Talking Point #6 (Lawrence)

I feel Lawrence is arguing that the Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools back in 1954, was not really a success if we look closely at it. The case might of started a spark that ignited all the boy-cotts, sit-ins, and marches after the case decision but one can not be to certain. He says that the case only focused and dealt with the effect of school segregation, but did not recognize the purpose of segregation as a whole, which is to designate blacks as inferior in the society.

1. "It is the thesis of this paper that the Brown decision fostered a way of thinking about segregation that has allowed both the judiciary adn society at large to deny the reality of race in America, that the recognition of that reality is critical to the framing of any meaningful remedy-judicial or political- and that Brown may ultimately be labeled a success only insofar as we are able to make it stand for what it should have stood for in 1954." I got this quote pretty much rate from the beginning of Lawrence's article and he comes rate out and states the reason for this article and states what he argues. I felt by him coming rate out and telling the reader what his thesis, made it easier to follow along and understand.

2. "In short, segregation American-style, like South African apartheid, has only one purpose: to create and maintain a permanent lower class or subcaste defined as race." This quote or sentence from the article got my interest because I had a class that went over in depth about South African apartheid and this allowed me to compare segregation to something else.

3. "Once established it will not be eliminated by mere removal of public sanction but must be affirmatively destroyed." I got this quote from the section of the article that went over the three underlying characteristics of segregation. This pointed out that by the Brown case just merely eliminating segregation at schools was not enough. It was only a step, but a lot more need to be done to improve the society.

I was only able to read the first couple of pages of this article because I have had a lot of other work to do, but from what I read it has caught a good bit of my interest and can not wait until I have time to finish reading the rest of the article.

Talking Point #5 (Kahne/ Westheimer)

the authors of this article, Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer, seem to be arguing that service learning is a good way for people who are involved, to help others and change themselves and the community around them. It also seems that they argue that there still can be way to improve service learning experience. The authors say that one way for service learning is by "civic duty" and voluntaring in communities and another way is through knowledge of issues which will in the long run create "change".

1. "Mr. Johnson explained, students would interact with those less fortunate than themselves and would experience the excitement and joy of learning while using the community as a classroom."

Mr. Johnson's way of teaching and doing service learning is through civic duty, voluntay work, and giving. The authors explain that this is one way to do service learning but this way neglects the students fro having an in depth look at why these problems are happening and how one can start making change.

2. Mr. Adams seventh grade "examined the social, economic, legal, and polictical determnants of homelessness around the world and in the local school community."

On the other hand Mr. Adams's way of teaching and doing service learning is through giving his studnets systematic and critical analysis of the causes of homelessness and strategies on how to prevent it but this way neglects the charity aspect of it.

3. "more attention has been focused on moving forward than on asking where we are headed" "controversial issues surrounding the means and ends of service learning have been pushed to the background"

We have to ask ourselves what do we went to get from service learning and what is the proper way of get the most out of service learning. I believe that we need to get both knowledge on the issue and also get experience with volunteering and civic duties dealing with the issue we are looking at in class.

I found this to be a pretty easy read and was somewhat interesting the hear about the different types of service learning. I feel that we are doing a good job in class with getting some knowleged about issues we talk about and also get good voluntary experiences with the VIPS program.

Talking Point #4 (Christensen)

In Christensen's article "Unlearning the Myths That Blind Us", she argues that children's cartoons and shows and media are "secret education" that teaches kids what society thinks as acceptable and unacceptable. They teach kids stereotypes about different genders, race, and class that are not true. In this article Christensen explains what she does with her class to help here students to critique what they see and help them to act on what they see in cartoons to make change.

1."depicts all Arabs with the same face, same turban, same body and they are all thieves swinging enormous swords." This is from a Popeye cartoon and this is pointing out how this cartoon stereotypes Arabs.

2."Both of the Cinderellas compete for their men against their sisters and the rest of the single women in their cities. They "win" because of their beauty and their fashionable attire." This quote is talking about the story of Cinderella and teaches little girls that watch or hear this story that if they want to win they need to be beautiful and compete and fight against all other women, including their sisters, to get a guy.

3."Many who watched cartoons before we start our study say they can no longer enjoy them. Now instead of seeing a bunch of ducks in clothes, they see the racism, sexism, and violence that swim under the surface of the stories." This is what a lot of Christensen's students are saying after taking her class. It is hard for them to realize that cartoons is a "secret education" before taking the class, but after they can know critique and take action to start changing this "secret education."

Talking Point #3 (Dennis Carlson)

Dennis Carlson argues the same thing that Johnson and McIntosh argues kind of. Carlson says that schools and communities do not talk about "gayness" and try to keep it in silence and have hidden practices. He says that we should talk, recognize and have dialogue about cultural diversity and now a days in our schools and communities that is slowly starting to happen.

1." I want to suggest that public schools may play an important role in helping build a new democratic, multicultural community, one in which sexual identity...is recognized, in which inequities are challenged, and where dialogue across difference replaces silencing and invisibility practices." This reminds me of Johnson and talks about how we have to talk about the silent thing if we want to improve and fix them.

2."Within normalizing communities, some individuals and subject positions get privileged and represented as "normal" while other individuals and subject positions are disempowered and represented as deviant, sick, neurotic, criminal, lazy, lacking in intelligence and in other ways "abnormal." Carlson says that this what the views have been like for most of this century and i feel that this is an important thing to point out and we need to change this view because everybody is different from one another but that does not make it right to view them as being sick or criminal.

3."Three techniques of normalization and (hence) marginalization have been of promary importancein this regard: (1) the erasure of gayness in the cirriculum, (2) the "closeting" and "witch hunting" of gay teachers, and (3) verbal and physical intimidation of gay teachers and students." These are the ways that Carlson says that school communities have kept "normalization" and i feel that it is important to first know the ways that schools have been silenceing gayness and then work to fix and change it.

Talking Point #2 (Rodriquez, "Aria")

I feel that Richard Rodriquez is saying that it is important for students that don't speak English as their first language, should be taught as soon as possible to be able to communicate in English or the language of the culture of power. But also Rodriquez says that the students should still learn to appreciate and recognize their native language. Some of this article reminded me of Lisa Delpits argument about culture of power. Rodriquez says that a student should learn the language of the culture in power if they want to succeed, but also they should not forget their native language.

1. "What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right and the obligation to speak the public language of los gringos." Here Rodriquez is talking about if he wanted to succeed then he was going to have to learn to speak the public language or the culture of power language of English.

2. "it would of pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered the classroom...But I would have delayed...having to learn the language of public society." Rodriquez is talking about how he would of felt more comfortable if his teachers would have spoken Spanish to him, but this would have not prepared him for the real world.

3. "while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilate into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality." This is saying by learning the public society language to make achievements possible, one is losing some of there individuality and this should not happen, I feel they should still recognize their culture.

Talking Point #1 (McIntosh/Muwakkil

In the articles that McIntosh and Muwakkil write, they argue that there are unearned privileges and power that white people and males have. The article talks about how most of the people who are privileged do not like to recognize it and are taught to be oblivious to it.

Some quotes and statistics that interested me from the articles were "white applicants with prison records were still more likely to be hired than black men without them." This was surprising to me and shows that there is still a good bit of racial biases in the united states. A quote I liked was "White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks." This quote from McIntosh's article helped me look at her argument a different way and understand it better

I liked how in McIntosh's article she gave us a list of ways that showed white privileges. This also helped me to follow her argument a little better. I felt that this weeks read was much easier to follow compared to Delpit's article because in these articles it got rate to the point and gave good examples. I think that both of these articles are with Johnson's argument because they say there is privileges that are ignored and not realized by some and Johnson would say that we should talk about these privileges and powers