I was listening to a segment on NPR Radio on Thursday, the 7th titled, "Boston Schools Integration." While listening, it occurred to me that one of the problems we have with education and how we should, or shouldn't, concentrate on de-segregating classes, "multiculturalism", etc. is the language we use to talk about it.
From the program, "[one of the concerns is that Boston schools will] drift back to the days before bussing where white students dominated some schools, and minority students were isolated in others."
Why is it that the minority students do not dominate the schools in which they are the majority? Is it because, in the language of expectations, minority students cannot, or are not allowed to, dominate? Is domination only allowed by, or expected from, the white students? If a group of minority students make up the majority of a school population, do they not dominate that school? ?by definition? OR, must they be isolated by the mere fact of their racial and ethnic make-up?
This is, yet again, another example of what I call the "Language of Expectations." Is it possible that it is the way we talk about things, the very words that we use, (whether of habit, choice, popularity, or whatever other reason), that cause some of the very problems that we purport to talk about? Are the words we use themselves one of the reasons that we cannot get past certain problems, merely speaking, writing, arguing, about them using the words that we use perpetuates the very problem we are trying to solve by reinforcing the conditions that cause the problem in the first place?
I'm sensing a philosophic paper coming on... more later
1 February 2002, 1:53pm*
Just posted the second part of Judith...
1 February 2002, 10:36am*
I can't believe it's fucking February already. I always thought my mother was lying to me when she told me that time goes faster as you get older (she often did this around October, when all six of us kids would start getting out the Toys-R-Us and Sears toy catalogues to start the first drafts of our Christmas wish list). But, as it turns out, she's right. I can only imagine the speed of her everyday life now that she's 63...
My biggest fear about this whole situation isn't that I think that things should go slower in my life, I mean, I'm 34 years old and am only just now completing my Bachelor's degree (I know, I know, but I went back, that's the important thing. If that truly is the important thing, why do I sometimes feel like I've wasted the last 12 years of my life? What could I have done already had I finished my degree in four or five years?), my fear is that I am somehow, as I get older, missing something in life that I saw before. I mean, when I was twenty and life seemed to drag on a little more, did I actually see things, experience things in the world or in my life that I, for whatever reason, don't anymore? Have I grown so accustomed to things, so used to the state of the world, so unaffected by the few surprises that pop up, that they slip through my life and right on by without leaving any real significant impact on my consciousness?
And if so...is there a way to slow it all down and notice things again, without life dragging by, of course?
Well, if you know, shoot me the answer by e-mail or through the guestbook- speaking of which, if you are reading this, sign the damn thing and let me know someone's out there, this is entertaining for me, but it won't be for long...