Blog Post / Sleeter

 Blog post 

The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies 

by Christine E  Sleeter 

Quotes 

In this week's blog post we are going to be discussing and reflecting on the Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies by Christine E  Sleeter, this  excerpt and how she brings up the mismatch between teachers and students who are often from middle class backgrounds and minority lower income groups. She explains how this mismatch or misunderstandings and not making connections with students personally can lead to miscommunication in the classroom. This will only have a negative impact on these children on schooling and their education in the classroom. In fact  she references a white middle school classes have brought in a significant number of students of color ( african american and hispanic0 felt marginalized and upset that what they were learning in class was white american history and little to none about african american history outside the month that celebrates it.

"White adults generally do not recognize the extent to which traditional main- stream curricula marginalize perspectives of communities of color and teach students of color to distrust or not take school knowledge"seriously.(page 4,1st paragraph)  It said in the passage that Black history was rarely discussed in class and students felt like teachers avoided the discussions of race and racism out of fear Black students would react out of anger and get violent and feared these students. These teachers can’t even achknowkege their culture without having to be fearsome of how they would react and bring it up, how are they supposed to get the same education as the white students. Some teachers did try to make accommodations and create classes that go over different social groups but still didn;t meet the students to have a curriculum with their own cultural background and history. 

I chose to write about this because its crazy to me that teachers felt comfortable not discussing any black history in classrooms with black and other races within the classroom. I wonder what my classmates have to say about this as well. The teachers, also being afraid of the students' reactions, also says alot about how wrong this situation was and how the adjustment needed to be fixed with blacks and other races in American history classes. 

https://www.christinesleeter.org/biography

This is Christine E Sleeters Biography if you want to learn more about her and her research