Has anybody thought of asking a student (minority or otherwise) just what
he or she wants in the first place?
My teaching experience has been limited - undergrads, many of them
immigrants or children of immigrants, at Brooklyn College and adult
immigrants from the former Soviet Union at Touro, but I think some of the
things my students told me as they struggled with the material and the
"system" may provide a clue. What they all seemed to want was to
*survive* and if possible to "get ahead" in a very difficult and
frequently unfriendly society.
As far as diversity goes, I got by very nicely simply by listening to
each one as an individual with respect and attention, asking questions
when I did not understand "where someone was coming from" and remembering
as much as possible my own experiences as an immigrant in Israel.
It is very nice to talk about forcing the hegemonic powers that be to
change, but the student in front of me needs to go out in a year and get
a job, and what can I do about it? The obvious - teach the student how
the system operates and how to beat it. Part of beating the system is
learning how to produce "academic achievement" in a form that the system
validates without taking it as personally invalidating of one's own
culture/individuality. Just as I can learn Russian without ceasing to
speak English, so can my students learn academia-speak and the content of
a particular field without relinquishing their own significance as human
beings with a different class/cultural background.
The "System" will change or not change as history takes its own course.
What matters most in teaching is whether we serve our students according
to the responsibilities we have taken on by taking on the identity of
"teacher" vis-a-vis their identity as "student" without presuming we
"know better" than they do what they need simply because we can phrase
our opinions in academically-correct abstractions.
Rochel Sara (Rachel) Heckert
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