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Saturday, June 11, 2005
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MEETING ALL OF YOUR NEEDS WITH HEART AND PRIDE Fellow teachers: Are you capable of meeting the needs of all of your students? The needs of all of your students? Let UD be the first to admit that she is not capable of meeting the needs of all of her students. Let her go further. UD is capable of meeting the needs of none of her students. UD is not a need-meeter. She is a teacher. She is capable of teaching many of her students, but she is not capable of meeting the needs of her students. Not even all of them. One of the things UD teaches her students is how to recognize and avoid empty cliches and the empty sentiments about life they convey. A good example of such a cliché would be “meeting the needs.” Yet crucial to an Oregon education professor’s defense of pending legislation mandating “cultural competence” of all Oregon teachers is the reiterated use of just this cliché in place of any effort to define “cultural competence.” “The Oregon Legislature has rightly pushed for future teachers to be culturally competent, capable of meeting the needs of all of their students. ...[Cultural competency] meet[s] the needs of all our students." The writer bangs away at this cliche - meeting the needs of all - in a short editorial piece in an Oregon newspaper where he defends the cultural competence mandate. But nowhere in what he writes does he attempt the beginning of a wisp of a hint of a definition of cultural competence, beyond assuring his readers that it guarantees all teachers will meet all of the needs of all of their students. The writer pads out the rest of his piece with more cliches. Here is the heart of his argument for cultural competency mandates, with UD‘s parenthetical remarks: "You can't just wish diversity didn't exist in our schools. [Remember the University of Iowa grad student defending his porn course? He used this approach too. If you oppose porn courses you’re too repressed, cowardly, hypocritical, and vindictive to handle the truth of the existence of pornography in the world. If you oppose cultural competency mandates, you can’t handle the reality of America’s diverse population.] Most of us believe that diversity is one of the core strengths of America. [The rest of us believe that the melting pot has been an unmitigated disaster. We can’t wait until everyone in America looks like Christopher Walken.] We hope we can agree that achieving cultural competence standards is a worthy goal for our teachers. Once initiated, it will take thoughtful discussion to define those standards so they best meet the needs of all our students. [Worthy goal…thoughtful discussion…] Education is the heart and pride of our country [Heart and Pride is the name of my unsalted whipped butter.] We have always looked to schools to help people rise up out of their situations to be successful and productive citizens. Teachers are the critical piece in that process. They need to be prepared to understand the needs of all of their students so they can design instruction that creates the greatest potential for success. Schools of education across the country are constantly striving to adapt their programs to meet the ever-changing nature of students who enter our classrooms [Constantly str- …forget it.]. The Oregon Legislature's support and encouragement of that effort is essential." You do not make an argument by smearing cliches over a screen. This writer thinks he’s made an argument, but all he has done is alarm UD one more time about this country’s schools of education. Anyway, that’s pro. The newspaper also features con, a state legislator who interrupts the self-flattering pieties we have just read with realities. Reviewing the standards and tests many other states now feature in their education policies, she notes that “Nowhere is there a mention about ‘cultural competence.’ …We don't have a definition, we don't know how to measure it, and we don't know if it will close the achievement gap. Before we require teachers to be culturally competent, we need to know what it is, how you measure it, if it is just another educational trend that will be discredited in the future, and how much it will cost.” |
