2227 Race and Pedagogy Project - Research Archive » Pedagogy and Mixed Race

Pedagogy and Mixed Race

November 17, 2005

Williams, Patricia J. “On Being the Object of Property (a gift of intelligent rage).” The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991. 216-236.

November 17th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, Race, Gender and Sexuality, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, African American, Court & Policy Issues

Utilizing a combination of feminist personal narrative and legal discourse, Williams analyzes how contract law and the legal institution exercise a “deadening power” by creating in the individual “a passive relationship to the document: it is the contract that governs, that ‘does’ everything, that absorbs all responsibility and deflects all other recourse.” (224) She explores in particular how this quality of contract negatively affects those who have been institutionally (and thus legally) formulated as inferior: people of color and women. (Read the article)

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August 25, 2005

Donato, Rubén. The Other Struggle for Equal Schools: Mexican Americans During the Civil Rights Era. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997.

August 25th 2005 Posted to Race, Literacy and Pedagogy, Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, Court & Policy Issues 21e7

In this book Donato explains that while many scholars have focused on the African American struggle for equal education during the Civil Rights movement, few have focused on the Mexican American community during this period. Donato summarizes this “silent” history, using as his primary example Brownfield School District in northern California. Donato writes that in Brownfield, “The concern for respecting and preserving the cultural identity of Mexican Americans found itself at odds with the traditional values of the Brownfield school system and the larger white community…Despite the claim that Mexican children were being processed by a neutral school system, public schools across the Southwest were rife with ethnic, linguistic and class biases. If one of the prime values of the Brownfield schools was uniformity, then there was an inherent conflict between the organization of schools and the desires of the Mexican American community” (10). (Read the article)

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August 17, 2005

Valencia, Richard R., Martha Menchaca and Rubén Donato, “Segregation, desegregation, and integration of Chicano students: old and new realities”, Chicano School Failure and Success. Ed. Richard R. Valencia. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2002, 70-113.

August 17th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, Court & Policy Issues

In the third chapter of Valencia’s book, Valencia, Menchaca and Donato explore the issue of the segregation of Chicanos in public schools. They begin by providing an overview of the history of Chicano segregation, beginning with the post-1848 decades following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In addition, they paint a picture of Chicano school segregation today and offer several practical solutions. (Read the article)

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Valencia, Richard R. Chicano School Failure and Success. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2002.

August 17th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American 2451

This book is a compilation of the most recent research being done on the historical, political and social factors contributing to what Valencia describes as “the persistently, pervasively, and disproportionately, low academic achievement” of Chicano students (4). In his introductory chapter Valencia provides an historical background of Mexican Americans as a conquered people who have always been subject to language suppression and cultural exclusion (7). He then outlines the main factors contributing to Chicano school failure today, which include: (Read the article)

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August 10, 2005

Darder, Antonia and Rodolfo D. Torres. After Race: Racism After Multiculturalism. New York: New York UP, 2004.

August 10th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, Race and Globalization, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, The Academy

In this book, Darder and Torres critique the concept of “race” in contemporary political and academic rhetoric as a mask for the class oppression that underlies late capitalist American society. “The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of “race”—an ideology that has served well to successfully obscure and disguise class interests behind the smokescreen of multiculturalism, diversity, difference, and more recently, whiteness,” write Darder and Torres (1). Darder and Torres focus their Marxist analysis on the United States education system, and specifically on the key issues of bilingual education, standardized testing, critical race theory and Latino studies departments. They argue that if any real changes are going to be made in educational policy, the concept of ‘race’ must be dismantled and the underlying class issues revealed and critiqued. (Read the article)

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August 8, 2005

Valenzuela, Angela. Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.

August 08th 2005 Posted to Race and the Academic Institution, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, The Academy

This groundbreaking book reports the findings of Valenzuela’s three year ethnographic study of immigrant Mexican and Mexican-American students at Juan Seguín High School (a pseudonym) in Houston, Texas. According to Valenzuela, the much-studied achievement gap between first generation Mexican immigrants (who tend to have a pro-school attitude and perform well) and second or third generation immigrants (who typically have an antischool attitude and perform poorly) can be traced directly back to the schools themselves. Valenzuela argues that, “For the majority of Seguín High School’s regular (non college-bound) track, schooling is a subtractive process. It divests these youth of important social and cultural resources, leaving them progressively vulnerable to academic failure” (3). (Read the article)

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August 3, 2005

Portes, Alejandro and Dag McLeod, “Educational Progress of Children of Immigrants: The Roles of Class, Ethnicity and School Context,” Sociology of Education, 69.4 (1996): 255-75.

August 03rd 2005 Posted to Race and Globalization, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, Asian American

This article addresses two major factors that contribute to the success or failure of students from immigrant families: socioeconomic status and the social influence exerted by ethnic communities on students. As Portes and McLeod write in their abstract,

“Recent immigration to the United States has spawned a rapidly growing second generation, most of whom are of school age. This article reports the findings of a study of 5,255 second-generation high school students in Florida and California, who were children of Cuban and Vietnamese immigrants (representative of relatively advantaged groups) and of Haitian and Mexican immigrants (representative of relatively disadvantaged groups). The study found that parents’ socioeconomic status (SES), length of U.S. residence, and hours spent on homework significantly affected the students’ academic performance, but did not eliminate the effects of ethnic community. Attendance at higher-SES schools increased the average academic performance and the positive effect of parents’ SES, whereas attendance at inner-city schools flattened the negative effect of ethnic disadvantage. However, school context had no appreciable effect on children from advantaged ethnic backgrounds” (255). (Read the article)

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Ogbu, John U. “Understanding Cultural Diversity and Learning,” Educational Researcher, 21.8 (1992): 5-14.

August 03rd 2005 Posted to Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American, African American

In this article Ogbu argues that two major approaches in the current school reform movement, core curriculum and multicultural education, are inadequate methods of dealing with the struggles faced by minority students in public schools. He suggests that the main reason these methods have failed is that they ignore the often oppositional nature of minority cultures to American mainstream culture. As Ogbu writes, “the crucial issue in cultural diversity and learning is the relationship between the minority cultures and the American mainstream culture. Minorities whose cultural frames of reference are oppositional to the cultural frame of reference of American mainstream culture have greater difficulty crossing cultural boundaries at school to learn” (5). (Read the article)

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August 1, 2005

Flores-González, Nilda. School Kids/Street Kids: Identity Development in Latino Students. New York: Teachers College Press, 2002.

August 01st 2005 Posted to Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (2000), 28% of all 16-24 year old Hispanics are high school drop-outs, as compared to 7.3% of whites, 12.6% of blacks and 4.3% of Asians (Flores-González 2). In School Kids/Street Kids Flores-González addresses the high drop-out rate of Latino high school students by conducting a study of thirty three Puerto Rican students at Hernández High School in Chicago, a school whose student body is comprised mostly of low income Hispanic students. Flores-González divides the students in her study up into what she calls “school kids,” or students who adopt an identity based on participation and achievement and “street kids,” or students who form an identity in opposition to school and authority. According to Flores-González, there are several specific steps schools can take to reinforce “school kid” identity formation among Latino students, thus lowering drop-out rates. (Read the article)

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July 25, 2005

Darder, Antonia. “Creating the Conditions for Cultural Democracy in the Classroom,” Latinos and Education: A Critical Reader. Eds. Antonia Darder, Rodolfo D. Torres and Henry Gutierrez. New York: Routledge, 1997, pp.331-350.

July 25th 2005 Posted to Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, Pedagogy and Mixed Race, Latina/o American

In this article Darder addresses the challenges faced by teachers in bicultural teaching environments. Basing much of her analysis on the theories of Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire, Darder argues that in order to create cultural democracy in the classroom (and, by extension, in society at large), teachers must do more than blindly implement a “multicultural” curriculum; they must also be made aware of the theoretical and political issues with which they are engaged. “…this critical view suggests that, prior to any engagement with instrumental questions of practice, educators must delve rigorously into those specific theoretical issues that are fundamental to the establishment of a culturally democratic foundation for a critical bicultural pedagogy,” writes Darder (331).< (Read the article)

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