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! 

Re-posted from Diane Ravitch's blog

Parents, Educators, Advocates Demand Federal Protection of Student Privacy

Diane writes:  A coalition of parents, educators, and privacy advocates issued a statement in defense of student privacy, which is threatened by efforts to create a massive federal data base containing personally identifiable data.

BORDERS:  WALLS OR BRIDGES?
TEACHING THE US-MEXICO BORDER, Part 3

Image Source:
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/08/369383189/some-liberals-and-tea-partiers-unite-to-oppose-trade-deals

NAFTA, The TPP, and the “”Why Do We Have to Learn This?” Question!

It’s hard to think of anything more yawn-inducing for a social studies lesson than having to learn about a treaty.     The textbook formula for “treaty” has a sentence or two about the reason (the war ended, new trade routes were established, territorial disputes ended), the signers (the countries or warring parties, or maybe a president who made it happen, or two infamous enemies), and (if the paragraph is more than a few lines long), what happened afterwards.    The sterile textbook prose gives little indication of the fraught conditions and deeply held conflicts that led to the treaty, and even less hint that this “good” and maybe even “inevitable” treaty led to even greater negative consequences.  It’s signed, it’s done – on to the next “fact.”

Not so with NAFTA. And definitely not so with the TPP.    NAFTA, a treaty to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers between the US, Canada and Mexico, took effect in 1994, with claims of creating more jobs, reducing consumer prices, and dramatically improving the economy throughout Mexico.    Did “free trade” deliver on its promises?   Opponents of the TPP look at jobs in the US, poverty in Mexico, and say “No!”   NAFTA is one reason the TPP is being hotly debated by the current presidential candidates in the US and by environmental, labor and corporate groups in the countries involved.

Why spend some time this summer planning lessons about trade treaties?  Because, according to critics of the TPP, if it goes into effect, it could shift more US jobs to other countries, exempt corporations from a country’s laws protecting the environment and insuring the rights of workers, and put corporations “above the law” – beyond the financial regulations and tax policies of any country not favorable to that corporation’s profits.    A treaty for the 1%.

How to make sense of the proposed TransPacificPartnership  without a Ph.D. in economics, a law degree,  fluency in several Asian languages, and access to the documents produced in great secrecy and not yet released to the publics who will be affected by the treaty’s provisions?  Just because something’s important to know about doesn’t mean it will be easy – or even practical – to try to teach it.

Once again, Rethinking Schools comes to the rescue! The Line Between Us, their exciting collection of curriculum resources on the US-Mexico border, takes NAFTA as the touchstone for a comprehensive study of the ways individual lives on both sides of the border are shaped by a treaty that is anything but a dry fact in a history book.  NAFTA, designed in theory to transcend national borders, has instead been a creator of barriers, a source of new conflicts, and enforcer of new obstacles to economic development and personal mobility.

The resources and activities that enable students to step into NAFTA, its claims and provisions, and into the lives of workers and communities transformed by this trade agreement, are powerful for understanding the “border” from multiple points of view. And these lessons give us a template for helping kids – especially those who’ll be old enough to vote this fall – feel informed enough to ask serious questions about the still-pending TPP.

About the curriculum resources:  The NAFTA section of The Line Between Us includes a summary of NAFTA’s provisions, analyses by the Institute for Policy Studies (an invaluable resource), Bill Moyers’ powerful video Trading Democracy on the ways corporations, not workers, are empowered by NAFTA.   Necessary background. But what students will connect with are the personal stories of Mexican farm laborers, stories that then make an explanation of neo-liberalism by an immigration and refugee rights group worth understanding.  And the statement of “How We See the World,” the voice of Zapatistas in Chiapas on the degradation of work and workers’ conditions under NAFTA , a powerful motivator not only to pay attention to “trade agreements,” but to take all of their claims as questions to be investigated.  Questions like “who will profit from this?” and “who will be harmed?”

Image source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlHxrGdzoJ8

But just reading these compelling sources is not the same as stepping into the world according to NAFTA:  for that, this curriculum provides role play activities in which students can step into the persona of a US worker whose job was taken by his company to low-wage Mexico, a Mexican farm laborer whose pay has decreased when US produce is dumped on international markets, a young maquiladora worker who risks kidnapping and murder to work in a US-owned factory along the border, or a US capitalist who may have wished to keep jobs in his home state but can’t resist the profits NAFTA makes so attractive if he moves his factory across that national border.  Students research their character’s lives before and after the treaty, examine what reasoning might have prompted the treaty’s provisions and promises, and explore first-hand accounts of post-NAFTA life. “Border,” “immigration,” “free trade” become not facts in a textbook or slogans in a campaign but realities in people’s lives.     

What is “free” about “free trade”?  Did NAFTA make economies stronger and lives better for people in three North American countries? Or is it an agreement “designed by and for transnational corporations and investors?”  Can workers move freely across borders? Or are borders “open” only to the movement of capital, of wealth?  

The Line Between Us was published in 2004.  Yet its lessons could not be more timely. The wage scales debated in the role play are those being debated today.  The questions of who has power, who decides, who bears the costs and who profits are not test questions: they are the questions about the TPP that students can learn to analyze – and maybe answer – if they step into the world according to NAFTA.

See my next posts for compelling novels and some non-fiction titles that are fine literature on their own and sure to bring the “border” to life for your students.

BORDERS:  WALLS OR BRIDGES?

Honoring Families and their Funds of Knowledge

The visit to Houston this spring by a Danish educator coincided with dramatic news of refugees, campaign threats by a US presidential candidate to “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it,” and debates in the Danish parliament to about whether Denmark would confiscate the personal possessions of Syrian (and other) refugees wanting to settle in their country.   I wanted Professor John B.Kresjler of  Aarhus University to see classrooms where teachers do not see children as “the other,” even if those children and their families come from far away.  Especially if they are “not from here.”

So of course our first stop was the Gabriela Mistral pre-K center in southwest Houston where two amazing teachers have created a rich language laboratory where very young children learn English in a nurturing environment where their own language – and their family’s story – are treasured assets to learning.

The Oral and Written Language Lab is a collaboration between Rice University  (Rice “Owls”!) and the Houston Independent School District, a next step in the Classroom Storytelling work of Rice’s School Literacy and Culture Project.

In a district where 62% of the children are Hispanic and a large percentage of those are themselves immigrants or the children or immigrants (from all over the world), the pre-K years are the perfect time to excite children about learning and about the power of words.

The Mistral OWL Lab is in no way “subtractive.”   Instead, classroom teacher Lori Espinoza and her Rice colleague Debra Paz, team up to make the classroom as inviting to parents as it is to the children.   From the first day of school, Lori and Debbie invite parents to write a note to their children telling them their aspirations for them, notes posted with a photo of the child and family and kept all year. A classroom map pinpoints the home country of each family.   The parents are the acknowledged experts on their children and on their family’s hopes for that child. The OWL lab embodies these teachers’ deep knowledge of research on language learning and on children’s development in spirited, well-crafted and enormously fun activities.

I was thrilled to bring Professor Krejsler to meet these amazing teachers, see the children’s enthusiasm for play and books and story.   He already knew of our state’s disastrously inadequate and inequitable funding of schools; he was well-acquainted with Houston’s role in exporting the standardization of schooling beyond its borders in the No Child Left Behind Legislation.   I wanted him to know that every day there are classrooms where borders are being broken down and bridges are being built:  between newcomers and local families, between families and the children’s school experience, between good research and learning as children experience it, between children’s imaginations and the stuff of schooling.

I’m grateful to Lori, Debbie and their principal, Ms. Troutman, for so generously welcoming Professor Kresjler into the OWL lab. I knew they would because that’s the welcome they extend every day to the youngest children and the families that brought them to our community.   We have much to learn from the European (and other) countries who are creating new opportunities from refugees from war zones.   I hope Professor Krejsler is already sharing the story of the OWL lab with his colleagues:  evidence that even with all the hate-filled talk of walls, or maybe in response to such hostility, it is possible to teach in ways that build bridges and open the whole world to our children.

BORDERS:  WALLS OR BRIDGES?

TEACHING THE US-MEXICO BORDER, Part 1

I am a shameless promoter of Rethinking Schools, the organization itself, its publications, and especially its advocacy for social justice as a central component of what we teach, not as an add-on or special project.

That’s what makes The Line Between Us such a valuable resource for making the US border with Mexico not a political slogan of fear and exclusion, but a dynamic feature of our country’s history and a signifier of opportunities for asymmetrical conflicts or cross-national peace.

For teachers spending part of their summer preparing lessons in history, literature, world studies and cultures for their fall courses during this volatile and (in some cases) anti-immigrant election cycle, I urge you to grab a copy of this book.

The Line Between Us does not shy away from controversy.   The volume, authored by social studies educator Bill Bigelow, brings together historical sources, personal narratives, poetry, photographs and policy documents  for “teaching about the Border and Mexican Immigration.”  Unlike textbooks that sanitize the effects of colonization or simplify “history” through a single lens, The Line Between Us gives students ways to listen to, to think about, and to ask smart questions about this contested, emotionally and politically charged area.

All of Rethinking Schools publications – its journals and especially its curriculum publications, are respectful of teachers’ knowledge and of teachers’ role in engaging students in meaningful thought based on multiple credible and intellectually rich sources of information. 

Today’s headlines carry stories of “illegal aliens” crossing the Rio Grande River by night, or hidden in freight trucks coming through border check points, the “invasion” coming up from south of “the border.”  The Line Between Us shows that current  “border” to be  historically constructed, specifically constructed in the 19^th century by “invaders” coming not from the south, but from the north and east – Americans under US President Polk using military force, as well as economic pressure, to add a huge section of Mexico (yes, a section of the nation of Mexico) to US territory.   (Imagine if Canada decided it wanted Microsoft and Seattle, so it sent the Mounties to take Washington state!)

I can only imagine how shocked many of our students will be to see the book's maps that show the Mexico of 1830 and the much smaller Mexico of today after the original “border” was violated and moved to its present configuration along the Rio Grande. The accompanying historical analysis explains how thousands of miles of border was shifted, dramatically altering two nations and their futures.  Rethinking our mental borders of territory, of “the other,” of histories as constructed and chosen and resisted, makes The Line Between Us  uniquely valuable for studying the US border with Mexico and for giving us a framework for examining the choices and forces behind other “facts” in our history books and in our politicians’ claims.

My next posts will highlight several of the activities the authors have developed to engage students in seeing the border through the eyes of those who have enacted the policies that govern it and those who live with the consequences of those policies.

If you are one of the hundreds of teachers whose teaching of the US-Mexico border has been informed by The Line Between Us, I hope you’ll share your experiences – and your those of your students – in the Comments section here.

Measuring Inequities:  Education ‘Gaps’ in US Cities

Just in case anyone you know still believes that the claims of the No Child Left Behind “raised academic standards” and “closed the [racial] achievement gap,” an important new report by Next America gives stark evidence that the gaps not only persist, but are widest in those cities that are otherwise “doing well.”

Next America drew on data from 150 metropolitan areas to analyze high school graduation attainment and undergraduate degree attainment by city.   The gaps between attainment by whites and Hispanics and those between whites and African Americans are represented in interactive graphs.

Although the persistence of these gaps may not be surprising to anyone aware of the growing disparities of wealth and poverty in our country (an issue not addressed in this report), several findings are worth highlighting:  Some of the “narrow” gaps between whites’ educational attainment and that of blacks are due to very low attainment by whites, not rising attainment by African Americans in the same city.   

The political and cultural contexts are beyond the scope of the Next America study, but need to be filled in if we are to create schools, and communities, where all children can thrive.  For example, many of the cities with low African American and Hispanic educational attainment are in Florida, where claims of successful education reform under Jeb Bush’s governorship have led other states to adopt Florida’s “A to F” grading system for schools and reliance on standardized accountability and charter chains for “reform.”   The starving of public schools and public services by legislatures and conservatives in Congress are complicit in these gaps, but, again, not analyzed in this study.

In the words of the report, 

• Big disparities define Sunbelt metropolitan areas rapidly adding jobs and population, such as Houston (where 41 percent of whites but only 24 percent of African-Americans and 12 percent of Hispanics hold college degrees).
• In many cases, the gaps are smallest only in cities that are struggling to attract and hold college graduates of any race: Of the 67 metro areas with the smallest disparities between white and black college-completion levels, about three-fourths rank in the bottom half of college attainment among adult whites.
• The gap in attainment between adult whites and African-Americans is much lower at the high school level than the college level. Though wider differences remain with Hispanics, the picture for them also looks brighter than at the post-secondary level.

The Next America report focuses on the implication of these “gaps” for the future of our economy.  The larger issue is whether our democracy can survive – and thrive – with so many of our youth excluded from the education they need for their personal development and their empowerment as citizens.

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.