October 28th, 2008

Growing up, I received a Catholic school education that was very much about rote learning. As a child, I learned that I had a really good memory for facts and so I used that to my advantage to do well in school. Later on, when I came to the U.S., the education I received at a public school in Queens, New York was very similar in that it was also based around rote learning. It was not until I was accepted to a Quaker boarding school and spent three years there that my habits of thinking were changed substantially.

At Westtown, it was no longer sufficient to mirror back a set of facts I had learned from the book. Most of our assessments involved essays where we were required to provide a solid line of reasoning. I had a hard time adjusting to both the academic and social demands of a new school where I was one of a few minority and working class students. I also brought with me many defficiencies, specifically in my writing, that made working at the same level as the other students at Westtown difficult. As Delpit states, I did not come to boarding school with the same social capital as my fellow classmates because my single parent mom was too busy working a factory job to provide me with the attention that I would need to overcome the mediocre education I was receiving at my elementary school.

I was fortunate to find a teacher who understood what Delpit was referring to when she talks about educating minority students so that they have access to the codes of power and succeed academically. Rather than being easy on me, this teacher raised the expectations and demanded more from me. Whenever I would resort to speaking back the way I did back home with my friends, he would take the time to correct me (and he did this in both English and Spanish--he happened to be a Spanish teacher, which is how we became friends). The important thing is that he did this in a way that did not make me feel devalued, but rather in a way that made me feel like I had an ally who was on my side and wanted me to succeed. The important thing is that I saw how much this teacher cared about me in other situations and so I knew that when he was correcting me it came from a position of genuine interest in my success and well being. I was lucky to experience the same thing in college. I found professors who were not easy on me and I generally found the Hispanic professors to be the toughest of all. I think they understood, from their own experiences, that to succeed in a selective academic environment as a Hispanic or Latino person, I would have to understand the way people in that culture of power speak, write and think.

While I continued to grow intellectually over the years, I don't think there was a major change in my way of thinking. I still saw learning as the acquisition of more knowledge and skills. I think much of this came from the fact that I grew up mostly alone and I am a child of divorce. Books became my escape as a child and I learned early on to trust their authority. I think the major event in helping me to break free of the habits of mind that I learned as a child has been the fact that I am losing my vision. The belief that I had in objective reality (and the possibility of there being some kind of absolute truth to discover) is now shaken by the fact that at times my senses "lie" to me. With retinitis pigmentosa, objects appear in front of me unexpectedly as they move from my blind spot and come into focus in my remaining field of vision. It seems like these objects, which were not there a minute ago, suddenly appear out of nowhere. When your vision is lying to you, the belief in some kind of objective reality that we can know through empirical observation is much harder to accept. I think the fact that I am losing my vision, instead of restricting me, has actually liberated me from old ways of thinking and my belief in objectivity. I am now more willing to accept that everything is based on your perspective, from the way you think to the power you hold, to the choices you make. My lack of vision has in fact allowed me to see more. I can see how things may be different than they appear depending on where I stand, sometimes literally.

October 20th, 2008

The reading for this week presented several ways to understand what one believes about knowledge. On the one hand there was a division between a microscopic level, which is based at the level of the individual, and a macroscopic level, which is based at a more global level of society or the context in which one lives. To add another dimension, knowledge was also classified as either subjective or objective. When I tried to place myself into one of the cells in the matrix, I found it to be quite a challenge. What I found is that I don't really fall into any one of the cells.

At the microscopic and objective level (functionalism) I believe that a truly objective understanding of reality is not possible because it is shaped as much by our experiences, emotional states, and deeply ingrained biases we carry around with us. However, I don't fall into the microscopic and subjective (interpretivism) category either. I think when enough people agree on a specific knowledge and they act on it, it in fact becomes objective. The question of whether we can truly know it or not at that point becomes irrelevant. Based on the fact that an action took place based on it, I think that knowledge exists independently of the knower, even if in an abstract and roughly defined way.

At the macroscopic level, I have always been focused on exploring the power relationships in the society that I live in (placing me more in the radical structuralist camp). This preference for exploring the power relationships was definitly shaped by the fact that most of my family members were persecuted by the dictatorships that ruled the Dominican Republic. Listening to their experiences has made me sensitive to how power can be abused and arbitrarily applied, so I have always been aware of power relationships, especially since I live as a minority student within a majority society. At the same time, I believe power needs some kind of mechanism to continue to perpetuate itself and this is where culture comes in, especially in the form of values. Power relationships do not exist in a vacuum but need certain societal norms to either continue to exist or to be disrupted. This would put me in the radical humanist camp.

As for the relationship between the two levels (macroscopic and microscopic) I agree with Skrtic that there is a tension between the two, but I disagree with the order in which he has them showing in his chart. Whereas he emphasizes the importance of order at the microscopic level and that of conflict at the macroscopic level, I tend to see this a little differently. I see the macroscopic level of the power relations in society and the existing culture as the elements that reinforce order and continuity, and the microscopic level of the individual and choice as the catalysts for change that break that continuity through action.

As you can see, I could make a rationalization for any of the four categories set out by Skrtic in our reading. However, rather than a series of boxes, I would use a Venn diagram to show how all of these perspectives compete within my intellectual identity. This Venn diagram would not be static, but it would be constantly in motion, with the center of it, where each of the different categories intersects, moving in one of four directions depending on which interpretation of reality is receiving the most attention. The way this diagram reshapes itself continously represents the tensions that exist between the different interpretations in my mind. Rather than hoping that the motion ceases and one category becomes dominant, I would rather continue to have a more unsettled and dynamic understanding of knowledge. I believe it creates a richer live because it leaves openings for new and unexpected understandings to enter into my identity. This makes for a more exciting life.

October 14th, 2008

The readings for this week marked a sudden change from what we have been reading this semester. Rather than focusing on the historical background of the field of special education, these readings focused more on ethical and philosophical dilemmas.  The piece by Dr. Paul, which focused on the different definitions of morality (choice versus character) really made me think about my perspective on morality.  

I strongly believe that many of the problems in our society are closely tied to the fact that choice morality (in which individuals are judged based on their conscious actions) is the predominant way of thinking among the members of our society.  The problem with choice morality, in my mind, is that it is extremely difficult to connect the combined individual choices of individual members of our society to those of the society as a whole. Thus it becomes easy for someone to say that they are not responsible for the actions of the society as a whole because those actions were not their choices to begin with.  An invisible "it" is then given the power of action, which removes responsibility from the individual. This kind of mentality is dangerous because it can lead to situations in which atrocities are committed by rational people who think they are acting ethically (the same reason that was used to make the choice in the first place can then be used to justify it after the fact).

In contrast to choice morality, character morality judges the actor not based on their choice, but on the consequences of that choice.  Because consequences are more tangible (and visible) and character morality is a merit based system in which not all choices are equal (some bring about bigger consequences than others), this kind of morality has a better chance of holding the person who is acting accountable for his or her actions.  I think our society, which is obsessed with promoting the rights of the individual, tends to favor choice morality at the expense of character morality.  Unfortunately, as we mentioned in class, someone can act in a moral and ethical way and his or her actions can still have unintended unethical consequences.  This is why sometimes "good" people do "bad" things.  While a person's intentions in making an ethical or moral choice may have been good, there may be other things influencing that choice that are not entirely within that person's control, such as the social and political context.  

The Quakers have a simple saying that I think captures a different mindset on matters of morality: "live simply so that others may simply live."  I think the understanding expressed in this phrase is that yes, we do have choices, but each choice we make in turn affects the choices other people can make and thus has consequences for their lives and for the ability of the system as a whole to function.  The choices we make should not be only judged at the level of the individual and his or her rational process, but also at a global level in terms of how they affect the ecology of the system.  I think this kind of thinking is what we need to solve a lot of problems we face today (from how to fix the environment to how to educate diverse children). We need to focus more on what the consequences of our actions are and have a better awareness of the context in which we are acting.  

October 6th, 2008

The discussion on Monday night and tonight about language and the importance of paying attention to the words we use brought up several ideas in my mind. The first one is that we need to understand the power of words. A good example of this is the use of the N word. For most people this is a derogatory term that should never be used, no matter what the situation. However, growing up it was a term that I used all the time when I was talking with my friends.

The thing to understand is that most of my friends growing up were African American and that when we used the term it had a different connotation for us than it would if someone at my boarding school (where most students were white) were to use it. When my friends and I used the words in New York, we were appropriating the word and in some ways robbing it of its power, but when I have had derogatory terms used toward me in other settings I was immediately aware that the use of those terms was an expression of power meant to indicate my perceived inferior status. There are many other examples of how other groups have appropriated derogatory terms and stripped them of their power. One that comes to mind is the use of the word queer in the gay community.

It seems that the people in power also understand this point about the importance of words. As we have read a couple of times in our readings, the slogan "No Child Left Behind" was originally associated with the Children's Defense Fund. Since then it has been appropriated by the Republican administration as a way to sell their education legislation by making it sound more acceptable. After all, who would be in favor of "leaving a child behind." Other examples from this election include "hope" (again, who would be against that?) and "change" (during bad economic times, who can oppose a change?). In this case, words are being used to manipulate how we feel about an idea and tap into our sentiments as described by Michael Apple.

In addition to these more obvious cases, which we consider because they are associated with hot topics, there are other examples from research that we skip over without much thought. I was happy to see Vicki bring up the idea of what we consider "urban" tonight as a way of highlighting how the same word can have different meanings to each of us depending on our experiences. While for some of us urban meant a geographical area, for others the term described a cultural or class identification. As I read the remaining books we have to read this semester, I will try to be more aware of the terms that are being used and also try not to make assumptions that the author means exactly what I think they mean when they use a word.