Where to begin?

It seems as if recently I've been bombarded with information, readings, and media about how unequal the United States schooling system is. I've read about Indian Boarding Schools, about literacy issues, about how black and white students learn differently, and about the widening achievement gap. The only problem being, I don't see where to begin to solve any of these problem.

If as future educators we are striving to create equal opportunities for all children then we have to start acting now. Even if it's just a small decision, they have to start being made. The problem I keep coming across in looking for a place to begin is this: I am receiving a completely mixed message from my teachers and reading sources. It seems to me as if I keep hearing something like this, "You must treat all students the same, but all students learn differently so teach them differently." How can you treat all students the same but teach them differently?! I can't help feeling that this is the same contradictory message I am hearing over and over and over again.

So, where do I begin? How can I start to help low achieving students if I have to treat everyone the same? How can I take into account different learning styles if I'm supposed to treat everyone the same? How can I have a unified goal for every student when I am supposed to be teaching them differently?

It seems to me we need to stop looking at race and color as a factor in schools. It has been said that color is not something that is invisible, it is a part of every person, but a part of ever person individually. As teacher we need to work on an individual basis. Think Globally, Act Locally. Why aren't we being taught this in our education programs? Why aren't we being taught how to cater to our students needs, as INDIVIDUALS, not as a group of students of color? When we get out into the world, we will be well versed, as Delpit points out, in the negative situations in education. Why not the positive?

So, my question is where to begin? In an educational environment full of negatives and contradictions, how can we know where to start to make improvements? I know there are no definitive answers... but all we need is a place to begin, we can at least move FORWARD from there.

Where are the directions?

One of the ideas from Lisa Delpit's book, Other People's Chilcren:Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, that really struck me was the notion that perhaps as we go through a Westernized school system, we actually lose some of our individuality. She writes, "Despite the rhetoric of American education, it does not teach children to be independent, but rather to be dependent on external sources for direction, for truth, for meaning" (101). This response comes in the context of a conversation about literacy, and how it applies to people in different cultures. Specifically she is examining Native Alaskan schools and how literacy is a problem there, but she finds out it is because literacy is not valued in the community. In certain cultures, like that of the people she observed in Alaska, more focus is placed on action, and feeling than on language. For me, this was a mind blowing idea.

I had never thought of communication that would NOT revolve around literacy. But she brings up some good points that cause me to pause. If we are literate, we take our facts from other sources, we do not tend to follow our own knowledge, but take the truth of our world from newspapers, politicians, signs, and other forms of language. Do we do anything without being told? And aren't there some ideas that cannot be expressed through words?

We are taught constantly through school to follow directions and explain what we do in words. What if we cannot? Isn't there some part of our individuality that is so complex or unique that words cannot describe? There are only so many words. However, I do not believe there are only so many ways someone can be an individual. I would say one of my goals of being a future educator is to allow students to become individuals; but how can we accomplish this goal if as teachers we only teach them how to be just like everyone else? We ask students to all solve the same math problems, write papers on the same topics, and to explain why reactions happen to the chemicals we manipulate. But how does this create individual minds who look to themselves for direction and purpose? If we constantly teach our students to look to external sources for direction, they will not know how to think individually without directions.

And frankly, life doesn't have a set of directions.