Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

In this collection of essays, Lisa Delpit (1995) provides her views that "other people's children," that is children of color, are taught by white educators whose curricula, pedagogies, and teaching strategies focus on the norms, values, and customs of white culture. In this first section, Delpit (1995) provides information that searches for how best to teach African-American children how to read and write. She engages in the process approach versus the skills approach in teaching children to read and write. She maintains that many African American students fall behind their mainstream peers in literacy because educators place the focus on fluency and not on skills acquisition. She insists parents of students of color want their children to maintain their own language style but to be taught the codes of power. In this manner, Delpit (1995, p. 46) undermines the process-approach/skills-approach debate by suggesting that "those who are most skillful at educating black and poor children do not allow themselves to be placed in �skills' or �process' boxes." She insists there is a need for a combined approach.

In this section, Delpit (1995, p. 21) discusses another important factor that under serves non-mainstream cultures of students, the "silenced dialogue." In this process, teachers of color who suggest alternative pedagogies, curricula and strategies for teaching students of color are silenced. This has the adverse impact of shutting down

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Children of Color & White Educators .... effectively educate all students. Delpit, L. (1995). Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: The New Press. (1390 6 )

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ten people of other cultures misread the symbols or gestures or cultures foreign to them. She maintains that children of color need to learn concepts within a significant context rather than as abstract ideas. She maintains that context is often as important if not more so than the actual message. Students at Black colleges watch while they listen but those at White schools mainly listen to what is being stated. As Delpit (1995, p. 97) maintains from her time as a professor in Alaska, "It's not just what is said, but who says it, who is present when it is said�what else is happening at the same, what happened yesterday or last week or last year." On top of this, Delpit explains that some communities value connectedness more highly than others, meaning that for optimal student success and for best practices teaching parents should be included in developing students. Colliding worldviews between whites and blacks in American schools is similar to colliding worldviews between U.S. culture and cultures quite different from our own. In the 1960s, when Delpit (1995, p. 73) was responsible for integrating a Southern high school, she maintains that "suddenly many of the �sensible' ways of doing things no longer seemed acceptable."

Category: Psychology - C