235b Race and Pedagogy Project - Research Archive » Public School Initiatives

Public School Initiatives

September 20, 2005

Sleeter, Christine E. “How White Teachers Construct Race,” Race, Identity and Representation in Education. Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, Eds. New York: Routledge, 1993, 157-171.

September 20th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, Public School Initiatives, Whiteness Studies

In this article Sleeter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of multicultural teacher education programs. She begins by noting that the teaching population in the U.S. is becoming increasingly white, even as the student population grows increasingly diverse. Sleeter argues that while multicultural teacher education is somewhat effective at raising white teachers’ awareness of racial issues, the only way to reverse institutional racism is to draw more teachers of color into the teaching profession. (Read the article)

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September 12, 2005

Lipman, Pauline. Race, Class and Power in School Restructuring. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.

September 12th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, African American, Public School Initiatives

In her book, Lipman examines the effect of school restructuring on two urban junior high schools which she calls Gates and Franklin, located in a mid-sized Southern city. Efforts to restructure these schools (which included giving teachers more authority, creating smaller “teams” of students within classes and forming organizations that promoted dialogue about race) were all thwarted by teachers’ own unacknowledged racial prejudice and by the power wielded by Riverton’s white upper-middle-class parents, school board members and administrators. Lipman concludes that efforts to restructure schools fail to address the needs of minority and low-income students because they tend to reproduce larger social inequalities. (Read the article)

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September 9, 2005

McLaren, Peter and Ramin Farahmandpur. Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005.

September 09th 2005 Posted to Critical Race Theory and Pedagogy, Race and Globalization, Race, Class and Pedagogy, Public School Initiatives

In this book McLaren and Farahmandpur pose a Marxist critique of postmodern, liberal pedagogy, arguing that its emphasis on “diversity” and “multiculturalism” obscures underlying class issues. McLaren and Farahmandpur believe that in an age of global capitalism and neo-imperialism it has become critical for educators on all levels to acknowledge and resist capitalism in their classrooms: “In the space that follows, we attempt to sketch out in broad strokes the key characteristics of a socialist working-class pedagogy that attempts to move beyond liberal and Left-liberal efforts at making capitalist schooling less barbaric and more democratic. The democratic working-class pedagogy that we envision here agitates on behalf of pedagogical practice connected to a larger socialist project” (52). (Read the article)

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September 8, 2005

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

September 08th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, Latina/o American, African American, Public School Initiatives, Court & Policy Issues

In this widely-discussed book, Kozol examines the inequalities of the public school system by interviewing teachers, students, coaches and administrators in six of the nation’s poorest urban areas. Kozol compares the day-to-day experience of students in well-funded, predominately white suburban schools to the experience of students living in predominately black and Latino urban areas. Kozol notes that many problems facing urban schools (poor facilities, high dropout rates, large class sizes and underpaid teachers, to name a few) are largely the result of funding inequalities. He suggests that desegregation through school bussing programs combined with a nationwide effort to equalize funding could help narrow the gap between suburban and urban schools. (Read the article)

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September 6, 2005

Delpit, Lisa. “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children.” Harvard Educational Review. 58.3 (1988), 280-298.

September 06th 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, African American, Public School Initiatives

In this article Delpit examines the (often unacknowledged) codes and structures that create a “culture of power” in classrooms. She suggests that, while middle-class whites might not be aware of this “culture of power”, minority students are acutely aware of their exclusion from certain codes and discourses. Delpit compares black teaching strategies—which are often more direct and task-oriented—to more process-oriented white teaching strategies in order to show that “progressive” pedagogy often fails to reach minority students because it participates in rather than dismantles the “culture of power”. Ultimately, Delpit argues that teachers should make minority students aware of the culture of power so that they can succeed, while at the same time respecting their individual cultural backgrounds. (Read the article)

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September 2, 2005

Anyon, Jean. “Race, Social Class, and Educational Reform in an Inner-City School.” Teachers College Record 97.1 (1995) 69-95.

September 02nd 2005 Posted to Race, Class and Pedagogy, African American, Public School Initiatives

In this article Anyon explores the ways that school reform can fail by observing a reform implemented in a predominately black and Latino grade school in Newark, New Jersey. Anyon argues that “three factors—sociocultural differences among participants in reform, an abusive school environment, and educator expectations of failed reform—occurring in a minority ghetto where the school population is racially and economically isolated constitute some of the powerful and devastating ways that concomitants of race and social class can intervene to determine what happens in inner-city schools, and in attempts to improve them” (70). (Read the article)

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