Teaching to Change the World By: Jeannie Oakes and Martin Lipton

This article is about:

• Ideologies
• Myths
• Culture
• Education
• Structure
• Inequality
• Morality
• Institution
• Inefficiency
• Opportunity
• Achievement
• Progress
• Competition
• Modernism

Oakes and Lipton made the argument has to do with dominant ideology. They talk a lot about the deeply rooted myths that are keeping those in power from truly understanding what people in public school need. As a democratic society we as students and teachers need to focus on changing the system and the institution to better suit different people. We cannot continue to be stuck in the boundaries that these myths of education have continued to surround us with. We also cannot put a band aid on a broken leg and think that certain resources will help everyone.

Evidence:

· “It has become clear that regardless of their merit, some people could never overcome the disadvantages from which they began”.

· “Even less attention is paid to the serious challenge to common schooling brought about by these events; namely, the increasing school opportunity gap for students that follows the increasing income gap of their parents”.

· “We must be sure the conditions exist so that everyone can participate fully”.

· “The postmodern world is abandoning the notion of progress through universals and predictability”.

This article was so long and had so much in it that I almost felt like I was reading Delpit again for the first time. It took me a little while to actually understand where the authors were going with the information that they were giving. I felt as though it was a combination of everything we have read so far (what a coincidence).

I thought some of the myths were extremely true of our society. One of them was the myth of merit. I think we have all been in situations where no matter how hard we worked someone with more connections or was wealthier seemed to steal our thunder. Wealthy white Americans can be extremely successful in their lives due to their race. Then they were talking about the war on poverty and tried to level the playing field of education for everyone. They gave people of color more resources but these barely scratched the surface. This makes me think that the people did not truly understand what the people in poverty truly needed. I can make the connection to the service of what where they talk about how people helping those in need really have to try and understand where they are coming from. They need to talk and reflect about what those people need. Most of the people in power have no idea what people unlike themselves really need they just assume or the people in power are not aware they have power. I also thought about Kozol and the vicious cycle of poverty. If our school systems put so much emphasis on the individual bringing success to themselves that we don’t see that the problems they face effect how they do things.

The authors also talked a lot about the institution and how they treat everything as if it was a factory. That everything needs to be efficient, quick, and the same standards are set for everything. I hate how our school system does this. Nothing is personal or interactive which makes it almost impossible to get anything out of it. How many times have we all learned things in a class that we completely forget later on. Block schedules give barely enough time to fully understand things because the curriculum is tries to jam pack so much into a small time frame. Students are also extremely over tested and judged by the grades that they get. I am one of many perfectly well rounded and intelligent individuals who did not do well on the SATS. This in turn limited my opportunities for schools that I could get into.

People who do well and the people in power do not want to change things because they are thriving on the system that is already set in place. This also means that they have no idea that they are part of the problem. It is the privileged that make the opportunity gap so big because they only let people like them come into power. The only reason they have power in the first place is because of their wealth and connections. As a privileged person I can begin to change things by understanding and listening to those who come from a different background than myself. Reading the last bits of the article I came up with one equation hope + action=change