How long?

Rosa Parks

CRT and CultureWhat happens when we look at curriculum,

instruction, and learning through the lens of race and/or culture?

Is our current way of looking at curriculum, instruction, and learning the only way to look at curriculum…?

What happens when we look at curriculum… through the lens of race and/or culture?

(e.g., Chan, Valenzuela; Ladonson-Billings & Tate 1195; Love, 2004; Horsford, 2010, Ross & Chan, 2008; Sack, 2008)

Curriculum, Instruction, Learning

CRT looks at curriculum through the lens of race (and only race).

“We attempt to theorize race and use it as an analytic tool for understanding inequity” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 47).

But why?

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

There is inequity and race is a significant factor; there is racism.

Class and gender based explanations are not powerful enough to explain all of the difference (or variance) in school experience and performance.

Example: Examination of class and gender, taken alone or together, do not account for the extraordinarily high rates of school dropout, suspension, expulsion, and failure among African-American and Latino males.

~Essentially direct quotes from Ladson-Billings & Tate, p. 51

Why?

~The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worthwhile, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him fell that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the stands of other peoples.~

-Woodrow Wilson as presented by Ladson-Billings & Tate, p. 51

Why?

To help teachers change their practice to better serve students of color and to attempt to address negative perceptions of people of color by sharing their stories of triumph and failure.

-Excerpt from class notes.

Why?

What happens when we look at curriculum, instruction, and learning through the lens of race and/or culture?

First: “Use race as an analytic tool for understanding inequality” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, p. 47)

Use storytelling to look at inequities, reasons for inequities, and “solutions”◦ Differences in Achievement

Students of Color – White Students U.S.-Born Mexican Americans – Immigrants (Sequin High School) reasons for inequities, and “solutions”

Agenda

-virtually all Mexican and generationally diverse (45 percent immigrant and 55 percent U.S. born)

-Teachers: predominantly non-Latino (81 percent)

-In 1992, a full quarter of the freshman class repeated the grade for at least a second time…

-Between 1,2000 and 1,500 students enter the 9th grade each year and only 400 to 500 students graduate in any given year.

pp. 336-337

http://www.seguin.k12.tx.us/default.aspx?name=schools.seguinhigh

Excerpt from Valenzuela’s Subtractive Schooling…

-large (3,000+)

-inner-city

-Houston

NC Report Card 2008-2010 (1 School):

Percentage who passed BOTH the reading and math tests. Typically students score lower in reading…

White: 86.3 Black: 33.3 Hispanic: 28.3

Differences in Achievement Between:

Students of Color and White Students US-Born Mexican Americans and Immigrants (Seguin High School)

Master Narrative (Some Characteristics)

Note: Narrative/characteristics are

essentially excerpts from Love (2004).

Counter Narratives

(Examples that Contradict Master Narrative)

What do they reveal?

“New Possibilities for Solutions”

- Majoritarian stories present the experience of the dominant group as normative and as universal. These stories assume that what is true and in the best interest of the dominant group is true for everyone and in everyone’s best interest. -…and children as more likely to find themselves cast as “other”, alien, and not normal or, more likely, rendered invisible and not cast in the curriculum at all. -In majoritarian achievement gap storytelling, schools purport to be completely race neutral (colorblind). There is no acknowledgement of the ways that a traditional curriculum “limits access to knowledge and perpetuates inequality” to produce raced results in participation rates and achievement outcomes.

Based on Love’s (2004) “guidelines for deconstructing the master narrative and creating counter-stories” (p. 244).

Does race matter?So…

Horsford, S. (2010). Mixed feelings about mixed schools: Superintendents on the complex legacy of school desegregation. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(3), 287-321.

Ladson-Billings, G. & Tate, W. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record , 91(1), 48-68.

Love, B. (2004). Brown plus 50 counter-storytelling: A critical race theory analysis of the “Majoritarian Achievement Gap” story. Equity & Practice in Education, 37, 227-246.

Ross, V. & Chan, E. (2008). Multicultural education: Raj’s story using a curricular conceptual lens of the particular. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1705-1716.

Sack (2008).

References (Not on Moodle or Syllabus)

Dr. Manfra’s Slides:

Critical Race Theory (CRT) Basis in legal studies Racism is “endemic and deeply ingrained in

American life” Racism is “culturally sanctioned beliefs

which, regardless of the intentions involved, defend the advantages Whites have because of the subordinated positions of racial minorities”

Race is culturally constructed

CRT Emancipatory research linked to radical

action Race-based epistemological lens (rather

than other theories that focus first on class, gender, etc)

Critical of colorblindness and stereotypes Research method: counterstories or

portraiture “naming-one’s-reality theme of critical race

theory”