Sean Grant
February 9, 2014
Blog 2
Are You Listening? Or
Hearing?
While
reading Lisa Delpits piece “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in
Educating Other People’s Children” I had to go in with my mind open and ready
to look at all aspects. After reading
the first piece in my first journal, my eyes starting opening to the aspects
and now I am approaching everything knowing, my view necessarily isn’t the
correct view. But once I started reading
this piece, I had to reread certain paragraphs because I kept forgetting what
race was being talked about, or what kind of examples she was trying to use,
but once reading through it one or two extra times it started to make more and
more sense. One of the main lines in
this piece, one that really stuck with me was that “those with power are
frequently least aware of-or less willing to acknowledge its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of
its existence.” I could reflect on just
this one quote in many more ways than one.
This does not only apply to race and power of the culture, but it can
even go down to who has power when it comes to “popularity” throughout school,
it could also go towards power on a sports team, the one with the most
skill. But always when you feel like you
are not “in charge” or feel behind where everyone else is, you realize the
power that the others have just because of what they have, whether its skill,
friends, etc.
With
RIC being my third college, I have been in many different environments, from
living in a dorm as a freshman, to going to a community college, to now being
here at RIC living off campus. But one
thing is always the same, the so called “power.” One of my first experiences in college really
opened my eyes, because at Dean College I felt there were less white people at
the school rather than those of colors. From
the classroom to both teams, I could see power being shown all over the place. To the kids on the team who felt as if coach
wanted them there most, or had the most previous success felt as if they were
above everyone else and had more power over us when no one really had any power
over another teammate. This was me being
inside the so called “power circle” and seeing where people thought their power
mattered. But not only on the same team,
but even when it came to other teams, since the football team was the biggest
and one of the most successful, the athletes felt as though the college was
theirs. But that was me looking at them
from the outside looking in. which like Delpit said those with less power are
most aware of its existence. This made
me realize how it could be pushed onto those students who did not play sports,
how much power they felt we thought we had.
But also
like Delpit said, which I feel was common throughout not only my college time,
but even my time in high school is the power the teacher has over the
students. I feel as though this is a
norm for every classroom and a way for a more successful class. But I can say being in this class, where the
power is still in the professor’s hands over the students, you still allow us
to have a lot of power in the classroom.
A type of power we do not normally get in a classroom, but we have more
than a voice in class, we have identities because of how many times are voices
are allowed to be heard in class.
Going
through Delpit’s five aspects, I could write a couple examples for every step
because of how true this power and silence really is. The second aspect is about the codes and
rules in power, “culture of power” which is something I know all of us can
relate to seeing our first classes we talked about SCWAAMP. And another aspect of how the culture of power
reflects in the rules and codes that I have never realized but it has always
been right in my face. Reading textbooks,
reading books, science books, all our books throughout high school, the main
characters were for the most part white, as well as others in the stories, it
was always about white people. It is
crazy how much reading certain pieces can really change your views on things
and I know that is the point of all these pieces and it is doing more work on
me than I could ever imagine. Not only change your view, but make you realize
what is really happened behind the “blinders”
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