Finn Article Extended Comments

My blog this week will be an extension of Jackie’s connection on the “Literacy with an Attitude” piece by Patrick Finn. I found this to be a tedious piece but like Jackie, once I got through the first few pages I was intrigued.

The first connection made was between The Brown vs. Board of Education based videos featuring Tim Wise and a quote by Finn about the “status quo” amongst society. This was a great connection that I actually did not think of. Jackie brought up a good point that if people stuck with the status quo of society and did not attempt to make any changes in a bad situation, that equality may never have been achieved, or would have taken much longer to make such strides. This sort of reminded me of the invisible privilege that McIntosh introduces, because people who “choose to remain comfortable”, as Jackie said, do not realize that they are not helping the bigger picture in the end.

The other connection Jackie made was to Delpit’s rules and codes of power, and I thought the exact same way when I was reading this piece. Jackie explains that Finn made sure his students knew who the authority figure was in the classroom and that his rules would not be compromised. His methods mirrored the exact ideals of Delpit. Like Jackie, I am also a fan of Delpit, and try to look for the “rules and codes of power” displayed in my service learning classroom each week. Sometimes it is hard to notice when the teacher is being explicit or not in their ways of teaching, but one way to know is based on the reactions of the students.
      

I feel that this would be a great discussion as a class, as well. We can compare our different classrooms that are most likely filled with different economic classes just as in Finn’s article, and then gauge how students react positively and negatively to the teacher when they are displaying the ideals of Delpit. Once this is accomplished, we can further compare our real classroom observations to the classrooms in Finn’s piece to see if the social classes mentioned have any actual effect on the teaching of literacy to different students from different areas.