The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children

 The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children 

Author: Lisa Delpit

Reflection: The “culture of power” was a main focus that Delpit explored in this piece. When I read that there are codes and rules regarding culture of power it made me think of the SCWAAMP dominant ideologies. Delpit was referring to the power more linguistically, but the concept of power advantages are still related. Later, in the article she shifted to how some liberals will believe that they are helping people of other cultures they have power over, when in reality they are deemphasing power and indirectly communicating. Although the perpetrator with more power is trying to help in actuality they lessen their explicitness by asking questions and details. According to the article it states, “Some have added that liberal educators believe themselves to be operating with good intentions, but these good intentions are only conscious delusions about their unconscious true motives.” Basically, she argues that schools push every child to be successful in the white world. Further into the article, she says that black teachers have a more structured and powerful approach while white teachers do not. Meaning, that a black student will have a harder time due their cultural experiences instead of a white middle or high class student. That really resonated with me because it made me question and then agree that people of different cultures respond to teacher authorities differently. The example that she provided was that middle and high class white students would respond better to rhetorical discipline like “excuse are we supposed to blurt an answer?” The child growing up may learn that the question means discipline and since she is the teacher THAT means she is the boss. However, in a black home the child may be raised differently where the teacher must EARN his/her right to authority. 

Chatgpt generated prompt: [insert my text] can you generate the differences between black and white students responding to the different discipline styles I discussed?

Honestly, I loved how psychology was brought into the mix. We learned about obedient experiments in my class in high school and it is very interesting to me. She was almost implying that “meanness” is important for pushing students to do their absolute best and learn, however I am still not sure how I feel about that right now. I would never want to be the mean teacher, I want to show my true silly personality while also being firm enough that there is order in the classroom. Another point that she makes is that an individual's language and cultural style can be unique, but they must also learn formal English in order to get involved. She refers to this as playing the “power game.” I am a realist myself and unfortunately it can be tricky to learn about only other languages and cultures to be successful in America. However, he still emphasizes the importance of learning and embracing the linguistics of other cultures and believes they can practice in the context of certain audiences. 

Comments for class: 

When the author met up with the Native American girl about her paper, what she said resonated with me deeply. Even though she was not perfect, she still BELIEVED in her she could be a successful teacher, where others did not. Also word for word it says, “I stressed the need to use her own learning process as an insight into how to best teach her future students those “skills” her own schooling has failed to teach her.” I think that when a teacher has struggled as a student learning from their mistakes, they can be more passionate and better explain the concept or topic. In school I did struggle in difficult mathematics courses, but once I started tutoring I realized how much better I was at explaining since it never came naturally to me.