Ten-year-olds tackle ‘The Lie’ of demeaning stereotypes in video

Video source:  Washington Post

Albert Schweitzer (I believe it was in the "Teaching of Reverence for Life") wrote that we do harm to children -- and to our world -- when we encourage them to "grow out of" their natural early idealism.  When I circulated this video made by children speaking up against hate, Pansy Gee, recently retired teacher of 10-year-olds, sent this spontaneously eloquent and hopeful response:

I am pleasantly not surprised by the kids' reactions.  For the most part, kids are open- minded, blind to skin color, tolerant, and much more loving of their fellow man than adults.     The indignant reactions of children, when confronted with issues of prejudice or stereotypes is the one of the truest forms of social justice and  hope for the future.  It is when the adults in their lives deem that children are "old enough" to be "taught" about the "real world" that they begin to conform to their parents' world.  It is why I chose most of the books I did.  I wanted to open those lines of communication.  Sometimes I was not well liked by the parents. 

Reading those books about the prejudices of post-civil war times in Mildred Taylor's Friendship, the way the Okies were treated in California as depicted in the Cobblestone Magazine, or issues of personal freedom in The Giver and the discussions that ensued are what I miss about the classroom.  I am not just another adult voice that perhaps the kids would listen to.  I hope I am encouraging open minds, blindness to skin color, tolerance and love (or at least respect) for all. If children learned to read, write and talk skillfully and understand that we don't all have to agree on everything, their community, our world would be a bit more sane.  I hope teachers see the importance of reading REAL texts about REAL issues and give the boys and girls the opportunity to not just know the material, but to wrestle with it.  It's good to let them think through and struggle with the problems of their world. Teachers should give them chances to form opinions and to stand on the knowledge they're learning as support. Every teacher should have a classroom community where ideas are encouraged and can be exchanged safely, where minds can change more than once and no matter what-- as a class we care about each other! 

Educando Todos Nuestros Niños

Who are the children in our schools?  What does ‘diversity’ mean when we’re talking about educating children?

One person I rely on to teach me about the children, their families and their cultures – and the policies we need to give every child a powerful education, is Angela Valenzuela, whose blog consistently challenges our often limited vision for our schools and our teaching.   

A recent post on her blog, Educational Equity, Policy and Politics in Texas, shows the need to look behind the official “diversity” categories if we want to understand our students, their families and the ways they experience school.  Most recently, Valenzuela highlights important findings on the languages spoken by people in our country officially designated as “Hispanic.”  “English Proficiency on the Rise Among Latinos,” a report by the Pew Research Center on Hispanic Trends, shows that even the languages we speak, and use on a daily basis, can’t be automatically assumed by typical demographic designations such as age, educational attainment, or country of birth.  


I highly recommend the full report to anyone working in our schools or setting the policies that shape them.  These are just two of the interesting findings from their analysis of 35 years of Latinos in the US:

• "As of 2013, 73% of Hispanics spoke Spanish at home, a share little changed since 1980 (75%), but down from its peak of 78% in 2000. Nonetheless, the number of Hispanics who speak Spanish at home continues to grow, as the Hispanic population continues to grow."

• "Fully 95% of foreign-born Hispanics spoke Spanish at home in 2013....But among the U.S. born, this share has declined from 67% in 1980 to 60% in 2013." 

And of course I highly recommend Angela Valenzuela’s blog, always insightful and informative.

CINCO DE MAYO, or
Imagine how many teachers we could have hired with all that money they spent building that border fence!

All across the southwestern United States, previously known as Mexico, the fifth day of May, Cinco de Mayo, inspires parades, huge spreads of Mexican foods, margaritas of course, and vague explanations of some kind of independence day.   Actually, the day is special because the "they" is now "we." Mexicans -- both recent arrivals and those with generations of family history in "el norte" -- are, along with immigrants from Central America, becoming our new majority.   These children are the children in our schools, the coming face of the nation beyond this southwest region.

Indeed, we have much to celebrate -- and much to learn.

One cause for celebration:  finally, finally some dual language Spanish-English schools in Texas. Embarrassingly late, rarely fully funded, but immediately in high demand.

Another cause for celebration:  the always informative, insightful and unabashedly challenging blog by my colleague Professor Angela Valenzuela at the University of Texas-Austin.   A reliable and timely source for policy analysis (and monitoring of the Texas legislature), and today offering a story that explains what Cinco de Mayo is and is not, along with a creative celebration of the day by a group in Arizona.

Cinco de Mayo captures in one day the ambiguities and legacies of colonization, making us ask who is being colonized today? And who (and what) are the colonizers?   Here is one story, one answer:

"Now we make you ugly, my mother said...In the mirror I watched her move the piece of charcoal across my face.  It's a nasty life, she whispered. 
It's my first memory. She held an old cracked mirror to my face.  I must have been about five years old. The crack made my face look as if it had been broken into two pieces.  The best thing you can be in Mexico is an ugly girl."

With this powerful image, novelist Jennifer Clement introduces us to the lives of girls and women in rural Mexico, tenacious in their dreams, fierce in their mutual protection, and caught in the cross-border violence of US demand and Mexico's drug cartel supply chain.   The minute I finished reading Prayers for the Stolen, I read passages a second time to hear again the voices of the girls in the Guerrero region of Mexico.  (I won't give away the name of the narrator, which completely unexpectedly evokes the British royals.)   I added it to my course syllabus and bought copies to give away.

A poetic account of courage, fear, resilience, absurdity, and hope,  and a portrait of the long shadow of colonization that carries into the lives of the youth who are our neighbors, not across an international border, but down the street and in our classrooms.

I heartily recommend you rush out to your nearest independent bookstore and grab a copy of Prayers for the Stolen -- and let me know if it raised your hopes, made you angry,  and maybe sparked your imagination for ways we can take down those border walls, celebrate a shared history and imagine a more just future.