Transcript

The consciousness gap in education - an equity imperative | Dorinda Carter Andrews | TEDxLansingED

I'm guessing that last night at the dinner table you weren't talking about white supremacy and whiteness as a cultural norm and I figured this morning as you were preparing to come here the topics power privilege and oppression weren't on your mind now I'm saying these things jokingly but the reality is our society has socialized us to not raise critical questions about these topics and in reality they exacerbate the racial and socio-economic inequities that we have in society that then perpetuate themselves in our educational system schools never have nor do they currently prepare adults and young people to learn how to respect each other across cultural differences now I've spent a lot of times in school as a student a k-12 teacher a teacher educator and a researcher and I've come to realize that racism along with other forms of oppression are still a major impediment to the academic underperformance of many students of color and poor students in our country one of the things that I think prevents us from closing what are actually access and opportunity gaps is our inability to name issues of power as fundamental to the racial and cultural divide in this country when we begin to examine power as part of the equation we have a better understanding of how racism oppression and issues of cultural bias work to undermine the academic performance of students of color and low-income students now all of this sounds pretty heavy and depressing and nobody's laughing at what I'm saying but the reality is we have to examine these issues if we're going to close what we call achievement gaps in education I want to share a story with you I grew up in the 70s 80s and early 90s and I went to what we're considered racially desegregated schools I had a first grade teacher who didn't recognize my academic potential in fact I talked with a real slow southern drawl because I'm from Atlanta Georgia and I got bored with the homework and the schoolwork a lot of times I would act out and this teacher sent me to the principal's office several times that year and in fact she told my parents that I should be tested for special education well my mama being the mama she was said you ain't tested my child for special education in fact if you want to test her tester for gifted and talented so I took the test and as a first grader I scored on a fourth-grade level and it turns out that I skipped second grade and went from first to third now why am I telling you this story why is it even important because I believe so many youth like myself have had these kinds of experiences that teacher did not know what to do with my energy or my intellect she had labeled me as a child in need of academic remediation when in fact I needed academic challenge now I don't blame her solely for her behaviors in fact I think her teacher education program and her professional development as an in-service educator had not prepared her for these new experiences in the 70s of teaching black youth and in fact her low level of critical awareness about issues of race culture and power in teaching and learning impeded her for providing me the resources I actually need I work with school leaders and educators around the nation all the time and I hear them say we want to address issues of racial and socio-economic differences in our classrooms but there's no time right or they're no safe spaces to do that I'm afraid it'll be tied to my evaluation if my principal hears me talking about my biases and my stereotypes what I've tried to do in my work with educators is engage them in a process of critical self-reflection because I believe this gap in consciousness about these issues is one of the equity imperatives of our time and it's through helping educators think through these difficult topics that we'll be able to better meet the needs of our most struggling students in society in order to do this though we've got to move away from those diversity workshops that happened one or two times a year for teachers and school leaders this has to be a process of embedded continual critical self-reflection throughout the professional work of educators and really all of us in this work that I do with educators I ask them to consider three questions the first one is how does my own social location my race my class my gender my religion shape my mindset about teaching and learning the students that I'm serving and the practices that I act out and secondly what is it more that I need to know about what I don't know around those things related to culture power and difference where can I learn that material and thirdly this process helps educators to then continually be thinking about how can I be a more critically conscious leader and instructor and in our country where we have such gross racial inequities in education along with socio-economic inequities I think teachers and school leaders have to be thinking about how can I be a more critically race-conscious educator now there are a lot of things that I could say about critical race consciousness but I'm going to tell you about three big ideas that I help educators engage in as they do this work the first is an understanding that there is a system and a culture of power that oppresses and suppresses other cultures in order to maintain itself that's pretty depressing I'm sorry I had to tell you but we all operate in that system and that system is rooted in racial and social class hierarchy right it puts upper and middle income whites and if we add gender white men at polar opposites with people of color and poor people in our country and we see this play out in our educational system this system also known as white supremacy has at its core this understanding that particularly African Americans are genetically inferior and not fully human we have this racial staying on our history through racial enslavement of that particular group yet and still we expect students of color and many poor kids who come to our school doors already behind the 8-ball to amass the same level of successes as those who are inherently privileged by the system now why is this important for educators to understand because they have to be able to situate their own selves as one who is privileged in the system and how they're either using their privileges to help children or to harm them the second big idea that I try to get educators to understand so that they're more equitable in their work is that we cannot be color blind nor color mute there used to be a time in this country when teachers could say I treat all my kids the same I don't see color they're just all kids but we cannot do that anymore our public school population is over 40% students of color yet our teaching force is over 80% white there is an inherent cultural mismatch yet and still we believe that sameness produces equitable outcomes for so long we have been throwing the same amount of resources into schools and school programs and expecting that that will provide equal access to opportunities and it just doesn't work that way educators have to be committed to saying I understand and recognize that I work in a system that is inherently unequal and I'm going to do whatever I need to come hell or high water to bring those kids who come already under resource up to the level of those and even beyond those who come to school with the resources already at hand the third thing that I try to get educators to understand is that meritocracy is a myth this idea that if we all just work hard and put forth effort we'll get our piece of the American Dream is a farce that formula works for those who come to school already knowing those social and cultural codes of how to do school but that formula is devoid of considering issues of racism classism and other forms of oppression as potential barriers for kids living in poverty and many kids of color so this I did that if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps you should be able to do what other people have done just doesn't work and in fact the media sensationalizes rags to riches stories to keep us believing that let's play that example out some kids come to school with boots that are nicely polished they're laced up they're shiny they're ready to go for the academic journey and then we have other kids who have boots but their use they've been worn they've got laces it's going to be a little harder for them on the journey and still we have kids that come to school with boots but no laces and yet and still we expect them to travel the academic row in the same way with the kid who has the polished nicely laced boots and lo and behold we forget about kids who come to school with no boots at all so when we play the analogy out the idea that if you just work hard and put forth effort does not work for all kids if it did we would not have the gross racial and social inequities that we currently do in our school systems and in our larger society this brings me back to this cycle of critical self-reflection you know wbd boys once said a system cannot fail those it was never designed to protect and we're actually trying to educate young people in a system that inherently was never designed to serve all of them at this very time in our nation over thirty nine percent of black children ages 18 and under live in poverty followed by 36 percent of American indian/alaska native children and that's followed up by 34 percent of Latino youth you want to know how many white youth ages 18 and under are living in poverty 13 percent this is a larger social structure that is designed again to privilege some and disadvantaged others and so how can educators who really want to be equitable in their mindset and in their practice gain the skills they need to actually embody and live out this idea that all kids can learn we've got to provide spaces for them to do that in their regular school day in their current teacher education programs and in their professional development along the span James and sherry banks said this equity pedagogy is one in which teachers are committed to helping culturally diverse youth learn how to navigate within the system but also change it to make it more humane Paulo Freire II said we all need to learn how to read our world read it for what it is know the system for what it is and learn how to operate within it but Frantz Fanon said we've got to change that system it's not enough to just know how to operate within it now in order for this work to happen I believe we've got to do what bell hooks says which is embody a critical love and that's the kind of love that's about knowing one another better and it's really in the knowing that we learn how to work and respect each other across cultural differences the boy said the time is now there's no later time to do this kind of work this is the seed planting time for the harvest so I'm going to return to those silly questions that I asked at the beginning because I'm assuming that here at the end of my presentation your own critical awareness has been raised when is the next time you're going to have a conversation about racial inequity in education and actually work to do something transformative what is the next time you are going to talk about this system of white supremacy and whiteness as a cultural norm at your dinner table or around the water cooler at work and when is the next time you're going to take concrete action to change issues of power privilege and oppression not only in education but in our larger society we can teach and train teachers how to teach their content area but we can't train hearts and minds that kind of work requires us all committed to a level of engagement that means I might have to give up some of my privileges in order for things to be more equitable in schools and in society thank you