Skip to main content

All About Love

Reading bell hooks and Lisa Delpit back to back is like being slapped and hugged at the same time with two sets of arms and hands. But I'm the kind of buddhist that doesn't (theoretically) have a problem with being bashed with a stick in the pursuit of enlightenment (although I've never actually meditated with Rinzai folks.)
What I'm trying to say is that I am finding it so hard to align myself with the actively loving pedagogy that I adhere to intellectually and to some extent emotionally as well. In my classrooms I often resort to harsh words and stern faces, standard edited English, and "punishment". I am only able to negotiate with one of my groups right now, and sometimes I feel that I am doing them a disservice too by being over-indulgent and not expecting enough of them.
a tidbit from Lisa Delpit:
"Let there be no doubt: a 'skilled' minority person who is not also capable of critical analysis becomes the trainable, low-level functionary of the dominant society, simply the grease that keeps the institutions which orchestrate his or her oppression running smoothly. On the other hand, a critical thinker who lacks the 'skills' demanded by employers and institutions of higher learning can aspire to financial and social status only within the disenfranchised underworld. Yes, if minority people are to effect the change which will allow them to truly progress we must insist on 'skills' witihin the context of critical and creative thinking."
Reading All About Love and Other People's Children is really helping me to parse out the resistance I'm feeling to my own (disorganized, untrained, undisciplined) practice of teaching/guiding my students towards liberation and power.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Japanese Class in NYC - first lesson!!!!!!!!!!!!

(It's been a while since my last post! I have just begun my first job in NYC!!! Teaching after-school classes in Japanese Language and Anime Culture in a inner-city high school in dowtown manhattan! Welcome to the first installment...) "You better have a leg in it," said N__ when she heard how many students I had in my Japanese class: over 30. I had to ask what that meant, but I wasn't feeling any kind of ominous energy from the students who had signed up for after-school Japanese Language Club. What I mean is: Who signs up to stay at school for 3 extra hours unless they really want to be there??? After trying (and failing) to set up a DVD for the first hour, waiting for the students to trickle in, and being herded into a corner by a Student Government meeting, I began class. The first order of the day was to break up into groups and brainstorm what the students expected of each other, of themselves, and of me as a teacher. Many of them said the same things: for the t
5 comments
Read more

Japanese Class Downtown (Week of 10/23)

This week, we got around to talking about the indigenous peoples of Japan. Concepts that we touched on: - “Assimilation” - “History is written by the winners,” and therefore - “Losers are depicted by the winners.” - “ethnic groups” - “minorities” In the first half of the class, we watched a movie – 『もののけ姫』(Princess Mononoke) – which was the most popular movie in Japan until Titanic came out afterwards. It was also the most expensive animated movie to make, up until its release date (2004), at a production cost of about $20 million. I introduced the movie by talking about the setting – Muromachi Period (1336-1573), roughly contemporary with the Ming Dynasty and the arrival of C. Columbus in what is now known as the Caribbean. The main character of the movie is an Emishi prince, from a clan of natives who have continued to resist the Japanese Shogunal government. (Historians say that the Emishi natives were all assimilated by 1300.) The main character of the movie is based on a historica
3 comments
Read more

postcard poetry: here are some of my favorite postcards that i've sent to people so far 1

providence can be a brutal city, just like any other. in this glass box I watched the ocean fall in sheets outside computer clusters, braid inside the gutters. umbrellas made no difference. this is the version i actually ended up using: Providence can be and has been just as brutal as any other city in the country, but i was safe and desperately warm within the glass cage, watching the Atlantic fall in sheets, watching the acid rain braid itself into the gut- ters, wringing words like fair- trade coffee from my strained eyeballs to stain the imaginary page on my computer screen.
2 comments
Read more