Class this week was interesting, and the Equity & Diversity Awareness Quiz, that can be found at http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/quiz/quizNEW.pdf was really eye opening. I got 7 out of the 15 correct. I have to admit while taking the quiz I was telling myself to go with a pretty extreme answer because these facts wouldn't be so interesting if they weren't so startling. Even so, I still only got 7 correct because some of them I just really couldn't believe and didn't want to choose the extreme answer. A question that really startled me was #4, concerning a UNICEF ranking of the treatment of children,where the two countries which received the lowest ratings were the US and the U.K., I answered this question correctly but I think it is something useful to know because there are children in this country who are treated terribly and struggle and are not treated the idyllic way you would want children to be treated. Another question that struck me as interesting was #8 about the vast difference in median annual income in the U.S. of white men compared to Latina and Native American women who have the same degrees, it is just another raw, startling fact similar to those discussed in the beginning of the Sleeter and Grant book.
Lastly, a startling fact that is a segue into our reading was the first question in the test, how 40% of U.S. school have no teachers of color on their staff. That is almost half of the schools in the U.S. who do not have teachers of color. This makes me think about what can be done, and what should be done. Which relates to the human relations approach discussed in chapter three of Sleeter and grant. There are obviously need to be changes implemented into classrooms and the educational system as a whole so that there are more teachers of color, and children have opportunities to see themselves or someone of their culture, race, or ethnicity as their teacher. The introduction of more teachers of color in the classroom would not only help children of color but would show white children who may have racist or prejudiced homes that teachers don't have to be white. There are so many benefits that could arise if more U.S. schools had diverse teaching staff, and changes in schools can only snowball effect into changes in society as a whole.
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I was taken back by #8 as well because I never would have thought that the pay difference would be almost $40,000. That is just ridiculous. I liked what you said about teachers of color being role models for students of color. Some of the readings say that by seeing people of color as important figure in our society allows the students to believe that they can achieve.
ReplyDeleteQuestion #8 was also startling to me too. I thought it showed that even when one receives a good education, it does not secure his or her place in the economic world. I like to think that one's credentials (meaning academic background and experience) is what gets them a job, but, from seeing what the actual median income is of 2 sets of different culture groups with the same education, that academic background doesn't always mean something. This to me just goes to show that race and gender are still very much of an issue. I find it interesting that most people would describe themselves as accepting of everyone, no matter their race, gender, culture, religion etc. but from question #8 we see the exact opposite. People like to think that we live in this idealist world, but I think that is far from being true
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