February 11, 2015 - 01:18
At one point Noguera points out in his, "The Trouble with Black Boys" article the following,
"The majority of my students who seek to become teachers and the vast majority of teachers I have worked with did not enter the profession because they wanted to serve as sorters and gatekeeprers. They also did not choose to teach because of the high status the profession enjoys or because they believe it will lead to financial security. Most are motivated by the idea that education can transform lives by inspiring young people and exposing them to knowledge that makes it possible to dream, aspire, and imagine new possibilities for themselves and the world" (120).
I believe that his students are not the only ones who believe in this ideal of using education to inspire today's younger generation to transform their aspirations and dreams into realities (personally I believe in this too). However, it is interesting that he mentioned this fact when the rest of his article discusses how there are several schools like the ones he has worked with in which, it is much more important to educate its students on obedience and civility. It is understandable that some schools may face the pressure of being punished by the district through reduced funding if test scores aren't met and so as a result create these "zero-tolerance" policies in which, students may face punishments of suspension and expulsion in order to sort out the good students from the bad. And I agree with Noguera when he states that these methods of punishments aren't doing anything to help encourage and foster students to do better in school but instead feed into the idea that those who misbehave and act out in school are the same ones who will end up in prison as they grow older. However, what I can't get over is the kind of priorities staff and administration at these schools have to educate students as well as what their idea of education means to them. For instance, the principal at one of the schools Noguera mentioned, admitted that at the moment his only concern was increasing the students' test scores and how some teachers believed that by getting rid of all the troublemakers in their class, they would be able to better teach and meet the needs of the rest of the class. It seems as though their idea of education is that one must be obedient to authority and well behaved rather than "exposing them to knowledge that makes it possible to dream, aspire, and imagine new possibilities for themselves and the world". Why is it that these students get punished for acting out instead of giving them a voice and the opportunity to explain their actions? Why suspend and even expell these misbehaving students when by doing so puts them more at risk to wander into dangerous spaces and encounter potentially the wrong groups of people? If students like Noguera are inspired to be teachers in hopes to transform the lives of younger people, then why do they feed into a system that shuts out a certain group of students by limiting their knowledge? Why not challenge the system by encouraging students to create new opportunities in furthering their education rather than conforming to authority and order and teaching the students to do the same?
Meanwhile Casella