Letters

Race Matters

Being of South Asian origin, I appreciated the article “Can We Talk” (fall 2007). It reminded me of my own experiences in undergraduate and graduate school. However, I was wondering if the discussion would have been different if more racial groups had expressed their opinions, or if international students/staff/faculty had also been taken into account.

Maham Mela
Lahore, Pakistan

The cover art and illustrations for “Race in the Classroom” are outstanding; I’m surprised and concerned there was no credit for the designer.

C. A. Kolbe , Ed.M.’88
Watertown, Mass.

Editor’s Note: The designer, Paula Telch Cooney, is credited in the masthead.

In the spirit of Dean McCartney’s invitation “to continue the kind of self-reflection that leads to needed change,” I would like to point out a critical piece missing in the puzzle that Michael Blanding begins to put together in his article “Can We Talk?” While race and racism manifest through classroom discourse, Blanding forgets that the institutional context matters a great deal in how individuals engage and experience these social dynamics. As an historically white institution, HGSE shapes how race and racism manifest in its classrooms. Blanding’s article fails to illuminate the ways in which, institutionally, HGSE in fact promotes racism and supports narrow conceptions of race. This institutionalized racism is reflected in the dreadful failure to hire and retain faculty of color at all levels of the professorial hierarchy. The ways in which HGSE frames issues of “diversity” undermine its efforts to recruit faculty of color. For instance, the systematic refusal by (white) members of the senior faculty to acknowledge critical race theory as a fundamental framework for understanding educational issues in the United States is a monumental stumbling block for the substantive and meaningful diversification of the faculty.

It is ironic that the only faculty members quoted in Blanding’s article as fomenting an antiracist discourse are identified as white. I do not doubt that these efforts to foment conversations about race have opened up a “safe” place for white students to enter the dialogue about race. Yet I am suspicious of whether these spaces can ever be “safe” for students of color. Indeed, if Blanding’s claim that HGSE “can serve as a safe place for students to navigate issues of race” is to become true, the institution needs to consider what continues to make it unsafe — particularly for students of color — in the first place.

Rubén Gaztambide -Fer ández, Ed.M.’00, Ed.D.’06
assistant professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

I received Ed. magazine and was excited to see a cover article on race, which is an important, highly relevant topic. But reading the article was a total disappointment. With all the really good antiracism work in the world, you would think you could find some HGSE folks with more useful experiences to share.

Pam Kelly, Ed.M.’73
Greenfield, Mass.

I was troubled by Michael Blanding’s description of a persistent problem. One of my most painful encounters with the issues he describes occurred in a high school classroom where I was practice teaching. At the time, I was enrolled in Harvard’s two-year M.A.T. program, and I was sent to teach in a suburban Boston high school. The assigned social studies materials included several inexpensive, paperbound books published by the Xerox Corporation. The topic was the history of race in the United States. I taught the unit with my heart racing. Although I spent a summer in the Freedom Schools in Mississippi, I was not at ease discussing in a classroom setting the content our syllabus required. We were almost through the unit when it came — the screaming, shouting, angry cry, “What about US??!!” “Us,” in this case, were the Armenians, and the issue was the Armenian massacres. Did it matter that we were studying the history of the United States? Not at all. Part of the problem is that classroom education is not a good fit for all children or grownups. Race is a hotbutton issue, and the unhappy student will grab it and use it to vent. The answer may be to remove the issue from the curriculum. Our schools and courts have spent half a century discussing race. We have made no progress toward defusing this very nasty problem. We have only made it easier for the unscrupulous to destroy people who are earnestly trying to come up with solutions and/or remedies to social problems they have been taught originate in race.

Lynn Strudler , M.A.T.’70
New York

In reading Blanding’s recent article, I was struck by its optimistic tone, suggesting as it did HGSE’s commitment to the cultivation of “safe place[s] for students to navigate issues of race.” Pockets of critical race dialogue were among the most powerful and productive learning spaces for me at HGSE and I am glad to know they are surviving. Yet, I remain skeptical about the university’s commitment to support such dialogue and inquiry through its faculty hiring and retention decisions. The vague acknowledgements that “we have more work to do” offered without the identification of practices, policies, and values that will need to be changed amounts to placation, an attempt to momentarily appease transitory students while the institution continues about its otherwise race-avoidant business.

What the article fails to recognize is the long history of student-led activism at HGSE that has sought to inform the decisionmakers among senior faculty and the administration about why a more diverse faculty is needed. Reticent to speak with professors who demonstrate a paucity of awareness regarding race issues, dissatisfied students often deluge the few sym/ empathetic faculty capable or willing to discuss their concerns with requests to meet, talk, and act. Often these are junior faculty of color who are well aware that every minute devoted to student concerns like these is time that will go unrecognized when retention decisions are made, forcing some to make difficult decisions that cleave “scholarship” from “teaching.” Repeatedly, faculty who are most adept at facilitating inquiries into race end up leaving HGSE for other institutions. Indeed, the history of HGSE’s lack of faculty diversity is as much about who leaves (or is asked to go) as it is about who is invited to join. In the end, if current trends continue and some (clearly, not all) of HGSE’s faculty and administration continue to be “blindsided” when race issues flare up in classrooms, they should not be surprised one day when their invitation “Can we talk?” is simply met with a collective “No.”

Eric Toshalis , Ed.D.’07
assistant professor of secondary education
California State University, Channel Islands

Free Play

I am another alum who is part of a growing movement to bring play back into the lives of children (“Einstein May Never Have Used Flashcards, but He Probably Built Forts,” spring 2007). In response to questions posed by both Howard Gardner and Don Oliver at HGSE, I founded Fairhaven School in Upper Marlboro, Md., in 1998, modeled after Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Mass. As a school with no compulsory curriculum, free play is our bread and butter. Many of them in bare feet, our students explore Fairhaven’s 12 acres every day, often for hours at a time. And yes, they become thoughtful, responsible adults. They just get to spend their days probing our stream, building fairy houses, and chasing five-lined skinks! Thanks for shedding light on the very serious topic of play.

Mark McCaig , Ed.M.’90
Tracy’s Landing, Md.

As one of the authors of [the book] Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less, I was surprised and pleased to see our book alluded to obliquely in the title of the excellent piece on Elizabeth Goodenough. Furthermore, the point of the article is completely compatible with the message conveyed in the book: children need to play — indeed they must play if they are to learn to get along with others, nurture their incipient creativity, and practice the skills needed for success in the 21st century. Children don’t need fancy electronic toys that press for one right answer; instead, they need ordinary household objects, retro toys that were popular when we were children, and safe outside places. The toy recalls we are now witnessing will hopefully have the effect of making outside play and play with ordinary objects (like appliance boxes!) more frequent.

Roberta Michnick Golinkof
professor, University of Delaware
Newark, Del.

Write On

I agree with Mary Tamer that writing children’s books is “Hardly Child’s Play” (fall 2007). That’s always been the case, and now it’s even harder, especially for those who write the books that appear to be the easiest to create: picture books. The reasons are various: 1) children’s bookstores that promote the best new books have gone out of business; 2) in the eyes of publishers, celebrity authors trump experienced authors; 3) in many test-driven schools, second- and third-graders are brainwashed to believe that they are too old for picture books; and 4) publishers, who understandably need to show profits in their business, are drawn to picture books based on licensed characters. Not all books based on licensed characters are unworthy, to be sure, but many are, and they can shove the best, award-winning picture books right off the shelves.

There is a new exciting way to publish children’s books, digitally on the Internet; and, in this regard, I was interested in “Handhelds, Avatars, & Virtual Aliens” by Lory Hough in the same issue. Children are used to new media; and we, who want to create meaningful educational materials for kids, can find it satisfying to learn how to use the new media for this purpose.

Jean (Martin ) Marzollo, M.A.T.’65
Cold Spring, N.Y.