Reading Assignement Reflections

Today’s Deficit Thinking about Race and Language

Many Americans like to believe that racial and language prejudices have disappeared because these issues are no longer talked about openly. However, once people are given the slightest notion that these prejudices might be accurate, mainstream Americans are quick to voice their biased opinions. In 1994, a book called The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, was published, and this book was widely read and discussed. “Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s best-selling book claimed to offer scientific proof that African Americans inherit lower IQs than white Americans and that these IQ differences are virtually impossible to change” (Oakes & Lipton, 2007, p.59). Newspapers, television shows, and radio programs exploded with discussions from people who both liked and disliked the book’s findings. However, “[a] book such as The Bell Curve appears every few decades or oftener” (Oakes & Lipton, 2007, p.59). This book was simply one of many simply meant to spark emotion in the American people. The idea of racial superiority keeps coming back even today
Another way Americans have tried to exert their authority is through making English the national language. This push to make English the national language is not being made only by radicals but also by the public at large. James Crawford has examined this issue and “argues that, rather than being about language per se, the aversion to non-English speaking immigrants reveals conflicts over cultural and material supremacy – that is struggles for social and economic dominance – that lie beneath the surface of the public debate over language” (Oakes & Lipton, 2007, p.60). The campaign to make English the official language is more about power than it is about the national good.

Philosophy in the History of American Schooling

While we have very different views on education and the way students learn today, it is important to understand our roots in American education. The American founding fathers believed in deism. “Thus, education in the United States was influenced by the beliefs that humans, imperfect though they are, can, through science and reason, discover, organize, and control for their own benefit and enlightenment the mysteries of the universe and human existence” (Oakes & Lipton, 2007, p. 76). The American school system was set up so that children would be trained as good citizens who could fully function in a democratic society. Many of the “teachers” at the time had no training, so they drew from works by Enlightenment thinkers. This teaching lead to the idea “0f the ‘mind as a muscle’ and the notion that the study of classical languages, geometry, and so on causes learners to ‘exercise their brains’ and produce stronger, more capable minds” (Oakes & Lipton, 2007, p. 76).
In the next century new ideals on education were introduced: pragmatism and behaviorism. “Both pragmatism and behaviorism saw science as providing benefits to society” (Oakes & Lipton, 2007, p. 77). These ideals meshed with the Industrial Revolution ideas of organization, order, and control. All children were expected to learn this way. Today we recognize that “the ‘scientific method’ as just one of many ways of knowing, not the only way” (Oakes & Lipton, 2007, p. 77). I believe that while American schools are trying to incorporate other learning styles, the styles of learning through order and even ‘the scientific method’ are the most common styles of education today.