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NAIS - The Truth About Making Real Change for Racial Justice - 0 views

www.nais.org/...real-change-for-racial-justice

DEI social justice diversity racial justice

shared by Jill Bergeron on 02 Jan 21 - No Cached

To look at ourselves honestly means to ask: Why are our schools here? The raison d’être of independent schools has been, and continues to be, that of advancing the interests of those who already have privilege—to provide a return on investment (ROI) to those who have sufficient disposable income to afford independent school. To put it differently, our main job is to preserve the social status quo or reproduce the elite; this class-bound purpose results in a hierarchical view of the world in which our students are destined for leadership. In our mission statements, the idea that we are creating leaders is almost universal. On their face, these statements provide a binary and hierarchical understanding of society, one in which there are leaders and followers, and we are teaching the leaders.
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noblesse oblige, a worldview that accepts and perpetuates existing social hierarchies while promoting social good.
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When we look at our schools’ service programs, the idea of “giving back” is ubiquitous. Yet we fail to discuss or even question how much taking is appropriate.
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Families send their kids to our schools, and we must prove that we are better than local public or other school options. In other words, we ask the majority of our families to give us financial support so that their kids can get more—not necessarily different—than what their taxes pay for; the “more” is the ROI.
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Furthermore, this hierarchical worldview permeates our practices—from grading to sports, we promote hierarchies cemented on ability, access, and popularity, among other things. By viewing race problems in our schools in purely cultural terms, we are articulating our hope that we will promote some hierarchies while erasing other hierarchies based on race, gender, and sexual orientation. But as we know, hierarchies intersect and sustain each other.
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the demand that our teachers get better or different professional development, that we hire and admit more people of color, and that we collectively become culturally competent is a way to deal with the symptoms of racism, not with a system of racism.
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Why would those who have privilege, and want to keep it by paying for a special pathway for their children, want to give it up? Anyone familiar with the college admission process knows the tensions that emerge around race and class. If our students and families are happy to embrace the language of inclusion, such superficial pretense often evaporates when college admission lists appear. It is then that we see the hard limits of our inclusivity.   The families in our communities are essentially good people who want to share, but they don’t want to be left out.
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They like the idea of “giving back” but do not want to take less.
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many of our enrollment challenges derive from the fact that millennial families are looking for meaning and value—not access. We need to stop worrying about providing an illusory ROI and ensure that we help our students develop lives of meaning and purpose; we need to stop worrying exclusively about leadership and prepare them for ethical and active citizenship. It is only when we can talk to our students about the need to take less so that others can have their fair share that we will be able to honestly talk about race.
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'The Capacity for Connection' | Teaching Tolerance - Diversity, Equity and Justice - 0 views

www.tolerance.org/...capacity-connection

diversity

shared by Jill Bergeron on 09 May 16 - No Cached

For instance, examples to teach mathematics principles can be developed around social justice issues, such as rates of unemployment and disparities in incomes. Critical reading skills can be honed by critiquing biased and incomplete news reports.
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Only 14% of white students, for example, attend multiracial schools. How might such isolation affect white students' ability to develop healthy racial identities?
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Ironically, in more racially diverse educational settings, assumptions of white superiority are often reinforced by "ability" grouping and tracking. Thus, simply being in more diverse school settings is not a guarantee that white children will develop non-racist attitudes and behaviors, unless their teachers intentionally work with them on these issues.
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