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June 8, 2009Freire was right! Freire was wrong!
June 2, 2009
Often, I’m annoyed by community organizers and educators in America who romanticize Popular Education. My problem is not with Paolo Freire. I get annoyed because these folk morph his thinking into a philosophical system that ends up being more about the educator’s own struggle to be less oppressive (perhaps that is why Popular Education is standard fare for cool non-Latino guys and gals working in Latino communities) than it is about actual pedagogy.
Et Tu Flu?
April 28, 2009Are Segregated Schools Inferior or am I a Snob?
April 23, 2009By the time my sister had finally accepted that she would have to leave her beautiful home, she only had a few weeks to find a suitable place for her, her husband, her three school-age children, and her two cats. She found a large, attractive 3-bedroom apartment in Santa Ana, California on the border of Costa Mesa, both in Orange County. Although it’s a very nice community, my sister hadn’t realized that her children would have to go to some of the worst schools in Orange County (despite being in OC, the schools are below the California average for reading and math and most of the parents dropped out or at best only completed high school).
In evaluating these schools, I realized that not only did the performance data alarm me but so did the fact that roughly 70% of the kids at my nephew’s new high school would be Latinos. I asked myself: how could I, a life-long activist, have such a visceral reaction to this fact? I hate to buy into stereotypes. And in any case, who am I to say where my sister should send her kids to school? I don’t have children. Further, I went to Sierra Vista Middle School and to University High School both in the Irvine Unified School District. Perhaps I have developed a snooty filter that is causing me to look down on these schools as being somehow not good enough for my nieces and nephew. I hope that is not the case. I’d like to think that ever since California’s groundbreaking desegregation case, Mendez v. Westminster School District (1947), we Latino activists have been conscious about segregation and its pernicious effects. I also have some personal knowledge related to the disparities since I spent two and half years with my Grandparents in the South Central/South Bay area where I attended some of California’s roughest schools (long story) . But who knows what else is going on?–perhaps that’s for a therapist to figure out!
What I do know is that many Latino and African-American parents who have children in all Black or all Latino schools, have a sense that such schools are inferior. They know that their schools get fewer resources and generally lower quality teachers. They also know—as my mother commented recently—that if the school is all Latino or all Black, there is sure to be some violence going on!
NPR ran a fantastic story today about the increasing segregation of schools in the suburbs of Chicago. Many of those interviewed, expressed gut-feelings like mine as well as commentary similar to that of my mother. I don’t have a solution to the segregation problem. Some of the best minds and organizations have been tackling it for a very long time. At the end of the day, I only know that most segregated schools end up being separate and unequal. So separate and unequal, that the mere thought of a loved-one going to a segregated school can produce feelings of fear and anguish even in the hearts and minds of self-proclaimed activists like me.
Ok, don’t despair, here’s some hope from the Bronx:
The Latino Image
April 22, 2009Is Torture the New Black?
April 21, 2009
Every time some new document is released about the Bush administration’s War on Human Rights, I can’t help thinking that what has been released is not nearly as bad as whatever was deemed not releasable. President Obama has received a lot of criticism for disclosing torture memos. But for those of us Chicagoans who are familiar with Barack’s style (i.e. he is not crazy), we know that he probably provided the documents that were just bad enough to get the public to pursue the issue (perhaps forcing the administration to turn over the truly horrible stuff).