Lydia(Qingya DONG)
Reading and Vocabulary
10/18/2014
Reading Journal #3

The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children
Lisa D. Delpit

Discrimination seems to be a serious problem in educational field. There exist many different types of discriminations according to the diversity of culture in different countries. As we know, racial discrimination has been existing in the society of America for a long time even today. Throughout the whole article, the author emphasis that the phenomenon of “culture of power” that exists widespread and especially in the educational environment. The author illustrates five aspects of power and give the explorations for the educational needs of black and poor students. Also, she demonstrated different examples from personal experiences between white educators and educators of color. These two specific clues related to the mainly idea of the whole article.

Taking a meditation from the idea of “culture of power”, I’m try to thinking about what is the “culture of power” and where it comes from. Basically, It seems to tell people the power comes from different elements in the wide range of education system like the power of the teacher over the students or the power of the state in enforcing compulsory schooling etc..Personally, I would like to find out the original problem of discrimination in “culture of power” of education. The widening gap between the rich and poor can serious hinder the elimination of discriminate. Moreover, the disparity of the ways of lifestyle including the interaction, socialization and education etc., can also contribute to such the unequal treatment.

In comparison, all students can be classified into different levels according to the so called “exam” in China. I once had such experience when I was in the middle school. Teachers classified all the students in my class according to monthly exam, adopting the way of seating arrangement which means all the students with higher results sitting in the first few rows and others sitting in the back even one or two “special seat” for the worst academia performance students. Amusingly, almost every rows even seats had never been changed for any students. For me, I remember that I was always sitting in the middle row of classroom and I can easily recall that who once owed the “special seat” for like about three years. Considering this situation, whether it belongs to a form of the discrimination or not. In my opinion, I think it was really ill-advised teaching method practice for education because it goes against the development of personality for those students who want to be accepted but just get unsatisfied academic performance in the class, causing some mental problems from unequal treatment and a negative attitudes towards their study and life.

The author advocate the debate is fallacious which means the purpose not for better teaching, but aims for easier analysis. To some degree, I do not recommend people to read except for educators because this article has been finished too early and this phenomenon has been fading gradually with time and civilize, racialism in particular. However, I was supposed to read more about solutions for this unequal treatment, perhaps it can not be tackled considering the period of characteristics and the background of society. How much torment and numb for those people who were in the certain psychological states of black teachers and students I’ve learned about. I am so sorry for such unfortunate experiences and whenever the respect is the most important and basic principle for human being.

Reference:
Lisa D. Delpit (1988). The silenced dialogue: power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review. Aug 1988, v58 n3, p280-98.
Vocabulary:
estrange (v.) P580
Definition: to behave in a way that makes other people unfriendly toward you
Synonym: alienate
Eg1, The argument estranged him