To clarify, this student was *proud* of the teacher's "meanness,"
an attribute he seemed to describe as the ability to run the
class and pushing and expecting students to learn. Now, does
the liberal perspective of the negatively authoritarian black
teacher really hold up? I suggest that although all "explicit"
black teachers are not also good teachers, there are different
attitudes in different cultural groups about which characteris-
tics make for a good teacher. Thus, it is impossible to create a
model for the good teacher without taking issues of culture
and community context into account.
So perhaps the observations of the authoritatian nature of low
SES classrooms have less to do with disempowerment, and more
to do with shared values of people who consitutue them. Whose
values are we using to make judgments about appropriate
notions of authority when we make negative judgments about
the ways in which people conduct classes in particular settings?
I just read a small item in the newspaper about a researcher
who'd found that Korean children are enculturated to be silent
and listen and not to participate verbally in classrooms, and
that these children have higher reading scores than children
in American classrooms predicated on the assumption that
talk promotes learning. This researcher is developing a program
for American school children based on the Korean model. What
do you think the chances are that this model can be effectively
imported? If you agree with me that it ignores the activity
setting of American classrooms and is thus unlikely to work
well, then you might also question the imposition of mainstream
middle class communication genres on all learners in all
settings.
Peter Smagorinsky smagor who-is-at aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu