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Summary
Summary
As MacArthur award-winning educator Lisa Delpit reminds us--and as all research shows--there is no achievement gap at birth. In her long-awaited second book, Delpit presents a striking picture of the elements of contemporary public education that conspire against the prospects for poor children of color, creating a persistent gap in achievement during the school years that has eluded several decades of reform.
Delpit's bestselling and paradigm-shifting first book, Other People's Children , focused on cultural slippage in the classroom between white teachers and students of color. Now, in "Multiplication is for White People" , Delpit reflects on two decades of reform efforts--including No Child Left Behind, standardized testing, the creation of alternative teacher certification paths, and the charter school movement--that have still left a generation of poor children of color feeling that higher educational achievement isn't for them.
In chapters covering primary, middle, and high school, as well as college, Delpit concludes that it's not that difficult to explain the persistence of the achievement gap. In her wonderful trademark style, punctuated with telling classroom anecdotes and informed by time spent at dozens of schools across the country, Delpit outlines an inspiring and uplifting blueprint for raising expectations for other people's children, based on the simple premise that multiplication--and every aspect of advanced education--is for everyone.
Author Notes
Lisa Delpit is an African American and a lifelong teacher who promotes the idea of having "visions of success for poor children and children of color." Her 1995 book, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, discusses how to better train teachers by using nine specific factors, among them understanding the brilliance of the children, recognizing and building on the children's strengths, using familiar metaphors and experiences from the children's world, and nurturing a sense of connection to a greater community, of which they are a part.
Delpit's father owned a restaurant and her mother taught high school. Her parents set an example by providing free meals for local elementary school children who could not afford to buy lunch. This fostered in Delpit a commitment to helping others.
Delpit was one of the first African Americans to attend desegregated Catholic schools in Louisiana. She also attended Antioch College in Ohio and Harvard University. She has worked at the University of Alaska, Morgan State University's Urban Institute for Urban Research, and Georgia State University, holding the Benjamin E. Mays Chair of Urban Educational Leadership.
Delpit received a MacArthur Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1993.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A decade after her award-winning Other People's Children: Cultural Conflicts in the Classroom, MacArthur Fellow and education professor Delpit, her passion unassuaged, takes a fresh look at education practice and theory with a sharp focus on "children marginalized either by income-level or ethnicity-or both." Exploring four stages (infants, early childhood, adolescents, college age), her book is full of firsthand observations of teachers and students in multiple settings, most commonly the inner-city, and trenchant anecdotal accounts of her own experiences with her daughter's "often difficult travels through school," some predominantly white, some predominantly black. Delpit's assessments of Teach for America and No Child Left Behind, while respectful of the goals, are critical of both the practices and the results. In reviewing current scholarship, she offers jargon-free explanations of current terminology (like "stereotype threat" and "microaggression"), and clarifies arguments with graphs and statistics. This is very much a book for teachers and education professionals, but anyone concerned with the state of American schooling will find Delpit's smooth blending of the personal, the professional, and the political appealing and illuminating. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Choice Review
Two themes--the interdependence of Delpit's life as a mother and her work as a scholar/activist; and ten factors she suggests will promote quality urban classrooms for all children--are evident throughout the book. As with Other People's Children (CH, Jul'95, 32-6344), the role of cultural conflict in teaching and learning remains a dominant focus, but she believes the problem is larger than students and their teachers. A cultural framework of the US, which promotes the superiority of "white" and the inferiority of "black," is the larger problem. Although the majority of the book focuses on African American poor children in early educational through postsecondary urban settings, Delpit's premise is that "we can educate all children if we truly want to." Delpit (Southern Univ.) begins by exposing the myths about inherent ability and discussing the role of culture in learning and teaching. If teachers want to be effective, they need to know the lives and cultures of their students and, according to Delpit, students of color from low-income homes need effective teachers to succeed. Clearly articulated discussions about educating young children, teaching adolescents, and working with students at the university level and beyond reflect Delpit's knowledge and passion about teaching all children. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. D. L. Norland Luther College
Kirkus Review
Other People's Children, 1995, etc.) writes that African-American students are still not being treated as equal to their white peers. Using numerous examples from school situations and her own daughter's experiences, the author shows that stereotypes and racial prejudices still abound, with many teachers teaching "down" to their black students. To counteract this negative effect, teachers need to understand the cultural backgrounds of their students and connect the curriculum to this background so that learning has relevance to the student. Instead of asking "do you know what I know?" Delpit says the question to ask is "what do you know?" "This is the question that will allow us to begin, with courage, humility, and cultural sensitivity the right educational journey," she writes. When good teachers incorporate this method and learn to identify with each individual child, test scores and self-esteem rise and disobedience and absenteeism fall. Delpit feels her work in education is two-fold: She is "charged with preparing the minds and hearts of those who will inherit the earthas a sacred trustand the second purposeis to build bridges across the great divides, the so-called achievement gap, the technology gap, class divisions, the racial divide." If all teachers adopted these ideas, the American educational system would be vastly improved for all students. Covering age groups from preschool to college, Delpit offers advice to new and veteran teachers, advice that applies not only to African-American students but to all ethnic and minority groups. A much-needed review of the American educational system and an examination of the techniques needed to improve the teaching methods of all involved in that system.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
MacArthur fellow Lisa Delpit shows how to close the continuing achievement gap between black and white children in public schools. (The title references a student who told Delpit "Black people don't multiply, black people just add and subtract."). (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
INTRODUCTION: YES, DIANE, I'M STILL ANGRY R ecently I was invited by education activist Dr. Raynard Sanders to New Orleans for an educational summit. The speaker, the renowned and controversial Diane Ravitch, had told Dr. Sanders that she wanted to meet me. Dr. Ravitch, currently a professor at New York University, has made headlines with her about-face on many issues related to public education. Ravitch was the assistant secretary of education in the George H.W. Bush administration, where she made her conservative intellectual and political reputation with her staunch support of standardized testing, charter schools, the No Child Left Behind Act, and free market competition for schools. She has now repudiated many of her earlier positions, stated both in public presentations and in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education . This courageous scholar has resigned from influential conservative policy groups and has incited many powerful enemies. As a result, in contrast to her former life as a popular conservative commentator, she has now found herself barred from expressing her new views in many popular venues. Before the speech began, I joined Diane, Raynard, and a few invited guests in an adjoining room. Diane and I talked about the devastation of public schools in post-Katrina New Orleans and how politicians and educational entrepreneurs hawking privatization are claiming the travesty of New Orleans education to be a national model. Diane asked me why I hadn't spoken out nationally against what was happening. I told her about my work in New Orleans and my modestly successful attempts to engage other African American scholars in the struggle against what was happening there. I added that the sense of futility in the battle for rational education policy for African American children had gone on for so long and that I had come to feel so tired, that I now needed to focus on those areas where I felt I could actually make a difference: working with teachers and children in an African American school. I was so angry from the sensation of butting my head against a brick wall, I told her, that I needed to give my "anger muscles" a rest. Diane looked at me squarely and said, "You don't look angry." I realized two things at that moment. One was that Diane's anger was relatively raw and still fresh and hadn't yet needed to be modulated. It must have been quite a shock to go from being an influential authority whose views were sought and valued in most political circles to being a virtual outcast. While it was undeniably courageous to reanalyze one's positions and come to a significantly different stance, it has to be anger-provoking to realize that the power elite seem less interested in logical analyses for the public good than in maintaining power and profit. Her anger had a different quality than the anger of those of us who have struggled with the same issues for many years. The second thing I realized was that, yes, I am still angry--despite my attempts over the years to calm my spirit and to focus on the wonder of teaching and learning. I am angry at the machinations of those who, with so little knowledge of learning, of teachers, or of children, are twisting the life out of schools. I am angry that public schools, once a beacon of democracy, have been overrun by the antidemocratic forces of extreme wealth. Educational policy for the past decade has largely been determined by the financial contributions of several very large corporate foundations. Among a few others, the Broad, Gates, and Walton (Walmart) foundations have dictated various "reforms" by flooding the educational enterprise with capital. The ideas of privatization, charter schools, Teach for America, the extremes of the accountability movement, merit pay, increased standardized testing, free market competition--all are promulgated and financially supported by corporate foundations, which indeed have those funds because they can avoid paying the taxes that the rest of us must foot. Thus, educational policy has been virtually hijacked by the wealthiest citizens, whom no one elected and who are unlikely ever to have had a child in the public schools. I am angry that with all of the corporate and taxpayers' money that is flowing into education, little-to-none is going to those valiant souls who have toiled in urban educational settings for many years with proven track records. Instead, money typically goes to those with little exposure to and even less experience in urban schools. I am left in my more cynical moments with the thought that poor black children have become the vehicle by which rich white people give money to their friends. I am angry because of the way that the original idea of charter schools has been corrupted. In their first iteration, charter schools were to be beacons for what could happen in public schools. They were intended to develop models for working with the most challenging populations. What they discovered was to be shared and reproduced in other public school classrooms. Now, because of the insertion of the "market model," charter schools often shun the very students they were intended to help. Special education students, students with behavioral issues, and students who need any kind of special assistance are excluded in a multiplicity of ways because they reduce the bottom line--they lower test scores and take more time to educate properly. Charter schools have any number of ways of "counseling" such students out of their programs. I have been told by parents that many charter schools accuse students of a series of often trivial rule infractions, then tell parents that the students will not be suspended if the parents voluntarily transfer them to another school. Parents of a student with special needs are told that the charter is not prepared to meet their child's needs adequately and that he or she would be much better served at the regular public school around the corner. (Schools in New Orleans, the "model city" for charters, have devised an even more sinister scheme for keeping unwanted children out of the schools. The K--12 publicly funded charter schools, which are supposed to be open to all through a lottery system of enrollment, are giving preferential admission to children who have attended an affiliated private preschool, one of which charges over $4,000 in tuition and the other over $9,000.)1 In addition, the market-driven model insists that should charter schools actually discover workable, innovative ideas, they are not to be shared with other public schools but held close to the vest to prevent "competitors" from "winning" the standardized test race. So now, charter schools are not meant to contribute to "regular" public education but to put it out of business. I am angry about the hypocrisy rampant in education policy. While schools and teachers are admonished to adhere to research-based instruction and data-driven planning, there is no research to support the proliferation of charter schools, pay-for-performance plans, or market-based school competition. Indeed, where there is research, it largely suggests that we should do an about-face and run in the opposite direction. I am angry that the conversation about educating our children has become so restricted. What has happened to the societal desire to instill character? To develop creativity? To cultivate courage and kindness? How can we look at a small bundle of profound potential and see only a number describing inadequacy? Why do we punish our children with our inability to teach them? How can we live with the fact that in Miami--and I am certain in many other cities--ten-year-olds facing failure on the state-mandated FCAT test and being "left back" in third grade for the third time, have had to be restrained from committing suicide? I am angry at what the inflexibility and wrong-headed single-mindedness of schools in this era have done to my child and to so many other children. There is little tolerance for difference, for creativity, or for challenge. The current use of standardized tests, which has the goals of promoting competition between schools and of making teacher and principal salaries--and sometimes even employment--dependent on tests scores, seems to bring out the worst in adults as well. In locale after locale--including Washington, DC; Georgia; Indiana; Massachusetts; Nevada; and Virginia, to name a few--there are investigations into widespread allegations of cheating by teachers and principals on state-mandated high-stakes tests. And finally--if there ever is a finally--I am angry at the racism that, despite having a president who is half white and half black, still permeates our America. In my earlier days, I wrote about the problem of cultural conflict--that one of the reasons that having teachers and children of different cultural groups led to difficulties in teaching and learning was a lack of understanding about the other group's culture. I now have a slightly different perspective. I still believe that the problem is cultural, but it is larger than the children or their teachers. The problem is that the cultural framework of our country has, almost since its inception, dictated that "black" is bad and less than and in all arenas "white" is good and superior. This perspective is so ingrained and so normalized that we all stumble through our days with eyes closed to avoid seeing it. We miss the pain in our children's eyes when they have internalized the societal belief that they are dumb, unmotivated, and dispensable. Nor can we see what happens to the psyches of young, often well-meaning white people who have been told that they are the best and brightest and that they are the saviors of black children. Most inevitably fail because they haven't the training or the experience to navigate such unfamiliar territory successfully; nor are they taught to learn with humility from parents or from veteran African American and other teachers who know the children and the communities in which they teach. Others burn out quickly from carrying the weight of salvation that has been piled upon their young shoulders. Several young Teach for America recruits have told me that their colleagues frequently run back home or off to graduate school with the belief that the children they went to save are unsalvageable--not because of poor teaching but because of their students' parents, families, or communities. Yes, Diane, I am still angry. And that anger has fueled the two themes that run throughout this book. The first is the symbiotic interplay between my personal life as a mother and my professional work as a scholar and hopeful activist. Within the chapters of this volume are stories that range from my daughter Maya's first years in elementary school through her admission to college. My concerns for her educational struggles informed my work in schools. Feeling her frustration and pain opened my eyes to the frustration and pain thriving in so many of the classrooms I visited. Reveling in her successes helped me to suggest potential modifications for schools where I saw damaging practices. In fact, Maya has more than once over the years informed me that I wouldn't know half as much about education if I didn't have her! And she's right. The second theme that runs through the book, from the chapters on educating young children to those focused on college students, is the relevance of a list of ten factors I have formulated over a number of years that I believe can foster excellence in urban classrooms. These factors encapsulate my beliefs about black children and learning, about creating classrooms that speak to children's strengths rather than hammering them with their weaknesses, and about building connections to cultures and communities. I believe that if we are to create excellence in urban classrooms, we must do the following: 1. Recognize the importance of a teacher and good teaching, especially for the "school dependent" children of low-income communities. 2. Recognize the brilliance of poor, urban children and teach them more content, not less. 3. Whatever methodology or instructional program is used, demand critical thinking while at the same time assuring that all children gain access to "basic skills"-- the conventions and strategies that are essential to success in American society. 4. Provide children with the emotional ego strength to challenge racist societal views of their own competence and worthiness and that of their families and communities. 5. Recognize and build on children's strengths. 6. Use familiar metaphors and experiences from the children's world to connect what students already know to school-taught knowledge. 7. Create a sense of family and caring in the classroom. 8. Monitor and assess students' needs and then address them with a wealth of diverse strategies. 9. Honor and respect the children's home cultures. 10. Foster a sense of children's connection to community, to something greater than themselves. So, yes, Diane, I am still angry. But I am also still hopeful. . . . No matter how angry I get when I think about what the larger world may have in store for them, I owe my life to children, and I am forever grateful for the hope and joy their smiles and hugs engender. Excerpted from Multiplication Is for White People: Raising Expectations for Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | p. xi |
Introduction: Yes, Diane, I'm Still Angry | p. xiii |
Part 1 Inherent Ability | |
1 There Is No Achievement Gap at Birth | p. 3 |
2 Infinite Capacity | p. 27 |
Part 2 Educating the Youngest | |
3 Stuff You Never Would Say: Successful Literacy Instruction in Elementary Classrooms | p. 53 |
4 Warm Demanders: The Importance of Teachers in the Lives of Children of Poverty | p. 71 |
5 Skin-Deep Learning: Teaching Those Who Learn Differently | p. 89 |
6 "I Don't Like It When They Don't Say My Name Right": Why "Reforming" Can't Mean "Whitening" | p. 105 |
Part 3 Teaching Adolescents | |
7 Picking Up the Broom: Demanding Critical Thinking | p. 123 |
8 How Would a Fool Do It? Assessment | p. 137 |
9 Shooting Hoops: What Can We Learn About the Drive for Excellence? | p. 149 |
Part 4 University and Beyond | |
10 Invisibility, Disidentification, and Negotiating Blackness on Campus | p. 169 |
11 Will It Help the Sheep? University, Community, and Purpose | p. 193 |
Appendix | p. 207 |
Notes | p. 211 |