I just started my first graduate classes at BC for my masters in Moderate Disabilities and Special Needs Education, I know soooo awesome! One of my summer session classes looks at the social contexts attached to education, things like: race, immigration, economic status, gender, cultural environment, etc. The idea being that when you are a teacher, you don't just have Social Studies students sitting in your classroom; behind every desk is an individual coming to school with a heck of a lot of baggage, some even more than others. That being said, you can never assume anything about your students and you can't expect them to learn like the student sitting next to them because they have had many different experiences and an entirely different life other than school. It is so humbling to recognize this because it is very easy to go into education thinking that you can teach future students like you were taught as a child. I turned out well, right? Wrong. The students you teach, no matter the demographic, are of an entirely different generation than you and are coming to school with issues and opinions that are not the same as the ones you had.
So the first step was recognition that students are individuals and need to be treated as such. The next step is taking an active role in their lives by investigating what those differences are, how to best handle those differences in the classroom so that all your students are getting the same skills and knowledge and opportunities for success, and then going even further and asking why those differences exist in the first place. In my social context class we are going to be looking at the factors that may cause such disparities amongst children and trying to see if there is a link between those causes and current day effects like the achievement gap and social class issues.
There are so many questions to be raised in this investigation and I feel like not many of them are going to be answered easily. Do we have instituionalized racism in the United States or are we just filled with racist people? Can we change the system to be more equal or is our way of life so entrenched in greed and money that those changes will never come? Is this a racial issue or a power issue? What started white people to be the "superior race" in the first place? Can our country handle satisfying the intimidating amount of different cultural and community needs that exist or are we destined to always leave some group unhappy with feelings of oppression? Is it possible to have a equal, working, classless society? Is this an American issue or a human issue; will there always be people competing for power and then putting down and taking advantage of the weaker group? How much would our lives change, for better or for worse, if we illuminated class differences? Most of these are very theoretical questions and don't even get into the practical side of things, which is the cause of most concern. Why are black students suffering so much in school and dropping out only to end up in prison; is the the educational system's fault or our societies fault?
I look forward to discussing these questions all summer with my classmates, but I would love people to comment and raise questions of their own. This is an important and relevant issue for everyone as everyone can attest to some form of oppression in their lives for one reason or another.
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