"Other People's Children" Part III

I dragged myself through the last three essays of "Other People's Children." That's not to say that they weren't eminently enjoyable or readable, but I just somehow got swept up in the act of NOT reading them despite my best intentions.

In "Cross Cultural Confusions in Teacher Assessment" Delpit likens teaching in an interesting way to preaching, saying that they share traits like communicating and influencing/convincing people in a "live audience" situation. Delpit goes on to explain that, just as the best Episcopalian priest in New Haven would have difficulty connecting with the congregation of a Southern black preacher (and vice versa), so too might teachers from different cultural backgrounds. This leads to issues in teacher assessment when assessors (who tend to be predominantly from the "mainstream" culture) evaluate minority teaching students as less effective, even though these teachers may in fact be teaching in a way that makes sense to their largely minority audience.

In "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse" Delpit takes on the observations of literacy specialist James Paul Gee who has claimed that it is not only nearly impossible (if not actually impossible) for people who have not been born into the dominant discourse to learn and become fluent in that discourse but also that those individuals (particularly "women and minorities") may be better off NOT learning the mainstream or status discourse, as it may require them to deny their primary identities. Delpit, using examples of previous generation African American students who have mastered the dominant discourse and used it to influence mainstream culture even moreso. She goes on to encourage teachers to 1) validate and honor the importance of a student's primary discourse, 2) understand the conflict inherent in teaching the mainstream discourse and 3) include "discussions of oppression" as they relate to literacy and discourse-learning ... and helping students "cheat the system."

In the final essay of the book, "Education in a Multicultural Society," Delpit examines several of the primary issues that make teaching diverse populations especially challenging. Some of these include "the cultural clash between students and schools (or the tension between home culture and school culture), stereotyping, "child deficit assumptions that lead to teaching less instead of more" and "ignorance of cultural norms." Delpit encourages the development of a multicultural staff to match the multicultural student population, the inclusion of parents to help better understand the cultural conflicts involved, and a revision of curriculum to better reach a diverse population.