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Title: Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom by Lisa D. Delpit ISBN: 1-56584-180-8 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: February, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.71 (28 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Simplistic without really addressing issues at hand
Comment: "Hello Grandfather" is one scholar's perspective on the deficits of traditional education in the Alaskan Bush. The author, Lisa Delpit, often reflects back and draws comparison between several Native Alaskan cultures and her own African-American culture. Ms. Delpit addresses the issues of relevance, context, and decontextualization within the Alaskan Bush classroom.
My response to "Other People's Children" is going to be a fairly critical one. Through her writing, Ms. Delpit stumbled upon a few major pet peeves of mine: ignorance and shortsightedness. While I am sure Ms. Delpit researched her hypothesis well, she left out one very important element which would have surely impacted her point of view; actually teaching in the Bush. I, myself, have taught in Napakiak, Alaska, a fly-in village along the banks of the Kuskokwim River. My experiences there drastically changed my views of rural education and the many contributing factors which "make or break" educational effectiveness. I am always extremely irritated with people who tend to romanticize the reality of Bush life when they themselves have not actually lived there for any extended period of time. There is this tendency among the more affluent population to want to make reparations for exploitations past by justifying away behaviors today.
Delpit attempts to link the failures of traditional Alaskan public education on outsiders coming into villages and half hazardously educating Native children without any regard to custom or culture. This is a great fallacy for many reasons. Firstly, one of the greatest obstacles to achieving literacy in Alaskan villages today is not the student's focus on context. It's the ongoing movement that all children must first and foremost become fluent through the public schools in their native languages. For example, in the Lower Kuskokwim School district, the first critical years where connectedness of language takes hold is wasted on teaching kids Yup'ik that the parents could teach at home if they so choose. Instead, the kids are dropped into a Yup'ik Immersion Program where the teachers are not qualified. (By qualified, I am referred to the fact that the teachers had not graduated high school, were not fluent in Yup'ik themselves, and knew very little about educational process or strategies.) How can I say such politically incorrect things? Easily. I lived there and supervised the Yup'ik Immersion Program unlike Ms. Delpit.
Ms. Delpit does not ever address sociological concerns of wide-spread alcohol abuse, child abuse and neglect, poverty, drug/inhalant abuse, or the lack of opportunities in village communities. How one can possibly criticize a teacher's inability to reach their students without fully confronting those issues is absolutely confounding to me. Perhaps had Ms. Delpit spent less time talking to Grandfather Mountain she might have had time to brush up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Another constant source of confusion was Delpit's constant reference to her own experiences as a child within her African-American culture. Comparing rural Native Alaskans' cultural experiences to urban African-American cultural experiences is like comparing the proverbial apples and oranges. Both cultures are fantastically rich in perspective but being the receiving end of racism is not a leveling factor. Delpit repeatedly pointed to her own moments of revelation such as her mother stating Romper Room was only for white children. How does she parallel that moment of clarity with children who did not have television and were struggling with the daily challenges of subsistence living? How about the blind, generalized statement that at "white" universities that what you said was more important than how you said it? Delpit clearly has lead a sheltered existence is she honestly believes Caucasian people cannot read her body language or are not equally as offended at her subtly "rolling" her eyes.
Delpit comments towards the end of her paper, "Unfortunately, most Native Alaskan children do not have Native Alaskan teachers...". I would challenge Ms. Delbit to look deeper at that statement. Why is that? Are their cultural influences discouraging it from happening? I also have a story to share that a close Yup'ik friend told me while I lived in Napakiak.
A couple of years ago we had a girl go to school here. She was so smart. Everyone told her how lucky she was to be so smart. The girl studied hard and stayed in school. The year she was to graduate her teacher told her wonderful news. She had won a scholarship to go to college! When her grandfather, an elder, heard this news he did not celebrate with her. As the village elder, he refused to allow her to go. He said because she was so smart she was needed in her village. This wise old man could not see past the nose on his face.
Life in the village is not nearly as cut and dry as it seems. The race card is any easy one to play and often, a valid one. However, people are multifaceted and to ignore the factors in their lives which make each culture's experiences unique is a disservice to all. I wonder if Ms. Delpit is rolling her eyes now?
Rating: 5
Summary: A great easy read for all who care about children of today
Comment: Living and teaching in a multiethnic county such as SF, I found this book inspiring and eyeopening. I am guessing those of you who are not educated enough to read this book, (or better yet to pose an intelligent comment of the book...)should start with opening your eyes to the world of today and get out of your house more often. Thanks for such a good read!
Rating: 1
Summary: Don't buy into it...
Comment: First I will state that I am not anti-black. My principal is black, our elementary supervisor is black, and I teach in a school in which the majority of students is black. I do not teach black kids or white kids ... I just teach kids. I do agree with Delpit there should be differences in educational methods for low-socioeconomic students and high-socioeconomic students - regardless of race. That is basically where my agreement with Delpit ends. This book is very biased and anti-white. This book gives a very skewed view of white teachers. While I do agree that there are some white teachers who hold prejudices against black kids - and there are some black teachers who hold prejudices against white kids - it is not the majority as Delpit would have you believe.
Delpit denounces white teachers for thinking that black students are different from white students and then goes to great lengths and into great detail to specify just how different black children are. She seems to want teachers to act "black" to educate black children. She also seems to think that rules and regulations are a "white" practice.
Delpit implies that white teachers are racist and don't educate black children properly. In reality, white educators' hands are being tied because (as described by Gilbert Sewell):
"Shivering at the prospect of being called racist, some teachers are unable to hold nonwhite youngsters to strict academic account. As a result of all this, any teacher with exacting standards runs the risk of interference from students, parents, administrators, and colleagues, all of them ready to challenge the instructor's informed opinion. Not surprisingly, as more teachers withdraw from their traditional positions as standard-setters for a younger generation, many students grasp the fact that they have the power to defy, circumvent, or ignore adults in schools."
Delpit implies that white teachers cannot "control" black students. The idea that teachers have to "control" students is absolutely erroneous. It's easy to blame one's actions on someone else. The key to any civilized society is SELF-CONTROL. What happens to these children who need "control" when they have no one there to "control" them? Perhaps that is why (as Delpit states) that one in four black males is "involved with the prison system." Gilbert Sewell states:
"Effective learning environments require, first, self-control, respect for adults, and love of work on the part of young people. Modish adults who remain hostile or neutral to such primary values do the schools and children no good."
As far as student rights are concerned, Mr. Sewell states:
"...the never distant threat of lawsuits made school officials squirm at-or refuse to take-punitive action against even very disruptive or defiant students, especially if the administration was white and the student body nonwhite. Legal constraints on educators and the collateral hesitancy of adults in schools to enforce institutional rules became widely shared items of knowledge among young people. The most cynical of these students concluded correctly that no matter how annoying or depraved their conduct, school officials could not in practice deny them the "right" to go to school."
Far from being "racist" as Delpit asserts in this book, the feelings and beliefs she describes have more to do with class than race. According to Mr. Sewell:
"...urban middle-class whites have resolutely refused to send their children to schools where most pupils are black or Hispanic. Why? The reason is class much more than racial friction. Working-class and middle-class parents of any race generally insist that their children attend school with classmates raised in families where scholastic achievement and good manners are prized. They will not willingly transfer their children from high-achieving to low-achieving or from safe to unsafe schools, even when the government orders them to do so. Furthermore, they bitterly resent government fiats that seem to imperil their own child's future in order to provide opportunities for other people's children."
"Above all, urban schools have faced increasing numbers of lower-class students who have trouble learning. When frustrated or alienated, these pupils frequently disrupt classrooms, make schoolyards unsafe, and flamboyantly ignore middle-class educational values. Not unexpectedly, downtown districts have tried to accommodate these unhappy newcomers, gradually adapting to negative attitudes toward schooling. Many city educators, accustomed to home climates unsupportive of academic achievement, have introduced numerous schoolhouse social services to make up for parental inability or negligence, have taken ambivalent postures toward the value of "white culture," and have tolerated student behavior that middle-class parents find offensive or immoral."
Delpit complains about school standards for minorities, but, in reality, minorities have demanded different standards in such ways that it makes it practically impossible for schools to legally uphold high standards for every student. Sewell says:
"...making distinctions of any kind is likely to arouse the suspicion and anxiety of those who believe that their own interests will be jeopardized by the resulting standard. In a relativistic age standard-setting rarely occurs without complaints from individuals that guidelines are arbitrary or brutalizing. Many minority groups try to make the point that color-blind standards are discriminatory. Chagrined by inequalities and intimidated by pressure groups, many education leaders find it personally or politically impossible to install standards designed to make every individual try his best to achieve value or excellence against impartial or at least normative models."
"In schools [students] base their actions in the language of personal entitlements and rights; many are well versed in the limits on the powers of their educators. These students demand good grades for little achievement; in matters of discipline or possible failure, they always want another chance. When school personnel are not accommodating to individual wants, their aggressive challenges often lead to disruptions centered on alleged adult insensitivity."
All of the things that Delpit complains about in this book are things that came about because minorities demanded them.
All in all, it's best not to waste money on this book. It's more of the same arguments and postures that led to the state that schools are in today.
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