I was most struck this week by the end of Brantlinger’s essay, “Who Wins and Who Loses?”, where Bratlinger describes an “imaginative” way “to bridge the great divide between the social classes.” What follows is a description of “families” composed of students and adults that are used to prepare students for a “high stakes exam”. While it is easy to identify the source of my immediate feelings on high stakes exams, I am more struck by a connection to a recent article I read about Google’s understanding of successful teams through its “Project Aristotle”. In this project Google executives explain that the best teams are not necessarily composed of the best workers — instead the strongest teams are those that allow space for process and that share clear goals while being fully present as individuals within a collaboration. I am left wondering about the ways in which systems of power, especially noted this week in race and class, foreclose on individuals’ possibilities of being collaborators with valuable investments in their own education. By valuing these individuals emotionally, physically, and intellectually with resources, presence, time and experiences, educators can expand their own understandings while nurturing learners from a variety of lived experiences and identities.
All posts by clare hammoor
‘The burden of acting white’
Sadowski’s examination of Fordham and Ogbu’s understanding of “acting white” includes descriptions of black students’ “strategies to negotiate between racial group loyalty and academic achievement.” While Fordham and Ogbu often see this notion manifest in students “not trying”, “skipping school” and “maintaining a low profile”, I wonder if the requirement of dress shirts, slacks and ties forces students’ bodies to act white in conjunction with other school-driven forces. I am reminded of Foucault’s idea of “docile bodies” — those that are easily manipulated by the state. I wonder how certain uniforms, often those seen in charter schools, often restrict movement and access to the body thus forcing some notions of whiteness (stillness, dis-embodiment in the classroom, etc) upon students. I also wonder how these restrictive outfits may produce oppositional results as they are often uncomfortable — forcing student to squirm inside. This moment of discomfort within a paternalistically prescribed uniform is but one example of “the burden of acting white.”