THE EDUCATION SYSTEM AND STRUCTURES OF POWER
Students will demonstrate understandings of the historical and present structures of education and the significance of schools as a cultural institution within a larger system of power.
The public education system has a long history of perpetuating inequality and serving corporate interests. This comes in many forms: redlining pushing students in lower socioeconomic class neighborhoods out of wealthy, resourced school districts; private textbooks from education companies deciding what students learn in the classroom; and "Americanizing" Native American students. In all cases, the interests and identities of students and teachers are not the priority in education policy, state curriculum or school regulations. This objective allowed me to reflect on how my school experience came from a place of privilege and think about how I will work to dismantle these systems in my future work.
.png)
Reproducing Cycles of Inequality: Social, Cultural and Economic Capital
EDUC 34000 Social and Cultural Foundations of Education
In this reflection I analyzed three texts: Ladson Billings, From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools, Spring, The Economic Goals of Schooling and Tieken, The Topography of Race.
In this assignment I was also able to takes these texts and reflect on my own privilege that I experienced in K-12 classrooms and beyond. When thinking about how students are given opportunity I often think about learning levels and how students are separated into their classes. In my school district, this happened in sixth grade, so the potential of students to be placed in Learning Beyond Grade Level classes is based on their elementary school performance. From my experience there isn’t always that much mobility from that point through the rest of their education experience. These LBGL classes usually have the more experienced or qualified teachers, and more effort is placed their by the middle school and high school because the town prides itself on high test scores and AP testing. This approach to learning furthers what Spring discussed as cycles of inequality in schools dependent of social, cultural and economic capital.
Multicultural Education Enhances Literacy
EDUC 10200 Reading Foundations
For this assignment I read an article focused on children’s responses to a picture book read-aloud of Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly and analyzed the connections between the content of this article and the content of the other resources (theory/research/practical in class experiences or informal readings) rom our class to explain how to use the teachings of Smith and Rosenblatt to help me better understand what happened in this research and how it applied to the developmental stages of the children in the class who read the Malcom X text. This related to the SLO because I was able to explore how teaching kids about race and the history of segregation and discrimination is critical to young readers and learners. The article describes that many people believe that kids do not see race until they are told to, which is not true. Race is pervasive and kids notice it in their day to day life. Having conversations about race in school gives students and teachers the opportunity to dismantle racist beliefs and have candid conversations, rather than suppressing these ideas and leaving students in the dark about race and identity.