This is the same thing I posted yesterday. But, I have trimmed it down and made some major changes based on errors that some of you pointed out to me. I felt that my diary was sidetracked, due, in part, to my poor use of he term "critical thinking" (it has a specific technical meaning) --I didn't feel that the most important point I was trying to make got across to very many people. That left me feeling disappointed. So, I'm trying this again. I have revised the errors and, tightened the focus and made it much shorter. Thank you for reading, your comments will be very much appreciated.
Most folks agree "critical thinking" is more powerful than memorizing disconnected facts. Every year that I taught high school I attended at least one faculty development meeting where I was told to teach my students to think critically. This is supposed to be the solution to address the educational achievement disparities between children of different races.
But those disparities are not the result of students not getting enough instruction in critical thinking skills. The push for these critical thinking skills has been going on for years with no results.
It has more to do with the sense of control, ownership and power each student feels over the material they learn in school. You see, all people think critically, just not about the things educators want them to think critically about. And many minority students do not feel any sense of ownership over what is often a very Eurocentric curriculum. To make matters worse, too many teachers fail to see "these kinds of students" as potential masters, creators and generators of culture or of knowledge. Instead the students are seen as passive vessels that need to be filled so they can "survive in the real world" rather than reinvent it. This fundamental lack of respect kills the student's desire to form a creative, and yes, critical relationship with the knowledge. So, critical thinking doesn't happen. But, the problem goes way beyond anything that could be fixed by just teaching critical thinking.
It doesn't matter how enthusiastically I divide them in to groups and ask them to "Discuss ways to choose roots to test when solving an unfactorable cubic equation." -- if the students have sensed that I don't believe that they have anything to contribute to mathematics then, even when doing tasks structured to stimulate critical thinking, they will only produce rote-learning types of responses.
Schools are funded by property taxes so schools in wealthy areas have more funding than those in poor districts. This is why so few majority African American and Latino schools have swim teams (for example) very few have swimming pools and some do not have any athletics programs at all. But funding differences are not the only source of disparities.
Students of different races are seen by teachers, politicians and administrators in different ways. This results in vastly different modes of education and discipline for these students. This factor can operate independently of class differences, magnifying differences in education by race.I regard it as one of the most significant forms of institutional racism. It is passive unconscious racism that renders some educators, administrators and politicians blind to the the potential many students have to be a master, a creator and a generator of culture and of knowledge.