Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route -Jeannie Oakes

• Practice
• Tracking
• Segregation
• Abilities
• Skills
• Educational Levels
• Schooling

Jeannie Oakes argues that tracking in schools is inappropriate and belittles all students below high-ability learning levels. She also argues that high-ability learners achieve just as well when they are mixed with all levels and the average and low-ability students achieve above their normal averages.

1. "In low-ability classes, for example, teacher seem to be less encouraging and more punitive, placing more emphasis on discipline and behavior and less on academic learning. Compared to teachers in high-ability classes, they seem to be more concerned about getting students to follow directions, be on time, and sit quietly. Students in low-ability classes more often feel excluded from class activities and ten to find their classmates unfriendly." (Page 170)
2. "The quality of classes for average students usually falls somewhere between the high and low-class extreme. For example, in average classes, many teachers expected relatively little of students." (Page 179)
3. "Taken together, these typical differences begin to suggest why tracking can and often does work well for top students. Start by providing the best teachers, a concentration of the most successful students and sometimes even the lowest class size. Ass special resources, a sense of superior academic mission, perhaps a parent support group, and these students will get the best education in town." (Page 179)

I really enjoyed reading this piece from Oakes. It was persice and direct. I have never heard of this tracking method before. It's interesting to think teachers and professional educators would even think of separating each level of ability into different classes. I feel like that is complete segregation. As Oakes explains, tracking only caters to the high-ability learners and belittles the rest of the different levels. I feel that in a classroom each student contributes to class no matter what each child's level is.

Teaching to Change the World -Jeannie Oaks and Martin Lipton

• Support
• Public Schools
• White Privilege
• Racial Privilege
• Educating
• Myths
• Metaphors
• Ideologies
• Inequality
• Merit
• Change
• Tradition
• Action
• Hope

Jeannie Oaks and Martin Lipton argue that today's educators must stay updated with the newest materials to teach in order for their students to succeed in their schooling.

Oaks and Lipton explain how schools today have to change. They use a metaphor for describing schools when they explain, school is like an assembly line or a factory. They portray a forceful environment and show no encouragement. Students today are looked at as customers instead of individuals. This type of institute is very problematic because different children have different learning styles, every students is not the same. This makes a child feel distant and unnecessary, making them feel like the teachers are just there to teach and if the student is not completely there, they do not care. The language in which we use to talk to students really impacts the relationships and settings we provide for the school community.

Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us -Linda Christensen

• Secret Education
• Accepted Knowledge
• Stereotypes
• Cartoons
• Media
• Television

Linda Christensen argues that children's cartoons, movies, and literature are the most influential genre towards young people send them stereotypical messages before they understand the meaning.

1. "Early in the unity, I show Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, that depicts all Arabs with the same face, same turban, same body - and they are all thieves swinging enormous swords. " (page 130)
2. "Have you ever seen a black person, an Asian, a Hispanic in a cartoon? Did they have leading roles or were they a servant? what do you think this is doing to your child's mind? Women who aren't white begin to feel left out and ugly because they never get to play the princess." (page 131)
3. "In Daffy Duck, the absence of female characters in many of the older cartoons. When women do appear, they look like Jessica Rabbit or Playboy centerfolds - even in many of the new and improved children's movies." (page130)
4. "In Cinderella, happiness means getting a man, and transformation from wretched conditions can be achieved through consumption - in their case, through new clothes and a new hairstyle." (page 133)

I really enjoyed reading Christensen's piece. At first I was a little skeptical, thinking that she was blaming racism and stereotypes on cartoons, how could that be possible. But after I finished reading Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us I realized her argument was completely true and she had all the facts to prove it. After Christensen analyzed a few cartoons, I started thinking of every show I use to watch when I was little, to see if I could pick out her patter of stereotypical cartoons. Sure enough, I could state stereotypes for many of the shows I use to watch. For example, Boy Meets World, this show promoted relationships at the age of 5 and popularity gets you into parties. It was weird thinking that all the TV shows, movies, and media that I was brought up to believe was sending such messages out to children without even seeing the slightest signs of them doing it.

Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community -Dennis Carlson

• Absent
• Invisible
• Silent
• The "Other"
• Gayness
• Homosexual Orientation
• Gay Identity
• Socially Accepted
• School Community
• Public Education
• Scared

Denis Carlson argues that these practices, in the school community, are increasingly hard to sustain and that public schools may play an important role in helping build a new democratic, multicultural community, one in which sexual identity is recognized, in which inequities are challenged, and where dialogue across difference replaces silencing and invisibility practices.

1. "The first of these may be associated with the notion of a "community of interest." As the idea of a cohesive, monolithic community is collapsing, new social movements of identity are forming their own, relatively autonomous communities, speaking their own discourses."
2. "A second emergent discourse on community in America is that associated with the new right and cultural neoconservatism. This is a discourse about recapturing a romanticized lost American community, a "Father Knows Best" community where authority was respected, everybody "knew their places" and culture was homogeneous."
3. "A third discourse on community to emerge over the past decade or so in America is associated with the notion of a community of difference and diversity-what I will call a democratic multicultural community. "

I am completely confused. I am reading this essay over and over again but not comprehending his words. I think what Carlson is saying is that homosexuality is not the "normal" sexual orientation or is not the socially accepted way of living. I feel like he is comparing the white, middle class, heterosexual, male to the black, working class, homosexual, female to depict the image of homosexuals and how they are faced with the same disadvantages as the person of color is. Carlson says that the "normal" image in the American community is "Father Knows Best" and this is what is being taught in public school. The image of an American family including a father, mother, and children; never two mothers or two fathers. I feel like Carlson is describing homosexuals just like Johnson and McIntosh described men and women of color. Any issues involving either topic is silenced and overlooked. This includes education on these topics in schools and by parents.

Rethinking White Privilege

Yes, definitely! To be honest I never thought about "white privilege" or anything else we discuss in class. I understood racism and things like that, but going into detail and actually confronting these issues was never addressed in any class I have taken. If never speaking about white privilege is ignoring it, then yes, I was taught to ignore it.

Rethinking Aria

Yes I completely missed this one. Now that we talked about it in class I believe he argues that although it was necessary for him to learn English so he could succeed in his education and future, he did not need to forget about his primary language and customs he once loved.

Aria -Richard Rodriguez

• Bilingual / Second Language
• Students
• Family's Language
• Spanish
• English
• Americanization
• Embarrassed / Afraid
• Silence
• Public Language
• Private Language
• Individuality
• Classroom Language
• Language at Home
• Respect
• Education
• Comfort
• Voice / Tone
• Meaningful
• Understand
• Hatred of American Sound

Richard Rodriguez argues that English should not be the only public language taught in schools and white people of power need to recognize, accept and teach each student a second language so individuality is not lost.

1. "What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right and the obligation to speak the public language of los gringos. The odd truth is that my first grade classmates could have become bilingual...more easily then I" (p. 34)
2. "Again and again in the days following, increasingly angry, I was obliged to hear my mother and father: "Speak to us en ingles." Only then did i determine to learn classroom English" (p. 36)
3. "We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness. Our house would be empty of sound" (p. 36)

After reading "Aria" it left me feeling sad for Rodriguez. Reading about how he didn't feel like an individual anymore made realize that many students today must also feel the same. Feeling like they are being forced to only speak English and forget about their original and familiar language. I think it is very important to make each student comfortable in your classroom and bilingual education would be the perfect way to start. With many of today's students speaking a second language, I would imagine it would mean a lot to bilingual students if one day some of their classes were taught in their language. Forcing the English speaking child to learn a second language while at the same time recognizing other equally important languages.