Conference to Restore Humanity!

Consider

The collective molding done by our educational system has worked so well that:
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“…the overwhelming majority of Americans have been instilled with a rocklike conviction that certain linguistic forms are correct, while others are wrong. Even those Americans who are uncertain about precisely which forms are correct are usually confident that to find the answer they need only look the matter up in the right book or consult the proper authority.” (Burling, 1973, p. 130).
‍Reflect on when you first questioned the standardized language ideology that we all learn in school.

Consider

• Read: James Baldwin’s If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
• • If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
  • Also available as a Google Document.

Reflect on how the institution of school made you feel about your language(s). Did you feel validated? Alienated? Was it something you were made to feel about your speech/sign or was it just your writing? If you have worked in a classroom, how have you un/intentionally perpetuated the standardized language ideology? Outside of the classroom, how have you un/intentionally perpetuated the standardized language ideology?

Consider

Arizona Poet Laureate Alberto Álvero Rios joined us on the podcast to talk about growing up in the Borderlands, specifically in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, MX. He shared this with us about speaking Spanish in public school:

You got swatted… for doing something bad. So, we didn’t just learn, you know, our first lesson in language, we got our first lesson in making an equation. And our parents said listen to your teacher… You know that you’re going to get swatted for speaking Spanish, and you know that you speak Spanish, and you know you get swatted for doing something wrong. You make the equation. You’re feeling this with the body. Second grade comes around and the equation widens out. Your body is a little bigger and it fits more now. Because now it’s been demonstrated: you get swatted for speaking Spanish and you start to recognize by second grade your parents speak Spanish your family speaks Spanish and if Spanish is bad, they, then, must be bad. Now you don’t say that out loud, but you have learned it through the mechanisms of the body, not the intellect.

Answer the following: what are the ways in which children are making this “equation” in classrooms today?

Consider

In 1918, the Chicago Women’s Club held “The Better American Speech Week.” Here’s the actual pledge children recited:

I love the United States of America. I love my country’s flag. I love my country’s language. I promise:
1) that I will not dishonor my country’s speech by leaving off the last syllable of words. 
2) That I will say good American “yes” and “no” in place of an Indian grunt “umhum” and “nup-um” or a foreign “ya” or “yeh” and “nope.”
3) That I will do my best to improve American speech by enunciating distinctly and byspeaking clearly, pleasantly, and sincerely.
4) That I will try to make my country’s language beautiful for the many boys and girls of foreign nations who come here to live.

In the opposite spirit of “The Better American Speech Week” pledge, share a few mantras about language that you want your students to know to be true.

Consider

How does this apply to your teaching experience?

‍Challenge yourself to be curious, and to ask yourself and others productive questions with stretch, resonance, and resilience.

from: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, pp. 37-38, “Forgotten Places and the Seeds of Grassroots Planning” in Charles R. Hale, Ed., Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship, University of California Press, 2008, pp. 31-61)

Stretch enables a question to reach further than the immediate object without bypassing its particularity—rather than merely asking a community, “Why do you want this development project?” one asks, “What is development?”

‍Resonance enables a question to support and model nonhierarchical collective action by producing a hum that, by inviting strong attention, elicits responses that do not necessarily adhere to already existing architectures of sense making. Ornette Coleman’s harmolodics exemplify how such a process makes participant and audience a single, but neither static nor closed, category (Rycenga 1992).

‍Resilience enables a question to be flexible rather than brittle, such that changing circumstances and surprising discoveries keep a project connected with its purpose rather than defeated by the unexpected. For example, the alleged relationship between contemporary prison expansion and slavery falls apart when the question describes slavery in terms of uncompensated labor because very few of the 2.2 million prisoners in the United States work for anybody while locked in cages. But the relationship remains provocatively stable when the question describes slavery in terms of social death and asks how and to what end a category of dehumanized humans is made from peculiar combinations of dishonor, alienation, and violent domination (Patterson 1982; Gordon 2006).

Consider

How does this apply to your teaching experience?

Consider

How does this apply to your teaching experience?

Consider

• Create your own toolkit:
• • After reviewing the Critical resistance reform v abolition toolkit, open the adapted toolkit linked just above. You will notice that this one works a little differently. Familiarize yourself with its structure and format.
  • Make a copy for yourself and begin to fill out with pedagogical practices you might undertake, based on what you’ve learned over these four days.
  • If you want to discuss, please come to office hours: office hours are designated for you to join me to talk through your toolkit. (3-4PM ET via Zoom)

Consider

What do you understand childism to be? In what ways you find it a useful concept or not? What questions, if any, you have about it?

Consider

What is one way you think childism might usefully be applied to teaching or education?

Consider

Reflect on the ways you do (or do not) see adultism taking place in teaching and education.

Consider

Your concluding activity for this course is to write a carefully crafted 300-500-word blog, citing parenthetical references to our course readings (e.g. Wall 2019, p. 1), on any aspect of childism in relation to education that you would like to explore.