southland

Brutal scenes of racially-motivated violence are juxtaposed with beautiful moments of tenderness, passion, and humanity in Southland, Nina Revoyr’s second novel. Set in 1994 Los Angeles, but rife with flashbacks to the 1930s, 1940s, and especially the 1960s, she evokes an LA of neighborhood bbqs, corner markets, bowling alleys, and community centers. Japanese-American, African-American, European-American—they all live and work (and sometimes love) together, though not all the time and certainly not with equal access to resources and rights. Her accounts of the Japanese internments during World War II and the 1965 Watts riot—the events in Watts are the true centerpiece of the book—are written in a journalistic, matter of fact manner and serve to put the present day in perspective. With all this going on, a lesser author might lose track of the threads that hold it all together. Revoyr stays on track, telling a powerful story, full of poetic and at times gritty detail.

And it is in the detail that Revoyr excels. Whether it is a character’s beautiful, tapered fingers or the blood soaking a white shirt after a policeman’s beating, such details bring the narrative alive. Her research, both historical and personal, is meticulous, leading me to think Revoyr could write non-fiction with flair. However that form might suit her, novels allow her to reach an audience that doesn’t usually read non-fiction and reach them with a story that she clearly thinks should be told. It’s a personal story and also one of injustice and pain and denial of opportunity for people in a U.S. that proclaims itself the land of the free. Southland reminds us that we can’t run from our personal or cultural history and that, in case you forgot and despite what some seem to imply, the struggle against prejudice and injustice is not over.

pedagogy of the oppressed continues to be relevant and revolutionary

In his forward to Paulo Freire’s classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Richard Shaul writes, “There is no such thing as a neutral educational process” (emphasis in the original). I take this as a given, and it is important to make this assumption explicit and to call attention to it in a time that is seeing increased emphasis on the “outcomes” of education, as well as increased calls for standardization of those outcomes. Standardized goals for students and schools imply a neutral standard and process that applies to every student, every teacher, every administrator, and every school or college. I maintain that such standardization is illogical and ill-considered. Further, standardized outcomes are ethically wrong, because they perpetuate the inequities and injustices of our already unequal educational system and society. Racism, sexism, classism, and other systems of oppression continue to be strong forces in our government, in our schools, in our jobs, in our doctor’s offices, on the streets—indeed, in every aspect of our lives. This does not mean that we should have no standards at all; nor does it mean that we should hold different people to different standards—that is yet another form of injustice. It does mean that we should understand our standards as situated within an unjust system and that we should work together with our students and the people in our lives to create standards that make sense in each situation and time. One standard does not apply in all situations.

Published in 1970, Freire’s book of political, philosophical, and, pedagogical thought is (unfortunately) still seen as revolutionary—and it should be, because, if taken seriously and incorporated into our educational system, Freire’s ideas would help dismantle the inequities and systems of oppression that underpin our society. The book is a complex and at times dense read, but mostly because it is so firmly rooted in the context of his time and place. Freire was born in 1921 in Brazil to middle-class parents who were greatly affected by the 1929 world depression. Thus, the young Freire learned first-hand about poverty and injustice. Right after World War II he began to espouse a form of liberation theology and became involved in adult literacy education, partly because being able to read was a condition for permission to vote. He continued the work into the early 1960s, but in 1964 a military coup forced him to leave Brazil and he did not return until 1980. So, even though Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published (in Spanish and English) while Freire was in the U.S., its spirit, its philosophy, and all its examples are of Brazil and his work there.

I will not attempt to summarize his arguments here, but I want to bring out, and hopefully clarify, one important point of misconception about Freire’s dialogical method and about Critical Pedagogy, which is greatly influenced by Freire and his work. In addition, I briefly want to discuss Freire’s attempt to synthesize theory and practice.

The misconception about Freirean thought I hear most often seems to be about the difference between an approach or philosophy of teaching and a method of teaching. By my reading, Freirean pedagogy is definitely an approach, not a method. What he discusses and advocates for is a way of engaging students and teachers in a process by which they problematize and grapple with the world in which they live. How that is done is not proscribed—only that it is done. Naturally, engaging with our world and with each other often involves discussion—dialog—but Freire does not preclude lecturing or any other teaching style. He asks only that any teaching method be in the service of the goal of helping students and teachers to process and name their world, thereby creating and understanding that world more fully for themselves.

When people suggest that Critical Pedagogy is only about students teaching themselves and others, is only about group work, is only about discussion and never about lecture, they are limiting Freire’s “dialogical” process to literal dialog only. That is, they are focusing on dialog as a method, rather than as an approach or philosophy. There are no magic pills that will make every classroom great and every teacher perfect. There is no one way to help all students learn and succeed; to look for one is folly. Freire knew that and so does every teacher who is honest with himself or herself. Instead, Freire tries to provide a philosophy that will promote the success of every teacher and every student everywhere, because it provides a framework for each classroom to define itself and its relationship to the world and to the subject it approaches.

Having talked to a lot of teachers, I feel safe in saying that most teachers do not have a consciously developed philosophy of teaching or careful theory of dialogical or democratic pedagogy (if you disagree, I’d love to hear about it). This is true even for the many teachers who practice Critical Pedagogy or variations of it. For Freire, this is a form of “activism”—“action for action’s sake,” to the “detriment of reflection.” The opposite extreme is “verbalism” or talking and reflection “deprived of its dimension of action”; verbalism turns words into “idle chatter . . . into an alienated and alienating ‘blah.’” For Freire, neither end of the spectrum is adequate or even good at all without the other end; true education, real liberation, and genuine revolution is the synthesis of theory and practice. Only “reflection and action” or “praxis” can truly transform reality; praxis is the “source of knowledge and creation.”

Thus, Freire argues for the necessity of theory, that we put that theory into practice, and that we then reflect on our experience to modify the theory and/or form new theory. Those of us who practice our teaching without a coherent, explicit philosophy, take note.

As the book’s title suggests, oppression and how we might combat it is a central theme in the book:

This, then is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. . . . Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to “soften” the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity.

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own “effort,” with their “courage to take risks.” If others do not have more, it is because they are incompetent and lazy, and worst of all is their unjustifiable ingratitude towards the “generous gestures” of the dominant class. Precisely because they are “ungrateful” and “envious,” the oppressed are regarded as potential enemies who must be watched (emphasis in the original).

[T]he pedagogy of the oppressed . . . must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (emphasis in the original).

These are important words to remember. They are also remarkably relevant today and in the United States. I see the truth of these words in the privilege and power I possess, in the values that our consumer culture espouses, in the continued oppression of women, people of color, and of all people who vary from the normative “ideal” in whatever way. I see it also in our foreign policy, as our government continues to treat most other countries—especially those populated primarily by non-whites—as potential cheap labor sources, natural resource wells, markets in which to sell our products, and/or potential threats to our possession-based culture. The rhetoric has literally been “they want what we have” and we must protect ourselves from that “threat.”

It is a sad fact that Pedagogy of the Oppressed continues to be relevant and revolutionary. At the same time, I take inspiration from its message of hope and possibility. I try to make my teaching a part of the solution for our community and our world.

leaving the nest

I have heard it said that Ken Kesey wrote only one good book and that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the one. Since I haven’t read anything else by Kesey, I can only confirm that OFOTCN is a good one. The novel does many things at once. Certainly there is a castigation and revelation of abuses perpetrated on the residents of psychiatric hospitals and by extension the book speaks, more or less explicitly, to the abuses of people in all kinds of institutions—prison, school, marriage, poverty, racism (especially toward Native Americans). In fact, Kesey identifies all of society as an abusive institution, calling it the “Combine,” a system of incentives, controls, and coercion that forces orderly, respectable behavior and labels any acts outside its “civilized” borders—defined as those acts not explicitly condoned by the Combine—criminal or crazy. As I’ve noted elsewhere in this blog, it’s what Edward Abbey called “the whole catastrophe.” The comparison of Kesey and Abbey is apt; they were born only eight years apart (Abbey in 1927, Kesey in 1935); both are concerned with themes of independence and wildness; both are anti-establishment; and both are, to put it perhaps too generously, male-identified.

So in a narrow way, this book is really about freedom of the human spirit, freedom to enjoy life and do as you wish. It’s also the freedom to risk that enjoyment; that is, part of the enjoyment is risk. OFOTCN is about the dilemma of doing what you feel is right versus protecting the small pleasures. The risk of losing things you care about—maybe your own right to be human—because you cannot let injustice and wrong continue. But it’s only about human freedom if women are excluded from that category; women seem to be excluded from the pursuit of this happiness and also from the risk of losing it. Arguably, Kesey is a product of his time (the book was published in 1962), but the women in OFOTCN are either controlling, conniving, passive aggressive bitches or prostitutes. The choice is literally nurse or whore.

The story: enter an all-male psychiatric ward completely dominated by the icy passive aggression of Miss Ratched, a.k.a. the Big Nurse. The men are cowed, beaten down psychologically and taken advantage of physically—“rabbits,” as the narrator, one of the patients, puts it. Add Randle McMurphy: loud-mouthed, brawling, inappropriate, red-headed Irishman, recently from the work farm where he was serving a sentence for fighting and disorderly conduct. (It’s hard not to see Jack Nicholson, who played this role in the classice movie version of the novel, though apparently Kesey wanted Gene Hackman in the role). McMurphy disrupts and gambles. He harasses and cajoles. He sings and dances and organizes outings. He shows the other men on the ward that Ratched can be had—but there is a cost. McMurphy endures electroshock “therapy” and other abuses. He takes it all, but his cocky attitude slips now and then; we see the grim determination, the weight of the duty he feels, the pain of the struggle of standing up to the Ratched and to the whole Combine. The freedom and pleasure he exercises is work. It would be easier, in many ways, just to sit quietly on the side, getting by instead of causing trouble. He maintains the joy of life through sheer determination, a role he is playing in which he will beat the system, an act that he will enjoy, god damn it.

And his act works in many ways. He does make the ward a better place for himself and for his fellow patients. Indeed, his wardmates all grow and change under his influence and, by the end, are no longer the rabbits they once were; they are men—fun-loving, free, independent—in direct contrast to the constraining female influence most strongly represented by Miss Ratched, but also by almost every other woman in the book. The gender divide is underlined by McMurphy’s behavior toward women; he pinches backsides and teases and sexualizes them all—even the icy Ratched, by the end of the book.

For its discussion of freedom and injustice, for its clear, direct prose, for the force of its narrative, for the vivid strength of its characters—I appreciate the book. I only wish Kesey had seen a way to represent the oppressive forces of our society apart from embodying them in women. It’s a great story, marred, I think, by rigid gender roles that force women to be the “civilizing,” responsible influence on “wild,” irresponsible men. Personally, I don’t want the women in my life to be Miss Ratched, but neither do I want to be McMurphy. I think both women and men can love freedom and fight oppression and still be civilized. In fact, I think true freedom comes from being truly civilized. Maybe Kesey, emerging from the repression of the 1950s, needed an over-the-top expression of the freedom he was after. Whatever the reason, the gender politics detract from what is otherwise a great expression of the beauty and the struggle of human life and character.

A Different Way to Fight Student Disengagement

This article by Donald W. Harward comes from InsideHigherEd.com. A teaser:

“At the source of the expressions of disengagement lies the problem of the disintegration of the purpose and core outcomes of college. All too many institutions of higher education — and even proponents of liberal education — are off-course, addressing only narrowly academic means and strategies rather than the integrated goals and ends that matter to our students and to our democracy. As a result, many of our institutions risk becoming complicit in the troubling patterns of student disengagement.

“Most institutions, in official handbooks and documents, still attest with eloquence and conviction to the importance of students’ personal and civic development. Regrettably, helping students actually achieve the full range of essential outcomes is much less evident, and only rarely are the institution’s resources, including its faculty and professionals, prepared and aligned to accomplish these ends. What is even more regrettable is that the current national debate about accountability has entirely ignored both the personal and the civic aims of a strong liberal education. As educators, as parents, as a society at large, we simply do not hold ourselves, or hold our institutions, responsible for achieving them or demand and expect such achievement. In fact, few institutions would have in place, or individuals have clearly in mind, what could be examined to determine if the core outcomes of higher education had been, even partially, achieved.”

Click here to read the full article.

i divided by zero — again and again

i divided by zero is by far my most popular post. In fact, the theme turns out to be so ubiquitous—including a band named Divided By Zero—that I can’t hope to keep up with all of it. Nevertheless, as both tribute and follow up, here’s some other images and links related to the idea:

Ben Bromberg has a nice variation of the pic I originally pulished.

Then there’s a couple of totally different pics for which I’m not certain of the source:

From there, we go toward related, but more text-based ideas:

(From DamnThoseWiffyDogs)

(From ImpactCards.com)

Finaly, there’s this ludicrous image (and comment) from lolninja.com.

Alice Walker on the election

Alice Walker did a nice piece on the election for The Root. A teaser:

“I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.  I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others’ lives that has so marred our country’s contacts with the rest of the world.

Click here to see the full article.

coordinating an effective learning center

While I was working at the coordinator for a math learning center, I tried to identify what I thought the important aspects of the work were. Recently, I rediscovered the document I put together then and, although it’s not perfect, I thought it might be useful for some of the teachers who occasionally look at this blog.

In the essay, I identify eight qualities that I think make a learning center a place that truly empowers and makes connections with students:

• Caring
• Approachable
• Consistent
• Relatively uniform in pedagogy
• Energetic and motivating
• Teamwork-oriented
• Resource-multiplying
• Consistently engaged in professionally development

I expand on these some in the essay and I conclude with the following mottoes:

• I don’t teach math, I teach students.
• Human beings are more important than disciplines or centers or institutions.

I believe these ideas are as important, if not more so, now, in my current role as a classroom teacher, as I did then.

Click Coordinating an Effective Learning Center to download the entire document.

Thomas Parham inspires and challenges

“You cannot be a healing presence in your community without a belief in the transformative possibility of the human spirit.” With words like these, Dr. Thomas Parham worked the overflowing room in Visual Arts earlier this spring, motivating his City College of San Francisco audience and welcoming late arriving students, helping them find seats and the little floor space left. His talk—entitled “Say it Loud, Say it Proud: Psychology, Education, and Racial Identity in College and University Students”—appealed to students, staff, counselors, and instructors by balancing psychological and pedagogical theory with highly accessible (and entertaining!) anecdotes.

Parham likened each human being to “a seed of divinely inspired potential,” explaining that “each seed needs good soil and nutrients to grow to its potential.” Counselors and teachers—indeed the entire college—can be part of that soil. He maintained that “circumstances are places we come from, not who we are” and that students need three things to succeed in what can be a hostile environment:

• Visions of possibilities
• Places to nurture rather than defer their dreams
• Places to affirm rather than assault their humanity

For students, Parham emphasized the importance of maintaining their self and cultural identity in a world that does not always support and affirm them, taking care not to create self-imposed barriers, and coping with socially-imposed oppression.

He concluded with an inspiring message of possibility and encouragement for all: “I’m not asking you to be 100% better at 50 things,” he told the crowd; instead, he wants us each to decide to “be 5% better on one thing. Add all those 5%s together and we can accomplish a lot.”

Parham is at the University of California, Irvine, where he is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Counseling and Health Services and Director of the Counseling Center, as well as an adjunct faculty member. He is the author of Psychological Storms: The African American Struggle for Identity and many other books and articles.

links round up — 2

67% of Children Left Behind
“A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin finds that Texas’ public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), directly contributes to lower graduation rates. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation — a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students.”
It gets worse. The link above is to a blog by Chad Orzel. Follow the link there to the report on the study.

Concept Maps
A reminder from a practicing teacher that concept maps and other “non-traditional” techniques can help students learn. The exchange in the comments is as interesting as the post itself.

Euphemism and American Violence
An insightful article on words and politics and torture and the abdication of our democratic responsibility: “‘History begins today’ was a saying in the Bush White House on September 12, 2001—repeated with menace by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the director of Pakistani intelligence Mahmoud Ahmad—a statement that on its face exhibits a totalitarian presumption. Yet nothing so much as language supplies our memory of things that came before today; and, to an astounding degree, the Bush and Cheney administration has succeeded in persuading the most powerful and (at one time) the best-informed country in the world that history began on September 12, 2001. The effect has been to tranquilize our self-doubts and externalize all the evils we dare to think of. In this sense, the changes of usage and the corruptions of sense that have followed the global war on terrorism are inseparable from the destructive acts of that war.”

Better than Free
Smart, provocative commentary about the internet and current society and what makes things valuable from some one who clearly spends way too much time online. Doesn’t change the power or the debatable nature of his observations.

Chris Jordan Photography
I once spent a lot of time making photographs of trash and other detritus of our culture. Jordan’s work has a more arranged quality to it (mine was more about what was found), but I like it.

SAT scores and book lists
Another take on book lists.

Why Math Matters
I get this question a lot—from students, from friends, from strangers. Dustin M. Wax provides a possible answer and I thought some of you might be interested. I think there are other answers, too, and they are almost always contextual. That is, I answer the question differently depending on to whom I’m speaking and in what situation. At what I think have been appropriate times, I have said that math doesn’t matter. Not very often.

Credit goes to Scottie and Mike M. for pointing me toward these links.

Tim Wise on “National Lies and Racial Amnesia”

In a recent essay, Tim Wise speaks truths that are not often spoken by white people:

But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.

Click here to see the full article.