Other People's Children

Lisa Delpit
Other People's Children; Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

Delpit argument is that schools have become very biased toward privileged power. She says, "Seldom are students encouraged to tackle the deep moral issues that they must tussle with in this complex time, nor are they led to think about themselves as agents responsible for a larger world. I cannot help but believe that the past decade's phenomenon of middle-class white students turning into assassins is connected to the emptiness of what many of our students call schooling." She believes that the key is to understand the variety of meanings available for any human interaction, and not to assume that the voices of the majority speak for all. To end her introduction she says, "I believe that the "open-classroom movement," depites its progressive intentions, faded in large part because it was no able to come to terms with the concerns of poor and minority communities. I truly hope that those who advocate other potentially important programs will do a better job."

(1) "Since the publication of Other People's Children, the country's educational system has become caught in the vise of the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates more standardized testing of children than the country has ever seen, with more and more urban school districts adopting "teacher-proof" curricula to address low test scores, along with school consultants whose sole purpose is to police teachers' adherence to scripted lessons, mandated classroom management strategies, and strict instructional time lines that ignore the natural rhythms of teaching and learning."

- I wrote a research paper on the No Child Left Behind Act my junior year in high school. I came to the conclusion that this law was hurting the very population it was suppose to help.

(2) "Seldom are students encouraged to tackle the deep moral issues they must tussle with in this complex time, nor are they left to think about themselves as agents responsible for a larger world. I cannot help but believe that the past decade's phenomenon of middle-class white students turning assassins is connected to the emptiness of what many of our students call schooling."

- To me, this is a very powerful quote for the author to make. I do believe that schools aren't what they should be but I don't think it's fair to blame them for the assassinations.

(3) "I watched one eight-second clip of a few black residents taking non-survival items replayed over and over again, day and night, with the unstated implication that those left behind were not worthy of rescue. A picture described two white victims as "finding" bread and soda at a local grocery store, while a picture of black survivors, also carrying bread, was labeled as "looting."

- I agree that Katrina showed America's biased against Blacks. I remember the pictures of Walmart they showed on television. I also remember well the pictures of the terrible conditions of the convention center. This also reminds me of the news reports when a young boy dies in Barrington and a kid who dies in Central Falls or in South Providence. It seems to be a much sadder tragedy on the news for the Barrington family.

(4) "It is time to look closely at elements of our education system, particularly those elements we consider progressive; time to see whether there is minority involvement and support, and if not to ask why; time to reassess what are we doing in public schools and universities to include other voices, other experiences; time to seek the diversity in our educational movements that we talk about seeking in our classrooms."

- I think we have all these questions about minority involvement and what kind of job public schools are doing and I agree with the author it is time to look seriously at these answers.

(5) "1. Issues of power are enacted in classrooms. 2. There are codes or rules for participating in power; that is, there is a "culture of power." 3. The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power. 4. If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture make acquiring power easier. 5. Those with power are frequently least aware of- or least willing to acknowledge-its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence."
"These issues include: the power of the teacher over the students; the power of the publisher of textbooks and if the developers of the curriculum to determine the view of the world presented; the power of the state to enforcing compulsory schooling; and the power of an individual or group to determine an other's intelligence or "normalcy." Finally, if schooling prepares people for jobs, and the kind of job a person has determines his or her economic status and, therefore, power, than schooling is intimately related to that power."

- Number 5 is a sad statement but I think it is true. Lots of people think if you buckle down and work hard enough anyone can be successful. Often poor people and minorities have many obstacles that most of us couldn't possible know or understand.
For the second part I think what is missing here is the State/Federal Government's power. They write the test that determine whether or not a school is failing. But should one test determine this?

(6) "In her dissertation, Michelle Foster quotes one young black man describing such a teacher, "She is boring, boring. She could do something creative. Instead she just stands there. She can't control the class, she doesn't know how to control the class. She asked me what she was doing wrong. I told her she just stands there like she's meditating for all I know. She says that we're suppose to know what to do. I told her I don't know nothin' unless she tells me. She just can't control the class. I hope we don't have her next semester.""

- I don't completely disagree with this quote I think that teachers view students as the problem & students view the teacher as the problem.


So many pages were missing from this article that it made it extremely difficult to follow. With what I read I did have some thoughts about what I understood. Delpit makes some good points that I agree with and I am able to see her point of view, but she makes some bad points where I disagree.