March 25th Readings

After reading through these articles, I feel I gained a lot of new insight. I will begin with Kubota’s article. I especially liked a quote from this article.

“Human beings possess a far larger proportion of genes in common than they do genes that are supposed to differentiate them racially. Not surprisingly, we are much more like each other than we are different. It has been estimated that, genetically speaking, the difference in difference - the percentage of our genes that determines our purportedly racial or primarily morphological difference - is 0.5 percent, (p. 67) RACE AND TESOL: INTRODUCTION TO CONCEPTS AND THEORIES”

I think it is easy to focus on differences between people, but we must be careful. Is race really just a biological concept, or is there a deeper, more hidden meaning behind how we identify others? If race is a social construction, then this changes things. Some say race can strategically mobilize groups to create resistance. This reminds me of essentialism, and how focusing so much on differences can actually empower certain groups, as well as cause a dichotomy.  

Racialization, or categorizing people, has roots even in colonialism. Judgments against others usually have underlying reasons. Perhaps there is pride or the sense of superiority in the one doing the judging, which can then affect how they treat or view the others.

As future educators, we have an important role. We must approach education through critical pedagogies and critical multicultural education. The word ‘critical’ is crucial here because we learned from Kubota’s article on Barbara that not thinking or discussing critically can be detrimental. Educational visions should target social justice and equity through examining power and politics and often reinforce domination and subordination in society. Students and teachers must discuss relations of power in terms of race, gender, class, and other categories to fully understand the reality in which we live.

I took away an important message from Ibrahim’s article. I like how it described rap as a voice for voicelessness. It explores the hopes and the human and cultural experience of the Black Atlantic. Black Americans created rap to express themselves. If we could integrate ourselves into it, we could better understand their problems. These can include human degradation, police brutality, and everyday racism. If educators consider learning to be engaging one’s identity and fulfillment of needs and deisres, then ESL pedagogy must find a way to draw in youths such as those in this article. Identity decides what ESL learners acquire and how they acquire it. Linguistic content learned should not be separate from political, social, and cultural context. Learning means investing. As teachers, we must find how our students invest in their identities and then develop materials accordingly, taking into account the race, class, sex, and identity of our students.

I became upset upon reading Kuma’s article, especially when it discussed Aptekin’s view of Asians. He stated that Asians were not capable of thinking critically and later the article downplays any and all of their inventions. However, basic scientific conventions such as the compass, gunpowder, and printing are complex and couldn’t have just been “stumbled upon.” This article also made a really good point in saying that to understand how Asian students communicate in the classroom, we must consider more than just cultural beliefs. Anxiety, motivation to participate, speaking abilities, communicative competence, how the instructor presents material, and many other factors influence an Asian child’s input and output in the classroom. IT is not fair for others to make assumptions about them without looking at the situation holistically.