Poll: Change How Black History Month Is Observed in West County Schools?
Please take our poll on a challenging question raised by the superintendent of West Contra County schools: Should the "heroes and holidays" approach to multicultural education be changed to a "decision-making and social action" curriculum?
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It's Black History Month again, a time when schools celebrate African-American contributions and heroes. This year, however, the superintendent of the West Contra Costa Unified School district, Bruce Harter, has issued a thought-provoking challenge to the traditional approach.
We'd like your vote in our poll at the bottom of this article on Black History Month education.
"Because we designate one month of the year as Black or African American History month," Harter says in his message, "we highlight and learn about contributions of African Americans – what some call the "heroes and holidays" approach to diversity in our society." (The superintendent's message is on the district Web site and is attached to this article.)
"Teaching about ‘heroes and holidays’ does not ensure any discussion of oppression, social inequity, and struggles with racism and poverty," he continues. "Some writers on multi- cultural education assert that the contributions approach tends to reinforce the American bootstrap myth: 'If you work hard enough you can make it.' The implication is that if you don’t ‘make it’ you must not be trying hard enough."
Harter says, for example, that the author of Critical Race Theory, Richard Delgado, contends that the focus on contributions takes individuals out of their cultural and historical context and casts them as success stories as defined by the standards of the dominant culture. "Delgado maintains that this approach leads to the reinforcement and perpetuation of the stereotypes by presenting a superficial and trivial understanding of the culture and experience of African Americans," Harter says.
Harter recommends that Black History Month observances in schools be expanded to what James Banks called a "decision-making and social action" approach. In such a curriculum, "students develop and implement strategies to eradicate racism, or any other form of oppression in their schools, communities, and personal lives," he says.
"Students could build upon their knowledge of African American history to explore how racism, stereotypes, and detrimental policies continue to operate in our society and in their own environments by using self-reports, interviews, and other data to provide multiple perspectives on the topic. Then students could analyze their own values and beliefs, apply their new knowledge, identify alternative courses of action and decide what, if any, steps they will take to address these issues in their school or community."
"The major goal of this approach is to teach students thinking and decision making skills, to help them acquire a sense of efficacy," Harter says.
Please cast your vote in our reader poll below, and we'd welcome your reason in the comments section.
Ruby MacDonald
7:45 am on Friday, February 10, 2012
Would studying the activists of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's be categorized as a "holidays and heroes" approach or a "decision-making and social action approach"? It should be possible to promote the specific aims of both approaches by suitable crafting of a lesson on this theme.
Susan Wehrle
12:27 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
I agree with Ruby. Good teaching is about inclusion, gaining access. We can all be heroes, effect change, learn from history.
Todd Groves
3:19 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
I've long pondered having students explore the achievement gap data as classwork in early high school, as Dr. Harter seems to be suggesting. Such a provocative exercise might stimulate more social thought among our distracted youth.
Should we be concerned at critical pedagogy's thinly veiled Marxist message when our kids deeply need financial and educational empowerment? Analyzing power relationships is a useful skill at cafe tables, non-profits or grad school, while teaching entrepreneurship might actually create some real community change. A factoid floating around the policy world holds that in the next decade only 300 million jobs will be created for the 1.2 billion kids presently between 10 and 20 years old. If our kids don't invent their own jobs, they easily may not have one.
WCCUSD must focus raising, and meeting, academic expectations for all students. Unless a sea change occurs in the California electorate, we must make do with current resources and tirelessly work to make them more effective. Our kids must be able to competently negotiate the commercial world, make good life decisions and add value to their community. How do we impart these qualities in the classroom?
Susan Wehrle
3:54 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
Marxist? Good grief.
Todd Groves
4:46 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
No kidding. Critical pedagogy has its roots solidly in Marxist theory, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy , http://mingo.info-science.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/definitions.htm . Is the enormous social overhaul the movement aims to achieve within the means or mission of schools? Our kids need avenues to enter the workforce and higher education, so a laser-like pragmatism about outcomes should be taken.
Susan Wehrle
4:54 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
Then it's a good thing -- critical pedagogy. We don't want to be (or to produce) "cogs in the wheel". We don't even have any manufacturing left in this counrty, to speak of.
Todd Groves
8:27 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
Critical thinking is good and needed, but critical pedagogy could easily be characterized as an ideology far outside the mainstream. Would you be as comfortable with a radical libertarian ideology driving our pedagogy? I know I wouldn't, yet our left-leaning community's embrace of this idealism invites such comparisons.
We need something deep to improve student achievement. Radical flirtations are titillating, but bedrock issues like classroom management and engaging, rigorous curriculum count far more than arcane theory. Our kids get a substantially different education than those in neighboring, wealthier communities. Achieving results comparable to Lamorinda for all WCCUSD kids would fit my ideal of equity.
Getting kids angry that the deck is stacked against them- the goal of critical pedagogy- isn't a bad thing, but it needs a direction. If we cause kids to reject the system because it has flaws, we do them no favors. If we cause them to beat the system and the odds, then that's a goal worth pursuing. If our kids leave WCCUSD with many open doors, then we have done our job. Let's face it, life's not fair. Accept what you must, and fight what you can.
Jason Schwager
8:02 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
Cumbersome name. Better may be simply: DECISIONS & ACTIONS
Jason Schwager
8:21 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
I appreciate Bruce Harter's thoughtful analysis, and voted "not sure" and here's why: Everything Bruce suggested. Adding his ideas and expanding the contributions made and continually being made by African Americans will provide depth and reflection on the many hands creating the culture everyone lives in. Rather than throw out what one celebrates and who we celebrate, have the curriculum look at how these celebrations are influenced by such invisible concepts as the American Bootstrap Myth. What decisions had to be made?
Richard Delgado's observation that education and popular beliefs too often divorce one aspect from it's ground of being. Wholistic is a concept I'm confident Delgado would agree, that will serve to not eliminate, but put individual's contributions back into cultural context. Don't ignore the great people who endured and triumphed, get them in context.