Culture of Power

In Lisa Delpit's book Other People's Children: Cultural Conflicts in the Classroom, she explores the idea that educators must re-negotiate and re-align their paradigms when teaching to minority students. At first read, I found myself taking aback by the thought that as an educator, I was not doing enough to meet the cultural expectations of many of my minority students, especially my Black students, whose success rates remain the lowest in our classes (6.5 times less likely to reach graduate requirements than whites). As a result, I began to question my own andragogy with the same idealistic veracity I once had as a graduate student. What can I do? What am I doing badly? What am I doing well? What more can I learn? And just when I was about to give up and pass Delpit's book off as another fine read in a long list of books, I was struck by the notion that even though I grew up in the same neighborhoods as many of our students, even though I too could speak the language of many of the same minorities I am teaching, I had never the less become a product of a culture that sought to preserve itself, a "culture of power" that had no place for people of color and class who would not, and many times could not, assimilate to the dominant paradigm.

"Power" is a word, an idea, with which I often struggle. Too easy would it be to say we are all equal, especially in regard to class, yet too hard is it to say that we are not, especially in relation to our flesh and bones. However, passionate about politics, power is not unfamiliar to me. In fact, the very definition of politics is the "acquisition of power." But just how do our students come to attain the very power that affords them a good education, wealth, and dare I say happiness? More importantly, how do they attain the skills necessary to avoid Katrina-like disasters and remain at the mercy of such power?

In Academia, one such way is through culturally responsive teaching methods, methods that work in a way that identifies and speaks directly to the population of students one is serving. Our Reading/Study Skills program at SBVC is currently using, both in our classrooms and our Lab, several multicultural readers. Two of our more well known are the "Multicultural Reading Series, Books 1-4" and "Selections from the Black," both designed to bring our students into the world of Academia in a way that is comfortable, identifying, and enriching, a way that until recently, thanks to California's Basic Skills Initiative, was hardly discussed, or forgotten about at best.

Culturally responsive teaching methods, in a sense, guide students in understanding that no single version of "truth" is absolute and definitive, and does not exclusively prescribe to mainstream ways of learning. In order to accomplish this, teachers make authentic information about different ethnic groups accessible to students, much like the multicultural readers we provide in our textbooks and Lab. What this means is that students gain knowledge in an environment that is inviting, normal, and familiar to them. In fact, Geneva Gay's book Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice demonstrates that African, Asian, Latino, and Native American students will perform better, on multiple measures of achievement, when teaching is filtered through their own cultural experiences and frames of reference. This is encouraging, since it is these groups that we serve the most.

I know this topic is a shift from my usual political rants, but I have felt increasingly obligated to discuss it on my blog. This year I was extremely involved in everything from researching new assessment tests for our school to actively dialoguing with colleagues regarding the Basic Skills Inititiative to collaborating with my department Chair to create our Program Review document. As a result, a theme began to emerge. How are we, as educators, serving our minority students, and more importantly, how are they succeeding? The data show we are not meeting the needs of many of our students (retention rates 76%, with pass rates at 55%) but we are definitely heading in the right direction as we continue to discuss and implement culturally responsive teaching methods across the curriculum.