Living & Learning in Poverty: Rethinking Student Participation

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Rethinking Student Participation

Christopher Emdin has an excellent challenge to traditional assumptions about student participation.

His work looks directly at urban students, but I believe this piece is relevant to all classrooms and must be central to any school reform we attempt.

"Rethinking Student Participation," Christopher Emdin, EDge vol. 5, no. 1

“Arts of the Possible,” Adrienne Rich (2001)

Universal public education has two possible—and contradictory—missions. One is the development of a literate, articulate, and well-informed citizenry so that the democratic process can continue to evolve and the promise of radical equality can be brought closer to realization. The other is the perpetuation of a class system dividing an elite, nominally “gifted” few, tracked from an early age, from a very large underclass essentially to be written off as alienated from language and science, from poetry and politics, from history and hope—toward low-wage temporary jobs. The second is the direction our society has taken. The results are devastating in terms of the betrayal of a generation of youth. The loss to the whole of society is incalculable. (p. 162)

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Sunday, September 20, 2009

Rethinking Student Participation