Delpit, Lisa D. Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: New Press, 1996.
Thesis: Power codes; cultural competence. Criticism: Codes do not provide success, difficulty for school to embrace languages of all cultures present for each lesson situation
Lisa Delpit
The book is comprised of essays and organized in three parts. Delpit explores her own journey and views as a teacher, cultural-ethnographer, and researcher. She calls for educators to consider additional cultural sensitivity and develop a more inclusive approach to the language of instruction, classroom activities, and curricular reforms.
Part I
Delpit uses her own personal reflections to explain her transformation from “progressive” educator to more of a “traditionalist” educator. In doing so she explains part of process writing theory as promoting fluency, whereas she asserts her African American students were lacking basic skills. She calls for skills within the context of critical and creative thinking. She explores the challenges of instructional language when differing from the cultural/home language (ex: asking a student “if you would like to sit down and complete the assignment”) and cultural language (sit down and finish your work now!) She calls for educators to recognize the “power codes” and teach them explicitly, while incorporating cultural language (in discussion, lecture, and journal activities) to engage and acknowledge student home knowledge. This section is made strong by Delpit’s own personal reflection and numerous examples.
Part II
Utilizing her experiences as student and researcher in Papua New Guinea and Alaska, Delpit suggests teachers step out of themselves and understand the complexities of culture in working with a diverse clientèle's. Her examples are strong and demonstrate the complexity associated with her New Guinea examples (a cultural divide that results when the young learn the trade language-English (1) and prepare to leave the village and the heritage behind and those prepared to stay behind using English for only trade). She further explores actual classroom instruction and promotes the use of context in addressing content (using examples relevant to student community and problem-solving relevant to student experiences). Additionally she explores how white students generally attend to what is SAID (auditory) whereas African Americans attend to the context of what is SEEN (visual).
She also explores the views and attitudes among teachers of color regarding their teacher preparation and teaching careers. Although the information gained from her study is valuable and raise considerable questions, Delpit’s study sample is very small (12). All of her informants did claim encountering one or more forms of racism in their educational experience. But even Delpit admits a factor influencing this overwhelming response may have been a result of the interviewer being a person of color. Additionally there are some weaknesses in her conclusions: ‘Some of the teachers never entered teaching and left during practice teaching’--- Is this indicative of racial tension or were these individuals not well-suited to the culture of public school teaching? ---She doesn’t question why these individuals didn’t stay to improve the culture, however she does claim to understand why they didn’t enter and remain in the teaching profession with this argument.
Part III
In this section Delpit addresses how teachers are assessed and the cultural views that may go unrecognized in explaining teacher style, delivery, language, and intent. She gives many examples to explain stereotypical notions held among educators and the misunderstanding they play out when working with students. (Example of the ‘Asians are good students’ instead of realizing this is really a ‘non-disruptive behavior equates with high achievement’ misconception”). She encourages using literary examples from the students’ heritage to strengthen the connection to classroom instruction. She applauds a teacher who has spent considerable time gaining broad background knowledge of culturally rich history, not learned in her teacher preparation. She also acknowledges the potential rich contributions that parents can make, if invited, to reach students through home culture traditions, language, and approaches to tasks.
Delpit presents many ideas to better reach our children of color and improve achievement. Through re-languaging instruction, explicit teaching of power code, acknowledging student culture, and broadening appreciation for the diversity within our classrooms, Delpit promotes a shift and improvement to inclusive cultures of our schools. She advocates that we do not merely tolerate diversity, but celebrate its unique and potential educational benefit to creating inclusive environments of learning. Because of these recommendations Delpit does not neatly fit into the category of progressive teacher or traditionalist. Her first essay sets up readers to place her as a traditionalist, but her subsequent essays although calling for explicit teaching, seem to place closer to progressive peers as she advocates a pluralistic language and argues for a multicultural approach.
OtherPeople’sChildren does not address the time and resources needed to implement the prescribed instructional and curricular reforms.[one might quote M.Fullan here] nor the validity of the power code theory as a key to success (how do you define success?). Today In the shadow of NCLB test mania and a race to “teach to the test”, how does an educator find the support for these curricular reforms while juggling heightened testing schedules, diminished resources, and the threat to close schools with lowered student achievement as demonstrated on summative tests?
Dr. Lisa Delpit, Executive Director for the Center for Urban Education & Innovation, received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education in 1993 from Harvard Graduate School of Education, which hailed her as a “visionary scholar and woman of courage.” Her work on school-community relations and cross-cultural communication was cited when she received her MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Most recently, Delpit has been selected as the Antioch College Horace Mann Humanity Award recipient for 2003, which recognizes a contribution by alumni of Antioch College who have "won some victory for humanity." She describes her strongest focus as "finding ways and means to best educate urban students, particularly African-American, and other students of color." Among her publications are Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (1995); The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children (co-edited with Theresa Perry, 1998); and The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom (co-edited with Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, 2002).
Biographical Source: http://education.fiu.edu/urbaned/scholars/index.htm
Delpit, Lisa D. Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: New Press, 1996.
Thesis: Power codes; cultural competence.
Criticism: Codes do not provide success, difficulty for school to embrace languages of all cultures present for each lesson situation
Part I
Delpit uses her own personal reflections to explain her transformation from “progressive” educator to more of a “traditionalist” educator. In doing so she explains part of process writing theory as promoting fluency, whereas she asserts her African American students were lacking basic skills. She calls for skills within the context of critical and creative thinking. She explores the challenges of instructional language when differing from the cultural/home language (ex: asking a student “if you would like to sit down and complete the assignment”) and cultural language (sit down and finish your work now!) She calls for educators to recognize the “power codes” and teach them explicitly, while incorporating cultural language (in discussion, lecture, and journal activities) to engage and acknowledge student home knowledge. This section is made strong by Delpit’s own personal reflection and numerous examples.
Part II
Utilizing her experiences as student and researcher in Papua New Guinea and Alaska, Delpit suggests teachers step out of themselves and understand the complexities of culture in working with a diverse clientèle's. Her examples are strong and demonstrate the complexity associated with her New Guinea examples (a cultural divide that results when the young learn the trade language-English (1) and prepare to leave the village and the heritage behind and those prepared to stay behind using English for only trade). She further explores actual classroom instruction and promotes the use of context in addressing content (using examples relevant to student community and problem-solving relevant to student experiences). Additionally she explores how white students generally attend to what is SAID (auditory) whereas African Americans attend to the context of what is SEEN (visual).
She also explores the views and attitudes among teachers of color regarding their teacher preparation and teaching careers. Although the information gained from her study is valuable and raise considerable questions, Delpit’s study sample is very small (12). All of her informants did claim encountering one or more forms of racism in their educational experience. But even Delpit admits a factor influencing this overwhelming response may have been a result of the interviewer being a person of color. Additionally there are some weaknesses in her conclusions: ‘Some of the teachers never entered teaching and left during practice teaching’--- Is this indicative of racial tension or were these individuals not well-suited to the culture of public school teaching? ---She doesn’t question why these individuals didn’t stay to improve the culture, however she does claim to understand why they didn’t enter and remain in the teaching profession with this argument.
Part III
In this section Delpit addresses how teachers are assessed and the cultural views that may go unrecognized in explaining teacher style, delivery, language, and intent. She gives many examples to explain stereotypical notions held among educators and the misunderstanding they play out when working with students. (Example of the ‘Asians are good students’ instead of realizing this is really a ‘non-disruptive behavior equates with high achievement’ misconception”). She encourages using literary examples from the students’ heritage to strengthen the connection to classroom instruction. She applauds a teacher who has spent considerable time gaining broad background knowledge of culturally rich history, not learned in her teacher preparation. She also acknowledges the potential rich contributions that parents can make, if invited, to reach students through home culture traditions, language, and approaches to tasks.
Delpit presents many ideas to better reach our children of color and improve achievement. Through re-languaging instruction, explicit teaching of power code, acknowledging student culture, and broadening appreciation for the diversity within our classrooms, Delpit promotes a shift and improvement to inclusive cultures of our schools. She advocates that we do not merely tolerate diversity, but celebrate its unique and potential educational benefit to creating inclusive environments of learning. Because of these recommendations Delpit does not neatly fit into the category of progressive teacher or traditionalist. Her first essay sets up readers to place her as a traditionalist, but her subsequent essays although calling for explicit teaching, seem to place closer to progressive peers as she advocates a pluralistic language and argues for a multicultural approach.
OtherPeople’sChildren does not address the time and resources needed to implement the prescribed instructional and curricular reforms.[one might quote M.Fullan here] nor the validity of the power code theory as a key to success (how do you define success?). Today In the shadow of NCLB test mania and a race to “teach to the test”, how does an educator find the support for these curricular reforms while juggling heightened testing schedules, diminished resources, and the threat to close schools with lowered student achievement as demonstrated on summative tests?
Dr. Lisa Delpit, Executive Director for the Center for Urban Education & Innovation, received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education in 1993 from Harvard Graduate School of Education, which hailed her as a “visionary scholar and woman of courage.” Her work on school-community relations and cross-cultural communication was cited when she received her MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Most recently, Delpit has been selected as the Antioch College Horace Mann Humanity Award recipient for 2003, which recognizes a contribution by alumni of Antioch College who have "won some victory for humanity." She describes her strongest focus as "finding ways and means to best educate urban students, particularly African-American, and other students of color." Among her publications are Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (1995); The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children (co-edited with Theresa Perry, 1998); and The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom (co-edited with Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, 2002).
Biographical Source: http://education.fiu.edu/urbaned/scholars/index.htm