Reflections on Sociological Thinking…

According to Sorokin, a sieve is a control that acts as a sifter in society that maintains and regulates social mobility and actually places individuals in society according to her/his “talents”; in fact, sieves “control the process of vertical circulation”. Sieves typically have a direct relationship with standardized tests. Examples of sieves that Sorokin gives [...]

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An Aspect of Assimilation in Schools

Something that I wish more researchers, educators, and scholars would study and write about is the socialization and assimilation process that students go through during their “education”. For all students, this is a very difficult time and process. Recently I have spent a bit of time reading and analyzing how many African-American students manage this [...]

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An intriguing piece of a lesson plan I’m constructing…

Necessary Background Information: Students will find that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has calculated that one-third of a family’s total income could be set aside for food. This led to the original poverty line at $3000 in 1963. This and other information surrounding this activity lends itself easily to fraction, decimal, and percentage manipulation, and [...]

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A work in progress on past and present learning theories

          Behaviorism is one of the theories that have remained popular since its inception. This theory came out of the notion that humans were biologically continuous with the animal Kingdom (Phillips & Soltis, 2004, p.21). The focus in behaviorism isn’t how new knowledge is acquired but how new behaviors are acquired. Simply put, behaviors are [...]

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Is Cultural Competency Just Another Buzz Word?

             

     Is Cultural Competency Just Another Buzz Word?
           As education reform in the United States continues to move, even if the movement is in circles, along with reform comes new buzz words and phrases. One of the hot phrases of today is cultural competency. Educators, teacher educators, and education institutions claim to be in [...]

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What to do about high academic standards?

“It is a travesty to expect all children to reach the same standards when only a few receive adequate resources”   Asa Hilliard III
            Like every conversation about effective schooling and the notion of reform, this conversation, the one about standards, is very slippery and complicated. I struggle to know from which angle to come at [...]

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Dissin’ “the Standard”: Ebonics as Guerrilla Warfare at Capital High

Something that I wish more researchers, educators, and scholars would study and write about is the socialization and assimilation process that students go through during their “education”. For all students, this is a very difficult time and process. Recently I’ve spent a bit of time reading and analyzing how African-American students manage this period of [...]

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Good Intentions Are Not Enough!

                  Good Intentioned Educators
Good intentioned educators come in all shapes, sizes, colors, religious backgrounds, and people groups.
Good intentioned educators think they’re helping students by telling them to stop using their “broken-English” and replacing it with “standard English” only.
Good intentioned educators think they’re helping by postulating dominant culture norms as “normal” and “good” and everything [...]

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A response excerpt from my Sociology of Education class…

          Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital refers basically to all the sets of beliefs, practices, ways of thinking, knowledge, and skills passed on from ones social class; the idea is that certain cultural behaviors or norms carry along with them certain stratified value. These behaviors also give certain groups advantages in their ability to navigate [...]

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A reflection from Math Methods 510 and a good resource for teachers

The book, Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers is a solid resource. Examples of some of the activities in it include but aren’t limited to exercises like Historical, Cultural, and Social Implications of Mathematics, “Home Buying While Brown or Black”, Sweatshop Accounting, and Chicanos Have Math in Their Blood. Teaching mathematics in the [...]

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