Thoughts on Teacher Education

In Mrs. Linda Strait’s U.S. History class, the students act out a simulation in which they as African-American teenagers attempt to convince the Anglo-American owner of a skating rink to allow them to stake in the rink (Grant, 2003). The student teams construct arguments to convince the skating rink owner, played by Mrs. Strait, to admit them. As each team presents their case, Mrs. Strait bounces back with statements such as, “…not my problem. Find another place” (Grant, 2003, pp. 20-21). Students must come up with powerful reasons to change her mind. I find this lesson remarkable because Mrs. Strait, an African-American teacher, teaches in a primarily middle-class, Anglo-American school. Mrs. Strait explained her reasoning for this activity, “What I try to convey is that America is multifaceted. That there—it’s not just White America anymore. I don’t know if it ever was just that, but that’s how it was always taught in history books” (quoted in Grant, 2003, p. 25). I believe Linda Strait presents an example of a teacher who practices culturally relevant pedagogy. However, several individuals do not see the need for culturally relevant teaching especially in Linda Strait’s homogenous classroom. I want to make two responses to this position, labeled by some as the exemption syndrome.

First, subscribers to the exemption syndrome may have implicit deficit beliefs about students of color. Bartolomé (1994/2003), for example, described how some students view culturally responsive teaching methods as a solution for working with culturally diverse students. These well-intentioned preservice teachers held the assumption that “children who experience academic difficulties (especially from culturally and linguistically low-status groups) require some form of ‘special’ instruction since they obviously have not been able to succeed under ‘regular’ or ‘normal’ instructional conditions” (p. 409). “Normal” education, by default, refers to Anglo-American, middle class education, which is supposedly a democratic meritocracy. Ladson-Billings (1995) summarized it best when she wrote, “the goal of education becomes how to ‘fit’ students constructed as ‘other’ by virtue of their race/ethnicity, language or social class into a hierarchical structure that is defined as a meritocracy [emphasis by author]” (p. 467). The exemption syndrome assumes that since Anglo-American students in Mrs. Straits are not “otherized,” the students already “fit” within the school system.

Second, the exemption syndrome implies that cultural competence has no importance for non-minority students. Teachers who hold this position teach uncritically, reproducing instead of changing (or bettering) society. Ladson-Billings stated, “Not only must teachers encourage academic success and cultural competence, they must help students to recognize, understand, and critique current social inequality” (p. 476). In addition, Bartolomé (1994/2003) suggested that teachers committed to social change achieve a sense of political clarity, in which they recognize that “teaching is not a politically neutral undertaking” (p. 412). I argue that critiquing the effects of white privilege must occur for a teacher to establish this clarity. The exemption syndrome prevents teachers from reflecting on how they participate in a system of inequality which adopts a “‘cultural’ ideology of White supremacy” (Bartolomé, 1994/2003, p. 414).

Critical teaching and critical learning form the foundations for changing societal inequities. Although Bartolomé (1994/2003) established the “moral conviction that we must humanize the education experience of students from subordinated populations” (p. 425), I believe that any education which implicitly reproduces inequality, thereby de-humanizing the “other,” also de-humanizes non-minority students. As Mrs. Strait confirmed, “[racism] is really still happening today” (Grant, 2003, p. 25); all students must be empowered to work towards social justice.

References

Bartolomé, L. I. (1994/2003). Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano & R. D. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 408-429). New York: RoutledgeFalmer

Grant, S. G. (2003). History lessons: Teaching, learning, and testing in U.S. high school classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ladson-Billings, G. J. (1995). Towardy a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491.