We Can't Fix What We Can't Talk About

• In Event: Engaging Praxis: Curriculum Studies in Classrooms and Communities

Abstract

In this paper, the author discusses how the fear of having critical conversations about racial issues perpetuates the current educational achievement gaps in American Schools. This work aims to situate practices proven to successfully educate children of color against the reasons these practices are not being aggressively embraced by classroom teachers.

Slavery in America would never have been abolished if the majority of White America had not supported the endeavor or if hundreds of White Americans had not risked their lives – resulting in the legalization of educating Black Americans.

The Civil Rights Movement would never have been successful if White Americans had not shed blood alongside their Black brothers and sisters. These efforts resulted in the delegalizing of segregated schools in America. So, how is that White Americans now fear talking about issues of race for fear of being labeled racist by people of color, and Black Americans refrain from discussing issues of race for fear of being labeled as radical or anti-White people by Caucasian
Americans? Research on the history of educating minority populations in the United States supports the fact that the foundation of educating minorities, specifically Black people in the United States, was founded on issues of race. So, how do we expect to resolve educational issues caused by racial inequities if educators are apprehensive about discussing the topic?

The author puts the work of educational theorist Gloria Ladson Billings and her findings about how to successfully educate children of color against current beliefs and educational reforms designed to close educational achievement gaps. Almost 30 years ago, Gloria Ladson-Billings’s ground-breaking study of successful teachers of African American children, The Dreamkeepers, was published to offer a solution to the problems of educating African American students.
The findings of this study became the tenets for culturally relevant pedagogy, which she thoroughly tested through intensive examination to support her theory that culturally relevant practitioners are consistently successful with students of color because they empower them intellectually, socially and emotionally, and politically.

Educational leaders consistently preach “data-driven instruction, insisting that teachers use student achievement data to determine best practices for educating kids, encouraging what works for students and discarding what doesn’t. Culturally relevant pedagogy has been proven to work; and few curriculum theorists have done more research examining the effectiveness of culturally relevant practices than Gloria Ladson-Billings.

So, why is culturally relevant pedagogy not pervasive in America’s classrooms? The findings in this paper suggest that only one main obstacle stands in the way of Ladson-Billings’s vision becoming a nationally sought-after reform model: the lack of candid discussions about issues of race.

Author

• Kawanya Isom-Benjamin, Houston County School District
  Presenting Author