Talking Point Number 3

Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community,Dennis Carlson

Carlson states on the first page what he is going to argue," ...more importantly I want to argue that these practices are increasingly hard to sustain." He believes that schools and communities need to teach about "gayness", so that it does not seem abnormal to everybody. If it is being taught then it will not seem so 'weird' for people rather a part of life. He also says that if teachers use words like, "lesbians" and "homosexual" in their everyday language it will not seem awkward to children and even adults.

"One way that a normalizing curriculum or text works is by presenting students with a "selective tradition""
--- This quote really got me thinking, about how true this is. We talked about this a little in class, about not telling kids about something because it might not be "age appropriate", but there are definitely ways to make things more age ready. Like the true Thanksgiving lesson that Dr. Bogad did with her class. In order to make something more "normal" lesson planners, book publishers, etc. just take out the awkward material, material that might cause controversy, or even something that is not in the "norm" .


"One thing we can conclude about the emerging shape of community in America is that because it is more fragmented, it is becoming more difficult to construct a "public" curriculum that has broad-based support."
---- I believe it is hard to come up with a curriculum for public schools due to the cultural, and sexual orientated growth in communities. And now a days everything has to be politically correct, and if it is not you are in trouble. I do not think there is ever going to be a time where you can get an entire community to agree on something, there is always going to be someone or a group of people that disagree. Like teaching "gayness", or bringing it into a classroom will definitely upset religious people, and keeping it out upsets LGBT groups. It is a lose-lose situation.

This article was hard for me to read, one because of the style, and two because I do not believe in Homosexuality. Although I do not hate anybody because of it, and am friends with gays and lesbians I do not support it, and would find it hard to teach in a my classroom one day, or even speak upon it because it goes against everything I stand for. I am a sunday school teacher, and teach the total opposite to my children that marriage is between a man and woman, so it would be really hard for me, and I probably could not do it, to teach it in my classroom.

Talking Point Number 2

In Aria by Richard Rodriguez, he seems at the beginning to be talking about his hatred for learning the English Language in School. And about how much pride he took in speaking Spanish at home with his family. He speaks about how close speaking Spanish at home made his family, how excited they were to go home and speak their language. He then goes into how being forced to speak English both at home and school, drove his family apart.
-"With out question it would have pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered the classroom."
-" Because I wrongly imagined that English was intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intrinsically private one, I easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language of of home."
--------Both of these quotes helped to realize that children hold something special to their culture, and to take it away from them by force can cause more harm then good. In this case the drive to make him speak English drove his family apart. All he wanted was to be greeted with some Spanish. How different would the situation have been if he was not noted at difficult? Or tried to make a point to learn some of his culture and background before dragging it out of him. Even to hear a simple HOLA RICHARD, how hard would that have been.

Talking Point Number 1

In McIntosh's article "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" she compares the privilege difference in color and sex. She talks about how white men have more power and privilege then other race or sex. She also touches upon the fact that white woman have more privilege then both men and woman of other races. Whites hold the most privilege out of any race, men more then anyone, but women in second over men of other races. She believes that people are born into their power and privilege level just by their skin color. I think it is interesting how she talks about whites growing up not to see their race as privileged. “Whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege”.I think that is interesting and really have never thought of it like that before. She makes good points, but I do not think there is anything that can be done about it. It is so hard to change many years of damage. And as long there is somebody that still thinks a certain way you can never get rid of it. Then there are the stubborn people who think that nothing is wrong and nothing needs to be changed, when it is clear that something needs to be done.



In the article “Data show racial bias persists in America” by Salim Muwakkil, I think the major focus was one employment and how bias employers on, even before they see or met the person. What I really liked about the article is all the facts that were used. Statics are shocking when layed out like they are here, " Applicants with white names were 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with black names...White applicants with prison records were still more likely to be hired than black men without them" Both of those statics really shocked me. After reading those I was just amazed, I never even thought that white males with criminal records would get hired over someone who has a clean record. I just do not understand how a country that is suppose to be equal and free can have so much inequalities and unfair chances and life. For a country who is suppose to offer liberty and justice to all, this article really makes you realize how unjust and unequal it really is. Shocking. I thought that we had some law to make sure that everyone was getting an equal chance at employment and freedom and life in general, this makes it seem like no law exist. And that is how people in this country live.