seems so distant to these people and makes it personal. He creates a sense of emotion by explaining, in detail, the suffering of real people within the African American community. This visual makes it impossible for people in the room to hide from what has been done and to deny responsibility of it. He is able to convey that all things created that constitute the “American Dream” are only made possible through the anguish of people just like him.There is no real sense of equality in this nation if this process is the only way to live out the “American Dream.” It is so clear that this “dream” is impossible without the expense of African Americans and there is no way to argue around it—it is a part of history that must be accepted in order to create change.

Love in red

Min-Zhan Lu discusses in her piece, “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle”, the various discourses of language and their impact on her and her writing. Lu begins by sharing her experience with multiple languages and their preferred audiences: Shanghai dialect with her servants, Standard Chinese at school, and English when at home with her family. Her family’s push to learn English was a means to ensure Lu and her sisters were well educated, as well as to keep Lu grounded from the attempts of Communist persuasion being taught at school. Therefore, this language was only to be spoken and practiced at home. While in school, Lu was regularly reinforced on the value of having pride in both the Chinese nation, as well as her political values. These two differing ideologies forced Lu to learn to read and write under certain discourses and for certain audiences. Early on in the piece, Lu shares the connections she finds between her two main languages and yet, how they differ. She brings up a reoccurring theme of “red” between both discourses and how she perceives it.

“One day I would be making a sentence at school: ‘The national flag of China is red.’ The next day I would recite at home, ‘My love is like a red, red rose.’…’Love’ was my love for my mother at home and my love for my ‘motherland’ at school” (Lu pg.439).

This quote was particularly striking to me in that Lu clearly emphasizes a huge parallel between not only her two languages, but the two identities that coincide with them. The word “red” has an entirely different connotation depending on the environment in which it is being taught in. In school, this word embodies the power of China and its pride in their politics. When learning this word in Standard Chinese, one was expected to know that these were the associations that went alongside it. This word in English, however, brought feelings of love and beauty in a sort of softer sense, one in which Lu compares to her mother. I find this one example of how a simple color can take on two entirely different meanings to Lu, yet still in some way show a connection between her two discourses, to encompass entirely Lu’s main argument of the accomplishments that came out of her complex learning experience. Lu is able to successfully and meaningfully bring together two discourses, by comparing them to a love she shares for each of them, while also keeping them separate upon necessary audiences, specifically by keeping those loves separate.

My Stuffed Animal

An object of mine that always makes me think of beauty in imperfection is my stuffed animal rabbit that I’ve had since my childhood. My rabbit would follow me everywhere I traveled: on long vacations, trips to the grocery store, and every night when I would go to sleep. With every journey my rabbit has been on, it has started to look less and less like an actual rabbit. It has become ripped, lost almost all of its stuffing, and rather than being short and round, it is now long and skinny. I’ve tucked my rabbit away in my closet for years now, but every now and then I stumble upon it when I clean and can’t help but feel all the memories of my childhood flood back. I think of all the family vacations, how each rip and tear got there, and of how this stuffed animal embodies my entire childhood in just one tangled object.

A particular quote that stood out to me while reading Lambeth’s piece was that of which discussed wabi sabi and its meaning. “Wabi sabi, the Japanese aesthetic philosophy closely tied to Zen Buddhism, insists upon asymmetry and imperfection, aware that these are signs of life’s impermanence and decay. In wabi sabi, fallen leaves may carry more meaning than those still on the tree…” (Lambeth, Three-Legged Dog). This quote makes me think of the impermanence of childhood I can see when looking at this stuffed animal, as well as the meaning that lies within it. I find that there is much more meaning in this torn stuffed animal than there could be in a perfectly stitched rabbit.