One of the problems cited with public school systems is that they cater to a very specific kind of person. It upholds the norms of the white middle class. Basically this means that the kind of authority and the kind of language that a white middle class family would use is the norm in the classroom. For example, here are two kinds of authority, both of which I'm sure everyone is familiar. There's the upper middle class, docile mother who says to her children, "Do you want to take your bath now?", which her children understand to mean they are supposed to do it. It's not really a question, it's a command, but it's veiled to make her feel less authoritative. Then there's the other kind. There's a working, lower class mother who comes home and says "Get your butt in that bath now". Her commands are stated as commands. If she were to ask a question, her kids would understand it as a real question, not as a veiled command. When her kids go to school and have a teacher who phrases commands as questions, they misunderstand it as an option, and get labelled as misbehaving. Obviously these examples are not absolute and are not meant to represent entire groups of people or exact scenarios, they are just examples. The language example is similar. Think about how your city friends talk, and your country friends, and your rich friends, and your poor friends, etc. Everybody talks differently, but the "right" way to talk is the way the "most" people talk, which is white, middle class language. For anyone who doesn't naturally talk that way, they can encounter problems with school by constantly having their language corrected.
So because of all this, there is a gap, something most people have heard of. Which is, that statistically, poor and/or minority students tend to do worse in school than middle class and/or white students. This is because the school is not designed for those students, and so they have more difficulties, and fall behind. Something should be done to help this situation, because if a student is left disadvantaged in school, it can affect their ability to function in the "real" world as well, in terms of jobs, etc., if only because it sometimes means they can't get a degree. It also just isn't fair to ask people to spend 13 years of their lives struggling through an institution that isn't designed for them to succeed.
So the question is: how do you bridge the gap between "them & us" if you have an "us-centered" curriculum?
I'd say, you don't. if the curriculum continues to be suited for only one type of person, then the other types will all continue to fail, no matter what. So let's assume we all agree, we should throw out the "us" curriculum, and start over, so we can bridge this learning gap. What do you replace it with? How do you design a school system that will actually put everyone on even playing ground? How do you establish a "right" or a "wrong" answer without catering to some norm or another? Is there really any way to account for every possible individual without rendering the education system completely useless? And if all that is impossible, is it okay to keep plowing ahead with the us-centered curriculum and let that gap keep getting wider?
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well i was confused as a kid because my mom would "ask" me to do something that i had to do and my dad would yell at me to do something. either way when i got to school i knew what the teacher meant. and not all lower class parents talk that way.
as far as the gap, there is proper english. People from the lower class confuses slang and proper english, people from the middle class know the difference and know how they are supposed to talk and write in class. its not just a race or class issue. most parents, from all classes, know what proper english is and should teach their kids the difference between slang and proper english.
I agree with you. Everyone does know proper English. We just choose to be ignorant. People should stop trying to hide behind these barriers simply because THEY'RE under the impression that this group of peope doesn't do "this" or "that". That won't get rid of stereotypes. Not like anything will. Hmm...if thats' your idea of what a typical non-white or black family is like, then I'd take the proper-speaking, loving white one anyday.
well my parents were definately not lower class...but they weren't upper class either. we were pretty much right smack in the middle. They made too much money to qualify for financial aid, and yet not enough to pay for college (lol) but I remember my parents saying "alright, wash up, it's time for dinner" or "I need you girls to set the table tonight" or "it's time to get ready for bed" It was not a question...but they didn't bark order at us either. They respectfully told us what was expected of us and we were expected to respond with the same respect. My sister and I both had a very easy time understanding our instructors in school...even if the directions were phrased as a question (although I don't remember many teachers saying "alright now, who wants to write an essay?" lol)
How do not white mothers talk?
In what way should the teachers talk to accomodate all students?
It's the accumulation of simple things. Something as small as, for example, where I'm from I say pop, but where I am now, people say soda. The more structured the setting I'm in here, the more "wrong" I feel when I use the word my family uses. So it can be just small things, like different words for the same thing, or ways of addressing each other (very casually vs. very formally), or different ways of structuring sentences. The same thing with the way people act. Lots of small things that add up to make people feel out of place. But you don't have to be white to talk the way "white middle class culture" talks or acts, it's just a norm set by that group. You also can be white middle class, and not talk or act in that norm. It's just about how standardizing the norm of one part of society, and calling it the "right" way, makes everything else seem "wrong". And how do you solve that, to accomodate all students? I have no idea. That's the point of this blog.