Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Acceptance only? How naive.

Talking about teaching acceptance instead of teaching minority children the language of power seems to me to be completely ignoring the concept of a culture of power. Sure, everyone could accept how everyone else speaks and behaves culturally, but there would still be that culture of power where the standard is set. Just because people accept each other in personal settings doesn’t mean they would accept them when a job is on the line. There are standards for jobs, and if the individual applying was just “accepted” all their life and so never got the opportunity to learn about the language of power, they aren’t going to be able to meet the standards of the career in the culture of power.
Acceptance here seems to mean keeping people at their present level of language, and changing the minds of the people in the culture of power so that language is less of an issue. That’s a nice concept, but very hard to implement. How does one teach people who are already in the culture of power to be accepting of people who aren’t? Only part of that can be done in the schools, the rest of it has to be taught in the home and in society.

5 Comments:

At 10:47 PM, Blogger sharon said...

It's definitely a complicated issue and by no means does there exist a simple solution. I agree with you that if we're going to try to adopt "acceptance," we need to work on it at the school, home, and cultural levels.

 
At 10:24 PM, Blogger Dianne said...

I completely agree with you. I don't understand how one can think that by teaching acceptance alone would help people in the long run. You can teach acceptance in schools, but what about when the students get home and go out with their friends away from school? There is no one there to enforce the idea of acceptance and they see people who are in the "culture of power" take advantage of those who aren't on a daily basis. Acceptance only would leave our society in an even worse situation then we are already in. However by teaching it in addition to the "language of power" the students may just have the skills and abilities to help change how our society views power.

 
At 10:24 PM, Blogger albert smith said...

Couldn't agree more :-).

 
At 8:01 AM, Blogger JENNA said...

I agree like everyone else does. Acceptance needs to be practiced on all levels of life in order for it to be effected. Like Dianne said we need to have someone to enforce acceptance and remind people of it all the time. It is an all or nothing issue, either we all need to accept or it doesn't really work.

 
At 9:00 AM, Blogger feebeef said...

Jenna...
I'm not sure if this is your meaning, but I don't like the words you used: "enforce acceptance." I've said this before on my own blog. You can't traditionally teach, much less enforce acceptance.

Betsy, what I was saying all along. This lady is really naive and I'd say idealistic about our world.

 

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