Week 2: Assignment A: The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children - Delpit

Talking Points:

1 – (beginning): One the first page of the article, Delpitt quotes a student of color on her experiences in education. The student states, “No, they listen, but they don’t hear – you know how your mama used to say you listen to the radio, but you hear your mother. Well they don’t hear me” (p.21). I highlighted that second part of the quote because of how important it is for me as an educator to know and understand why this student doesn’t feel heard. Think about it, if they don’t feel seen or heard, are they learning as much as they could be? Probably not because their needs are not being met. I thought about how this related to the concept of being “colorblind” that we discussed on Sunday in our larger post.

2 – (middle): There was one quote that I felt really stood out and summed up the middle of this article. Delpitt states, “To provide schooling for everyone’s children that reflects liberal, middle-class values and aspirations is to ensure the maintenance of the status quo, to ensure that power, the culture of power, remains in the hands of those who already have it” (p 28). This is such a powerful statement. It brings up the conversation of power that Delpitt has in the earlier portion of the article. Power is such a huge component of inequality and a huge part of the racism that we see in our society today. I know our students see it but I often wonder why Providence never addressed power dynamics and the effect of power dynamics in the classroom. I received a lot of information and training on that through TFA but never through PPSD. How does that affect our students?

3 – (end): I found that Delpitt’s argument towards the end of the article on her beliefs of what needs to be done in order to work towards equity in and outside the classroom. He top down approach is one that I think many educators don’t think about as we often think about the change we can make in the classroom and how that change will have a ripple effect in the future (first three paragraphs on page 40 explain her solution). This made me think about Trump and the racially motivated issues that began to occur around the time of the 2016 election. Could this have been directly related to the ways in which Trump's power motivated others to act in ways motivated by racism? If Delpitt's solution were followed and the top-down approach was taken could the opposite effect have occurred in the 2016 election?

Argument Statement: Delpitt argues that the current education system is not meeting the needs of POC for the majority of their education (including K-12 and higher education); students do not feel seen or heard in the classroom.