Christenson, Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us Response

After reading Christenson's text I feel lied to. As if my entire childhood was a secret training camp to shape me into a racist, sexist American pig. I enjoyed many Disney movies and several cartoons as a child since that was the only thing to distract me from my parent's constant bickering and I can see how the subliminal messages in said cartoons and movies have shaped my perception on how the world supposedly should be. My views on femininity stem from such media as I viewed girly acting women as how they are supposed to act, though I eventually broke out of that train of thought, the thought of a woman taking a mans role seemed strange to me as a child. My ideas about race were also based on the media growing up and that it loosely impacted my thoughts about those of different ethnicites I have encountered, though few when I was growing up. You could say that I was ethnically challenged. The idea of being the "hero" as a child set my standards high, so high that there was no way to reach them and so I thought of my self as weak and insufficient to the world's view. This subconsciously continued through out my early life and aided my medical depression in making me take drastic action against my self, actions that I do not wish to discuss unless you are a therapist in the field of depression and self harm. As I grew older I realized that it was a false view of the way people should be though the thought still persisted on what my perfect self should be, I saw that no one really fit the description of the perfect person and that it was okay to be who you are. This helped a bit while going in and out of high school though other problems at the time still weighed me down.

Delpit, The Silenced Dialog Response

Like in in White Privilege by McIntosh, Delpit explains the communications block between those with power and those with out it, mainly Whites versus everyone else. White educators have difficulty relating practices and experiences with people of color because they have different experiences and practices. As Delpit put it, "Those with power are frequently least aware of-or least willing to acknowledge-it's existence. Those with less power are often most aware of it's existence." To see the advantages of another race while you your self has to endure lesser or different treatment is much easier than to see a difference when you assume that everyone enjoys the advantages that you enjoy on a day to day basis. Teachers of other colors besides white are sometimes considered to be skills oriented when teaching students. Teachers of the White ethnicity are usually considered to be process oriented as process is what they are used to. A student in Delpit's text complained about a White teacher who used this method, she would have the students write essays then have them correct each others work. The student felt as though he was not learning anything while in another classroom he comments on how a friend has a black teacher who explains in detail the skills and steps in writing a paper. "Neither teachers agreed on each others teaching methods. The cultural and or view barrier is real and it can effect the way students view their teachers. A teacher who just stands for example from the text who seems like she does not know what to do and who assumes that the students should know what to do may look weak and unworthy to the st
udents and this may turn such students off from education. A balance between the several methods of teaching should be shared in group meetings and practices of many kinds should be tried at least once to accommodate for the students. The students attitude is what drives them in the end.



Critical Pedagogy and Teacher Education: Radicalizing Prospective Teachers

Lilia I. Bartolomé

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/23478420?uid=33249&uid=3739888&uid=2&uid=3&uid=67&uid=368664851&uid=33247&uid=62&uid=3739256&sid=21104389090171

McIntosh, White Priviledge Response

In McIntosh's article she describes the advantages of being a white male in this society and I found that most of them do correlate with me and that I did not realize a good portion of them. For example, I have never been harassed by anyone while shopping. This might have to do with the fact that I'm a 6'2" white male as I may look intimidating and or innocent while shopping for shampoo or Old Spice deodorant. The same could not be said for someone of the opposite sex, height, and race. I don't have to be worried about being followed and raped either because the notion of someone doing that to a 6'2" white male seems ridiculous, though it probably rarely happens. So I don't really need to buy pepper spray or a taser to keep those sort of people at bay. Also buying flesh colored bandages threw me off a bit. The more I think about it I realize that I have never seen any shades of brown on a band-aid meant to blend with the skin. In fact I assumed that the band-aids were tan because of tradition more than skin color, because that's how I have always viewed band-aids, as a tan strip off adhesive and padding. I also notice that because there are so many white people in America, it is difficult to not find music or a position in power that includes a white person. In fact, it feels as though I am in an ocean of white with little experience swimming in different waters. It feels as though there is nothing special about me, like I'm just another white male American with certain expectations. The same could be said for others though I do not feel like I have tight group of my race to relate to since my race is diluted, like it's nothing special to see another white  person in a Stop and Shop or to see another on the street while walking to the RISD museum. With the good comes the bad and vice versa. While I feel protected by a community full of whites I feel distant from them as well. While I wish everyone had the priveledges I had, I know that change is slow and that the trend of a white dominated society may stay true for many years, probably decades. The paradigm shift from white privelidge to public privilege will happen. It's just a matter of when. And maybe then we will all be judged by our actions rather than our skin color.
As McIntosh said "To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here." White men in power do not usually acknowledge their privilege. This is because it is invisible to them, because it is the norm for them, because it has never caused a problem for their lives, and so they do not acknowledge it and apply themselves to solving the problem of white privilege, it's not a problem to them, so why would they solve it?

http://everydayfeminism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/white-privilege-6.jpg
 http://dougernst.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/white-privilege-college.jpg

Meier, Why Can't She Remember That? response.

I found the speech patterns in early childhood to be interesting in this reading, how the culture of a family can be so influential in the way a child thinks, reacts, and speaks. Meier conveys the difference in the way several children in similar age ranges spoke and how it is related to their culture. I myself had difficulty speaking as a child as I was quiet and did not really convey language but rather actions. I do not know what that says about me but my sister was very talkative as a child. She would actually sing or play the blame game if she got in trouble, which would rarely happen, and it usually worked. I do not know if this has anything to do with culture as my family does not really have any connections left to our Scandinavian and Slavonic roots. Perhaps it was from watching our mother watch soap operas on the television, perhaps that is why she resorted to her ways of evading trouble. I really can't say, perhaps I was quiet because I preferred to be alone, playing with my legos and ignoring interaction with my family as much as possible, at this time both of my parents were beginning to have marital problems, keeping us up all night with their 10 p.m. yelling while we plunged our heads into our pillows, hoping everything would turn out all right, it did not. Maybe the lack of parenting or the constant chaos of fights and moving had something to do with our disjointing speech patterns. I really can't say.




Culture and Subculture
http://www.consumerpsychologist.com/cb_Culture.html

Allan et al Speaking the unspeakable response.

After reading Allan Et Al's Speaking the unspeakable I realized several things. The desexualization of teachers in the school environment is almost a standard as anything relating to sex and it's preferences are hidden from view until sexual education in later years. Even then sexual orientation is not touched upon enough as the process of birth is apparently more important. I remember in my 11th grade class that they once had a homosexual speaker come in and tell everyone about his exploits and how AIDs  ruined his life. He became rich through some means that I do not remember and became bored and depressed after a few years. So to pass the time he would go out and fulfill any urges he could including sex. Eventually he contracted AIDs and was thrown out of his job. That was pretty much the moral of the story, don't get AIDs or your life will be ruined, but the most interesting part of this story was the fact that he was a homosexual man who got it on with other men. This was not touched upon much at all when he was giving the lecture and was swept underneath the proverbial public school rug. When it came to the faculty of my school their sexuality was as much as a mystery as their ability to cope with students. Sure there were homosexual students and they were talked about but when it came to the staff of the school no one really knew. It was as if they wanted to keep them as a blank slate, to distance themselves as much as possible and to only interact to teach. Is this a good thing? Yes and no. While teaching is a very personal job it is also sometimes alright to be impersonal. Their lives could distract or interfere with the students studies or anger their parents if they adopt a life style that is not to their liking, adding to the stress of student life. While finding out about who you are is important I believe it should be gradual, to be grown in grade and high school then to blossom after graduation when they can be as open as they want to the real world. Then again maybe it would be a good thing for teachers to just come out with their sexual preference on day 1 at school, shouting what gender they like then beginning a lesson that has nothing to do with what they just said.

 Transgression and the Situated Body: Gender, Sex, and the Gay Male Teacher.
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED423332