Shapiro's "Clinton and Education: Policies Without Meaning", is about very misguided (good?) intentions. Last week we read pieces by Finn and Kozol, who described the dangers of tracking, scripted curricula and pre-packaged lessons; before that, Bartolome and her commentary on the pitfalls of focusing on methods; and before that Delpit and johnson, who introduced us to privilege and power in society and in the classroom. It seems to me that the common thread here is that (especially with regard to the underprivileged, non-scwaamp ers), the education system as a whole stifles creativity, suffocates critical thinking and problem solving, and prevents social mobility while preparing students to be tax-paying robots. Shapiro writes about Clintons approach on page 46, "the most alarming feature of your approach to education is the greatly increased emphasis on the notion that public education exists to service the needs of corporate America, that education is preeminently about preparing kids for the job market."
Shapiro writes, further down on page 46, "(education) is about creating and nurturing the individual's capabilities to live critically aware, humanly sensitive, and socially responsible lives. " And in case you think his views have changed, this is a snippit from a 2011 article titled "Educating for Peace", based on his book Educating Youth for a World Beyond Violence: Pedagogy for Peace :
"Despite our deep hopes, the Obama administration has continued on the same path for schools: one that emphasizes more testing and more competition, values only a narrow range of knowledge types, envisages teaching as mainly preparation for work and meeting corporate needs, and forgets education’s responsibility for nurturing the deeply thoughtful, spiritually sensitive, and morally concerned citizens of our future world."
*remind me in class to tell you about a conversation I had with a superindendent regarding this issue. I don't feel comfortable writing it in a public blog. It really emphasizes the fact that teachers need to be "rebels". from Rachel's Bartolome blog:
"We are suppose to teach children, ALL children. But how
when the stakes are against them and the people in charge set up a system that
will ensure that these students remain where they are. As teachers we will have
to take over our own classrooms for these students. Is there any other way but
to be a rebel?
So our job becomes a balancing act: prepare the students for standardized tests, which will allow us to keep our jobs and look good in the newspapers, while secretly incorporating the responsiblity, morality, and relevant connections to real life that our students need.
Segue into my election topic: environmental stewardship.
Links: Arctic Wildlife Refuge: Why Trash an American Treasure for a Tiny Percentage of Our Oil Needs?
and
Why Drilling in Alaska's ANWR Is a Bad Idea
My reason for choosing this topic is two-fold: 1. there is evidence that drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge will not yield much oil: ANWR is estimated to have 10,000 million barrels of oil--the US uses 21 million barrels per day (this would service 58 million of the 240,000,000 cars in the US (with 15 gallon gas tanks)), for 13.5 years. The problem is, the oil pipeline --the Trans Alaska Pipeline--can only transport just over 2.1 million barrels per day. Incidentally, this wouldn't even happen for ten years--2023-- (it would take this long for any actual oil production to occur). And it would not make much of a difference at the pump (90% of the profit would go to the state of Alaska, leaving a difference of mere pennies/ gallon for the rest of the country). 2. that being said, the bigger issue --for me at least-- is that this land was set aside to be preserved for future generations. We have a responsibility to protect some places on Earth... "wilderness" defined in the Wilderness Act (1964): “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
my old buddy Carl Sagan said it well: please enjoy Reflections on a Mote of Dust.
I think Shapiro would enjoy Sagan. From the bottom of page 53 to the top of 54 he writes about his view of discipline, "discipline means acting in ways that are mindful of the needs and rights of others. It arises from social standards and moral behavior that resist the disregard for human life shown on our streets, just as it opposes wasteful and unrestrained consumerism and the irresponsible destruction of the Earth and its resources. Inculcating this sort of discipline requires teaching methods that contest the indifference, callousness, and self-indulgence of our individual and collective behaviors, conveying the importance of acting with regard to limits and with respect for human life (indeed, of all life)."
GK
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Northern Cities, Practice What You Preach
One of the best descriptions of anything I've ever read:
"Childhood is...a perishable piece of life"
The entire paragraph:
"Admittedly, the economic needs of a society are bound to be reflected to some rational degree within the policies and purposes of public schools. But, even so, there must something more to life as it is lived by six-year-olds, or by teenagers, for that matter, than concerns about 'successful global competition'. Childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself." (Kozol page 19)
Kozol reveals the sad state of the physical conditions of inner city public schools. Coupled with disproportionate government spending and "Success For All" (or similar) scripted systems, many schools have taken backward steps toward resegration.
Kozol writes powerfully, "There is no misery index for the children of apartheid education." (Kozol page 16)
The end result is that white students have run to the hills, heading off to better schools outside their neighborhood or to private schools, leaving the inner city schools racially isolated.
Kozol is good writer and does well to illustrate the savage inequalities that exist in the schools he has visited with primary sources that tug on heartstrings. I can imagine the students he interviewed don't have the greatest life outside of school, and first and foremost, the schools need to meet the basic needs of students. They don't. So not only are students exposed to a learning environment that operates like a factory, they can't comfortably eat in the cafeteria, or use the bathroom, or exercise during recess. Even my pet tarantula at least receives benign neglect. This is just pure neglect.
Bartolome would clearly be opposed to these deplorable conditions and the rigidity and military-like implementation of the scripted curriculum. Talk about power in the classroom.
What was most troubling to me were the thoughts I had after reading the paragraph on page 8 regarding teacher salaries. I can only surmise that less is spent on teacher salaries, because teachers don't stay at the inner city schools for very long. There must be a huge amount of turnover, because any good teacher most certainly would realize that trying to teach there is futile. New teachers are shuttled in and paid new teacher salaries, while teachers in suburban areas make more and more money because they remain at their cushy jobs much longer. This fact must skew the numbers. But I asked myself,"would I give up my cushy job at a predominantly white, upper/middle class suburban school and take a shot at teaching at an inner city school in Detroit? St. Louis or L.A.? Milwaukee? South Bronx?" With sadness and embarrassment...no chance.
"A Tale of Two Schools"
GK
"Childhood is...a perishable piece of life"
The entire paragraph:
"Admittedly, the economic needs of a society are bound to be reflected to some rational degree within the policies and purposes of public schools. But, even so, there must something more to life as it is lived by six-year-olds, or by teenagers, for that matter, than concerns about 'successful global competition'. Childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself." (Kozol page 19)
Kozol reveals the sad state of the physical conditions of inner city public schools. Coupled with disproportionate government spending and "Success For All" (or similar) scripted systems, many schools have taken backward steps toward resegration.
Kozol writes powerfully, "There is no misery index for the children of apartheid education." (Kozol page 16)
The end result is that white students have run to the hills, heading off to better schools outside their neighborhood or to private schools, leaving the inner city schools racially isolated.
Kozol is good writer and does well to illustrate the savage inequalities that exist in the schools he has visited with primary sources that tug on heartstrings. I can imagine the students he interviewed don't have the greatest life outside of school, and first and foremost, the schools need to meet the basic needs of students. They don't. So not only are students exposed to a learning environment that operates like a factory, they can't comfortably eat in the cafeteria, or use the bathroom, or exercise during recess. Even my pet tarantula at least receives benign neglect. This is just pure neglect.
Bartolome would clearly be opposed to these deplorable conditions and the rigidity and military-like implementation of the scripted curriculum. Talk about power in the classroom.
What was most troubling to me were the thoughts I had after reading the paragraph on page 8 regarding teacher salaries. I can only surmise that less is spent on teacher salaries, because teachers don't stay at the inner city schools for very long. There must be a huge amount of turnover, because any good teacher most certainly would realize that trying to teach there is futile. New teachers are shuttled in and paid new teacher salaries, while teachers in suburban areas make more and more money because they remain at their cushy jobs much longer. This fact must skew the numbers. But I asked myself,"would I give up my cushy job at a predominantly white, upper/middle class suburban school and take a shot at teaching at an inner city school in Detroit? St. Louis or L.A.? Milwaukee? South Bronx?" With sadness and embarrassment...no chance.
"A Tale of Two Schools"
GK
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Best Practice...
I don't claim to be the best teacher in the world, but it seems to me that "culturally responsive instruction" and "strategic teaching" are simply good teaching practices and frankly, common sense approaches. Providing options, allowing students to choose, and relating subject matter to the real world, seem to me to be things that should happen frequently in any classroom setting--especially those comprised of diverse students with varying cultural backgrounds. I mean, creating relevant lessons? Using graphic organizers? If teachers don't do this on a daily basis, they have no business teaching. That being said, the reality is that many lazy, complacent, inflexible, and biased teachers are more concerned about their plans for the upcoming weekend than about student learning. I feel a rant coming on...How many times do you hear "It's friday!" after saying hello to a teacher the day before a weekend? How many times do you see students watching movies and eating snacks in classrooms the day before a vacation? How many times do you hear teachers chatting away during professional development workshops? It's unfortunate that papers such as this one by Bartolome even have to be written.
It's pretty obvious how Bartolome feels about privilege and power in the classroom. On page 176, she writes a few choice words that describe marginalized students (schools have denied their humanity, robbed them of their culture, reduced them to subhumans, etc).
She writes, "the creation of learning environments for low SES and ethnic minority students, similar to those for more affluent and White populations, requires that teachers discard deficit notions and genuinely value and utilize students' existing knowledge bases in their teaching. In order to do so, teachers must confront and challenge their own social biases so as to honestly begin to perceive their students as capable learners. Furthermore, they must remain open to the fact that they will also learn from their students. Learning is not a one-way undertaking." (p 182) The problem with this is that I'm just not sure the majority of teachers reflect on their teaching with this in mind.
One example that Bartolome cites on page 179 highlights "teachers who uncritically follow school practices that unintentionally or intentionally serve to promote tracking and segregation within school and classroom contexts continue to reproduce the status quo." I can pretty much guarantee that this is the farthest thing from most teachers minds during the school year. But on the other hand, teachers teach the classes assigned to them by administration, and in most cases, can't help if they are given an AP, honors, college prep, or lower level courses.
Bartolome writes that teachers need to be more culturally sensitive. This should manifest itself in the classroom with the teacher offering students choices and taking into account their different backgrounds in order to encourage them to take ownership of their education. In addition, teachers need to prepare students with skills they need to be "independent and metacognitively aware". It's the skill building that students really need in order to succeed in their classes and in their lives beyond school. Again, in my opinion,these are just best teaching practices that ALL teachers should be employing on a daily basis.
video link: culture based education, Kamehameha schools
GK
It's pretty obvious how Bartolome feels about privilege and power in the classroom. On page 176, she writes a few choice words that describe marginalized students (schools have denied their humanity, robbed them of their culture, reduced them to subhumans, etc).
She writes, "the creation of learning environments for low SES and ethnic minority students, similar to those for more affluent and White populations, requires that teachers discard deficit notions and genuinely value and utilize students' existing knowledge bases in their teaching. In order to do so, teachers must confront and challenge their own social biases so as to honestly begin to perceive their students as capable learners. Furthermore, they must remain open to the fact that they will also learn from their students. Learning is not a one-way undertaking." (p 182) The problem with this is that I'm just not sure the majority of teachers reflect on their teaching with this in mind.
One example that Bartolome cites on page 179 highlights "teachers who uncritically follow school practices that unintentionally or intentionally serve to promote tracking and segregation within school and classroom contexts continue to reproduce the status quo." I can pretty much guarantee that this is the farthest thing from most teachers minds during the school year. But on the other hand, teachers teach the classes assigned to them by administration, and in most cases, can't help if they are given an AP, honors, college prep, or lower level courses.
Bartolome writes that teachers need to be more culturally sensitive. This should manifest itself in the classroom with the teacher offering students choices and taking into account their different backgrounds in order to encourage them to take ownership of their education. In addition, teachers need to prepare students with skills they need to be "independent and metacognitively aware". It's the skill building that students really need in order to succeed in their classes and in their lives beyond school. Again, in my opinion,these are just best teaching practices that ALL teachers should be employing on a daily basis.
video link: culture based education, Kamehameha schools
GK
Saturday, September 8, 2012
addendum
Regarding differences between Johnson and Delpit:
I think the Delpit reading was more constructive (meaning, she at least offered what I took as a solution). Johnson wrote that privilege exists and didn't seem to lay out a solution (although he implies that recognition and discussion of privilege is the first step---or maybe there is no solution), while Delpit writes (maybe i'm wrong) that the culture of power exists and rather than right that wrong, if "we" clue everyone into the culture, and collaborate with others, we can at least level out the playing field in the classroom.
Also I re-read my post and I have no clue where the Babe reference came from. Sounds a little ridiculous at second glance....
I think the Delpit reading was more constructive (meaning, she at least offered what I took as a solution). Johnson wrote that privilege exists and didn't seem to lay out a solution (although he implies that recognition and discussion of privilege is the first step---or maybe there is no solution), while Delpit writes (maybe i'm wrong) that the culture of power exists and rather than right that wrong, if "we" clue everyone into the culture, and collaborate with others, we can at least level out the playing field in the classroom.
Also I re-read my post and I have no clue where the Babe reference came from. Sounds a little ridiculous at second glance....
Baa, Ram, Ewe
Coming soon to a theater near you, Lisa Delpit's adaptation of Babe. Here's a preview:
Farmer Hoggett: "That'll do pig."
Babe: "You know why 'that'll do'? Because I got the damn password from the sheep! That's right. Otherwise you, with your veiled, "liberal" herding commands, would have looked like a moron in front of all these people. Do you really think that by treating me like a sheep dog I was all of the sudden able perform like a sheep dog? No. Fly ran all the way home to the farm to get the secret password so I could do it. You don't want to acknowledge that you have the power in this relationship, do you? It's ok, you're supposed to have the power, and I'm fine with it. Stop thinking you're going to offend someone and just tell me explicitly how to herd sheep. It actually makes me feel worse when you attempt to deemphasize your power and act progressively, because it makes me feel like I'm missing something that I should already know. It's makes me feel inferior, not equal. I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have that password. My guess is the dinner table."
Delpit argues in The Silenced Dialogue, that a "culture of power" exists in classrooms and that, "if you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of taht culture makes acquiring power easier." The problem is, she continues, "members of any culture transmit information implicitly to co-members. However, when implicit codes are attempted across cultures, communication frequently breaks down. Each cultural group is left saying, 'why don't those people say what they mean?' as well as, 'what's wrong with them, why don't they understand?'"
Delpit also says that even when those well-intentioned "liberal" taechers, swho strive towards maximum individual freedom and autonomy, attempt to deemphasize power they, "remove the very explictness that the child needs to understand the rules of the new classroom culture."
Not all students go home after school and have the same experiences. They may have very caring parents who "would transmit those codes (of the culture of power) to their children, (but instead) they transmit another culture that children must learn at home in order to survive in their communities." These families don't fit into the "priviliged (as Johnson would call it) ideology" (Delpit addresses "whiteness" here) and those that are priviliged need to realize that (my favorite quote in the reading from Massey, Scott, and Dornbusch, p 45) "oppression can arise out of warmth, friendliness, and concern." It will be painful for (us) "liberal" teachers but we need to "learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness," and have meaningful interactions and conversations with ALL teachers in order to balance the culuture of power that exists in classrooms. Good intentions are not enough.
***the "scientist" (i'm not really a scientist) in me feels I should point out a rebuttal by Stephen Jay Gould-- Harvard zoology professor, author and supreme evolutionary biologist --to The Bell Curve (referenced by Delpit on page 31 (I assume)). An excerpt from the article "Curveball" published in teh New Yorker, November 28, 1994: He writes, "Herrnstein and Murray's second claim, the lightning rod for most commentary extends the argument for innate cognitive stratification to a claim that racial differences in IQ are mostly determined by genetic causes—small difference for Asian superiority over Caucasian, but large for Caucasians over people of African descent. This argument is as old as the study of race, and is most surely fallacious." and, "The authors omit facts, misuse statistical methods, and seem unwilling to admit the consequence of their own words."
GK
Farmer Hoggett: "That'll do pig."
Babe: "You know why 'that'll do'? Because I got the damn password from the sheep! That's right. Otherwise you, with your veiled, "liberal" herding commands, would have looked like a moron in front of all these people. Do you really think that by treating me like a sheep dog I was all of the sudden able perform like a sheep dog? No. Fly ran all the way home to the farm to get the secret password so I could do it. You don't want to acknowledge that you have the power in this relationship, do you? It's ok, you're supposed to have the power, and I'm fine with it. Stop thinking you're going to offend someone and just tell me explicitly how to herd sheep. It actually makes me feel worse when you attempt to deemphasize your power and act progressively, because it makes me feel like I'm missing something that I should already know. It's makes me feel inferior, not equal. I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have that password. My guess is the dinner table."
Delpit argues in The Silenced Dialogue, that a "culture of power" exists in classrooms and that, "if you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of taht culture makes acquiring power easier." The problem is, she continues, "members of any culture transmit information implicitly to co-members. However, when implicit codes are attempted across cultures, communication frequently breaks down. Each cultural group is left saying, 'why don't those people say what they mean?' as well as, 'what's wrong with them, why don't they understand?'"
Delpit also says that even when those well-intentioned "liberal" taechers, swho strive towards maximum individual freedom and autonomy, attempt to deemphasize power they, "remove the very explictness that the child needs to understand the rules of the new classroom culture."
Not all students go home after school and have the same experiences. They may have very caring parents who "would transmit those codes (of the culture of power) to their children, (but instead) they transmit another culture that children must learn at home in order to survive in their communities." These families don't fit into the "priviliged (as Johnson would call it) ideology" (Delpit addresses "whiteness" here) and those that are priviliged need to realize that (my favorite quote in the reading from Massey, Scott, and Dornbusch, p 45) "oppression can arise out of warmth, friendliness, and concern." It will be painful for (us) "liberal" teachers but we need to "learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness," and have meaningful interactions and conversations with ALL teachers in order to balance the culuture of power that exists in classrooms. Good intentions are not enough.
***the "scientist" (i'm not really a scientist) in me feels I should point out a rebuttal by Stephen Jay Gould-- Harvard zoology professor, author and supreme evolutionary biologist --to The Bell Curve (referenced by Delpit on page 31 (I assume)). An excerpt from the article "Curveball" published in teh New Yorker, November 28, 1994: He writes, "Herrnstein and Murray's second claim, the lightning rod for most commentary extends the argument for innate cognitive stratification to a claim that racial differences in IQ are mostly determined by genetic causes—small difference for Asian superiority over Caucasian, but large for Caucasians over people of African descent. This argument is as old as the study of race, and is most surely fallacious." and, "The authors omit facts, misuse statistical methods, and seem unwilling to admit the consequence of their own words."
GK
Sunday, September 2, 2012
ignorance WAS bliss
Some of you may find this of transitory interest. I began my teaching career as an eager young(er) man with a purpose. Science had always interested me and I felt that as a teacher, I could share this interest with young people and teach them some cool stuff about the natural world. But as I got deeper and deeper into the subject matter, well the following quotes from Carl Sagan say it better than I:
--the more I taught, the more I wanted to learn. And it felt really good. So deeper I went into matters of the history of life on Earth, and how we have defied probability in simply existing...
--Ok Carl, this is getting a little intense. And kind of depressing. Am I better off knowing all this?
--So that's it. In order to make any sense of this, we should do what we can with the incredibly short amount of time that we have to deal more kindly with one another.
So I came to grips with all of this.
Vonnegut said, "we are here on EArth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different". So, as I've been farting around, I've really tried to be a decent and moral person. I've tried to be a good teacher and role model. I've tried to show patience, and flexibility, and empathy toward my students. Then I get this slap in the face right out of the gate from the first reading of my first graduate course. From page vii of the introduction to Privilege, Power, and Difference written by Allan G. Johnson, "We all know that a great deal of trouble surrounds issues of difference in this society, trouble relating to gender and race, sexual orienatation, ethnicity, social class," and "All of us are part of the problem."
I was taken aback and kind of angry. But I trudged on to hear what he had to say.
I think Johnson knew he might get this response out of me, because he spent the entire three chapters explaining how as a white, heterosexual, middle class male, that I was part of the problem. And it worked. What I was blissfully ignorant of prior to this reading, I'm now committed to examining and to working towards a solution to the problem. If it's anything like Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, I'm in for a real awakening. But excited for it.
I know the first three chapters are just part of a book that I assume in later chapters lays out some solutions, but I think just defining and acknowledging the problem, and using proper language is the beginning.
I felt reassured when at the beginning of chater 3, Johnson writes, "The trouble is rooted in a legacy we all inherited, and while we're here, it belongs to us. It isn't our fault. It wasn't caused by something we did or didn't do. But now that it's ours, it's up to us to decide how we're going to deal with it before we collectively pass it along to the generations that will follow ours." I think that even though I have never really considered the privileges I clearly have, it's not too late for me to work on making th e situation better for the next generation.
Johnson goes on to write (page 36), "...privilege doesn't dreive from who we are or what we've done. It is a social arrangemnt that depends on which category we happen to be sorted into by other people and how they treat us as a result." Ok, so he's not saying every individual "WHMCM" (as a teen might text) is necessarily guilty, but that "privilege is more about social categories than who people are." This just furthered my buy in. Nonetheless, "privilege itself still exists as a fact of social life" (p39).
I watched a good Ted Talk by Richard Wilkinson called "How Economic Inequity Harms Societies" . In it he explains that those countries with the greatest difference in income between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% have the worst gaps in health and social issues (including imprisonment, trust, obesity, life expectancy, math and literacy, and social mobility). These steep social gradients cause general social dysfunction because people think about the inequality in their daily lives. IN fact tests were carried out by Dickerson and Kinney ("Acute stressors and cortisol responses", Psychological Bulletin, 2004 vol 130) who found that test subjects exposed to threats to self esteem and social status when performing certain tasks, had significantly higheer levels of cortisol (a hormone released during times of stress) in their blood than others that did not experience those threats (stress has been linked to chronic health issues such as cardiovascular disease. *another study suggests a link between racial discrimiation, stress and health).
The US has the second highest income gap behing Singapore. And incidentally, those countries with greater disribution of wealth (Japan, Sweden) had far fewer problems regarding health and social issues...
Johnson writes on page 24, "the ease of not being aware of privilege is an aspect of privilege itself, what some call 'the luxury of obliviousness'". After reading Johnson, I'm no longer oblivious to privilege and I don't think I can ever go back to simply "farting around".
GK
--the more I taught, the more I wanted to learn. And it felt really good. So deeper I went into matters of the history of life on Earth, and how we have defied probability in simply existing...
--Ok Carl, this is getting a little intense. And kind of depressing. Am I better off knowing all this?
--So that's it. In order to make any sense of this, we should do what we can with the incredibly short amount of time that we have to deal more kindly with one another.
So I came to grips with all of this.
Vonnegut said, "we are here on EArth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different". So, as I've been farting around, I've really tried to be a decent and moral person. I've tried to be a good teacher and role model. I've tried to show patience, and flexibility, and empathy toward my students. Then I get this slap in the face right out of the gate from the first reading of my first graduate course. From page vii of the introduction to Privilege, Power, and Difference written by Allan G. Johnson, "We all know that a great deal of trouble surrounds issues of difference in this society, trouble relating to gender and race, sexual orienatation, ethnicity, social class," and "All of us are part of the problem."
I was taken aback and kind of angry. But I trudged on to hear what he had to say.
I think Johnson knew he might get this response out of me, because he spent the entire three chapters explaining how as a white, heterosexual, middle class male, that I was part of the problem. And it worked. What I was blissfully ignorant of prior to this reading, I'm now committed to examining and to working towards a solution to the problem. If it's anything like Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, I'm in for a real awakening. But excited for it.
I know the first three chapters are just part of a book that I assume in later chapters lays out some solutions, but I think just defining and acknowledging the problem, and using proper language is the beginning.
I felt reassured when at the beginning of chater 3, Johnson writes, "The trouble is rooted in a legacy we all inherited, and while we're here, it belongs to us. It isn't our fault. It wasn't caused by something we did or didn't do. But now that it's ours, it's up to us to decide how we're going to deal with it before we collectively pass it along to the generations that will follow ours." I think that even though I have never really considered the privileges I clearly have, it's not too late for me to work on making th e situation better for the next generation.
Johnson goes on to write (page 36), "...privilege doesn't dreive from who we are or what we've done. It is a social arrangemnt that depends on which category we happen to be sorted into by other people and how they treat us as a result." Ok, so he's not saying every individual "WHMCM" (as a teen might text) is necessarily guilty, but that "privilege is more about social categories than who people are." This just furthered my buy in. Nonetheless, "privilege itself still exists as a fact of social life" (p39).
I watched a good Ted Talk by Richard Wilkinson called "How Economic Inequity Harms Societies" . In it he explains that those countries with the greatest difference in income between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% have the worst gaps in health and social issues (including imprisonment, trust, obesity, life expectancy, math and literacy, and social mobility). These steep social gradients cause general social dysfunction because people think about the inequality in their daily lives. IN fact tests were carried out by Dickerson and Kinney ("Acute stressors and cortisol responses", Psychological Bulletin, 2004 vol 130) who found that test subjects exposed to threats to self esteem and social status when performing certain tasks, had significantly higheer levels of cortisol (a hormone released during times of stress) in their blood than others that did not experience those threats (stress has been linked to chronic health issues such as cardiovascular disease. *another study suggests a link between racial discrimiation, stress and health).
The US has the second highest income gap behing Singapore. And incidentally, those countries with greater disribution of wealth (Japan, Sweden) had far fewer problems regarding health and social issues...
Johnson writes on page 24, "the ease of not being aware of privilege is an aspect of privilege itself, what some call 'the luxury of obliviousness'". After reading Johnson, I'm no longer oblivious to privilege and I don't think I can ever go back to simply "farting around".
GK
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