Ethan Freedman
Prof. Sam Stiegler
The American School
December 17, 2021
Introduction:
The education that I received was not normal. If I had to pick a place to begin telling my story, I would start with the very beginning. On January 28th, 2002, my twin brother Aidan and I were born. With one older brother and two parents we were very much an image of the nuclear family – however, this family was nuclear in a different way. When it comes to a nuclear family growing up in Los Angeles, things look a little different. While my mother worked from home, my father was rising in the entertainment business and was a member of the upper middle class. This was more than enough to enable us to go to private schools where my wealth was miniscule in comparison to my classmates.
From elementary school all the way up to sixth grade, my brothers and I attended The Center for Early Education, a prestigious educational institution located in the center of West Hollywood. This school was, and still is, desired by many wealthy families as well as A-listers in La La Land as it provides children with a terrific education and establishes connections with middle schools to which the students have to apply to after 6th grade. It was nepotism at its finest; however, I had zero comprehension of the bubble that I lived in.
As I progressed into middle and upper school, I attended Windward School in Culver City, California. Windward was simply a continuation of the environment that I grew up with at The Center. I was attending a school where left and right of me were, once again, students of A-listers. My peers consisted of children of producers, tech-gurus, actors, and so much more who simply could not comprehend the privilege that they have.
When I arrived at Colgate University, while the environment was similar as it was also primarily white, heteronormative, and a place of dominating wealth – something drastically changed. The classes I had the opportunity to take were ones in which I could acquire the tools to critically analyze my upbringing and the education I received. While I was capable of doing this more than others because I intended on majoring in Women’s Studies where classes required this, other courses also helped me to think critically. In “The American School”, a course facilitated by Prof. Sam Stiegler, I was given the tools to analyze the education I received. Through readings and introspection, this project reflects the notion that much of my educational upbringing was something that felt fixed. I was ignorant to alternatives because of the bubble I grew up in; but this is not something in which I have to participate. I am capable of breaking away from oppressive norms as well as helping others to do the same – all thanks to the education and critical thinking skills that I am receiving now.
Photo 1: Constantly in Comparison
As a twin, I have been compared to someone else my entire life. From the minute I was born I was suddenly not like the other; however, in this photo, he and I are standing, posing with one another looking very much like twins. Our stances, pajamas, smiles, and of course hair are scarily the same. Yet, uncontrollable forces – one of which is the education system – perpetuated the differences between us.
From reading Zeus Leonardo and Alicia Broderick’s, “Smartness as Property: A Critical Exploration of Intersections Between Whiteness and Disability Studies,” The notion that my school thought my twin and I were not two peas from the same pod is clear. Leonardo and Broderick say that “in terms of ability, constructs such as smartness only function by disparaging in both discursive and disposable.” In other words, smartness is associated with ability and is always in contrast with disability based on an individual's academic success (Leonardo and Broderick; 2011, pg. 2208). In elementary school, Aidan’s math, reading, and language skills excelled way above mine while my athletic abilities were terrific. This pushed the narrative that one of us was only academically gifted while the other was athletically talented – when in reality we were terrific at both.
By unpacking whiteness and disability studies, Leonardo and Broderick demonstrate that we can understand how smartness is directly contrasted to disability; however, from Irene Yoon’s “Haunted Trauma Narratives of Inclusion, Race, and Disability in a School Community”, we can fathom how my learning disabilities perpetuated the comparisons my brother and I experienced. As a child, I was diagnosed with a severe processing disorder that would greatly affect my ability to learn. Arguing that “race and disability in the United States are inseparable,” Yoon untangles the idea that individuals with learning disabilities are often not seen as people capable of the same levels of success because they are incapable of measuring up to the standards of whiteness to which it is closely tied (Yoon; 2019, pg. 422). Yoon argues that this leads to Hauntings, which is a consequence of trying to fill gaps “where people and communities have attempted to enforce silence” (Yoon; 2019, pg. 423). In Elementary school, for three days a week, every week, every grade year, I would venture down the hall with six other students to practice my reading. We were a breakfast club of people facing disabilities ranging from dyslexia to Autistic Spectrum Disorders and Yoon narrates how the physical removal of us from classrooms was an act of creating unity among the abled – but created a haunting story for the disabled.
Leonardo and Broderick in conjunction with Yoon help portray that disability is correlated with how the education system and society views whiteness, and in tangent – smartness. To be removed from rooms for my learning disability not only kept me from learning with the majority of my peers, but it created my own haunting story that I was not academically capable and did not measure up to ideal standards – especially in comparison to my twin. However, in the end, just like the photo represents, despite our differences, my Brother and I always have each other’s backs.
Photo 2: Teaching the Test was Not the Best
In David F. Labaree’s book titled, Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling, Labaree details the onset of educational movements as well as their shortcomings and successes. Describing a reaction to civil rights movements as well as administrative progressivism and schools for social efficiency, Labaree discusses the Standards Movement. He says that the “standards movmeent’s emphasis on academic content and learning outcomes served as a counter to the civil rights movement” as they wanted to reform the curriculum rather than focus on equal opportunity because of the idea that education was a “public good” (Labaree, 2010; pg 31). In order to achieve this, the standards movement pushed “high-stakes testing, curriculum standards, and accountability measures” while also setting “learning goals for each grade and each subject” (Labaree, 2010). In the end, all these standards were measured through statewide tests that were used to determine which school was fostering the greatest environment for success .
In this photo, I am sitting with my twin brother Aidan celebrating having just finished our last exam for the ERB Comprehensive Testing Program for 3rd graders. These exams would last approximately a week and every teacher would stop their curriculum for an entire week in order to proctor the exams. They were incredibly exhausting, but to the 3rd grader in me the reward of pizza made it all the while worth it. Five days straight of math, reading, grammar, and of course english was all seemingly worth it in the end.
However, after reading “No Child Left Bilingual: Accountability and the Elimination of Bilingual Education Programs in New York City Schools,” by Kate Menken and Cristian Solorza, I understand that teaching the test and accountability measures such as the ERB’s had consequences for the curriculum I recieved. In discussing how “high-stakes testing for purposes of accountability are a cornerstone for No Child Left Behind, a policy that seeks to unify students and create a common education”, Menken and Solorza discuss how language programs in schools have been diminishing due to standardized tests not covering other language skills (Menken and Solorza, 2014; pg 97). Despite schools being “primary sites for the implementation of language policies,” it is not necessary to teach secondary languages because schools must make “adequate yearly progress on state exams” in the subjects of English Language arts, math, and science (Menken and Solorza, 2014; pg 102). This means that there were no subjects on exams regarding secondary languages, which for Menken and Solorza highlights the reasons for the significant deterioration of language programs and loss of language for bilingual students.
However, for me, it highlights why I was unable to learn a secondary language in elementary school. The statewide exams I was being forced to take were calling on curriculum standards that a secondary language did not meet. For a dozen years, I was taught the test until middle school where I was finally able to take Spanish as a secondary language. However, this decision was an elective decision and had I started learning Spanish in my more fragile learning stages of my life, perhaps I would be fluent. Sadly I am not due to the standards that the American education system created leading to major consequences for the curriculums of many schools.
Photo 3: Sex Education is Liberation
In the basement of East Hall at Colgate University, there is a small space called the Center for Women’s Studies. Oftentimes, you can find me studying there or relaxing because it feels like home for me. This is exactly what I am doing in this photo. As a double major in Psychology and Women’s Studies, I have found that there are many wonderful conversations to have in the space. They can range from debates on feminist scholors like Judith Butler and Patricia Hill Collins to colloquial conversations on astrology and music preferences.
However, one of the common conversations that I often sit and listen to other student talk about while in the center is their experiences with sex education. For many people, the sex Ed. that they recieved covered solely abstinance intervention or biological functions of sex with the occasional person that recieved a comprehensive sex education. This narrative on sex Ed. is something common in society and elaborated on by Nancy Lesko in their piece “Feeling Abstinent? Feeling Comprehensive? Touching the effects of sexuality curricula”. Here, Lesko says that “abstinence-only education and comprehensive sexuality education dominate the curricular landscape and the educational politics of sex education” which upholds many of the stories that I hear from other students (Lesko, 2010; pg 281). Under and abstinence-only curriculum, one is “to develop the realization that true sexual freedom includes the freedom to say ‘no’ to sex outside of marriage” which highlights a key theme of the curricula that one should not have sex outside of wedlock (Lesko, 2010; pg 286). Supporters of this side argue that “the wrong messages are that sex is everything in life or that sex is nothing” (Lesko, 2010; pg 286). While this kind of education may not sound terrible as it teaches agency to students, the reality is that it does not teach students at all about sex.
Growing up in Los Angeles, California, I was able to access sex education curriculas that were incredibly comprehensive and focused significantly on pleasure, agency, and knowledge. For Lesko, comprehensive sex education calls for science, posativity, and freedom in sexual decisions” (Lesko, 2010; pg 288-290). Comprehensive Sex Ed. “prides itself on including current, scientifically-correct information,” seeks to “affirm sexuality as a positive aspect of human life,” and “directs us to feel free in the triumph of reason over tradition and of individual decision-making over dictate” (Lesko, 2010; pg 288-290). A comprehensive sex education, in other words, is entirely inclusive and respectful of the individuals lives that people live.
Because I received a broad, all inclusive, comprehensive sex education through my academic career, I find myself in the Center for Women’s Studies learning how to approach sex Ed. curriculas in order to help liberate the world on the conversation of sex, sexuality, gender, and more. With my major, I intend on bettering this planet through reformations and critiques of sex cirricula because of how liberated I feel based on the education I recieved. Since starting this journey, I have worked on educational and comprehensive sex podcasts such as “Sex With Emily” by Dr. Emily Morse as well as facilitated discussions on sex here at Colgate. I am hoping that this is how I can give back to the world.
Photo 4: Power Dynamics in School
When it comes to policing, we all know that authoritative figures exist with the intent of making others abide by the laws created for society. These often look like police, government officials, or even a president; however, In Bettina Love’s piece “‘I see Trayvon Martin’: What Teachers Can Learn from the Tragic Death of a Young Black Male,” one begins to understand alternative ways that power operates on race that stray away from authoritative figures. Love quotes Audre Lordes’ Sister Outsider, saying “the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us” signifying this idea that we ourselves are oppressors (Love, 2014; pg 294). Speaking of a student's reaction to a protest, Love argues that people do not “create the privileges from which she benefits because of her skin color nor did she construct the racial discourse surrounding black males. These conditions that are rooted in the fabric of American society, to which we are all exposed, and from which we derive some benefit, can lead to interpretations of domination” (Love, 2014; pg 295). In summary, while we as individuals have, rooted deep within us, values that are oppressive towards other identities, we oftentimes have not actively constructed them as much as society has placed them on to us.
One of the ways this ideal perpetuates is through gender stereotypes and for one of my college courses titled “Introduction to Women’s Studies,” I was tasked with a project called “Unsettling Gender”. For this project, students were asked to perform opposite to the gender they identify with and as a straight male in today’s society, I thought of many ways that I could approach this: painted nails, makeup, skirts, dresses, and so much more. I ended up doing a combination of all, but in this photo, you can find me in a skirt. While walking all over Colgate’s campus, I found many people glaring at me. I knew it was because the way I was dressed did not conform to the standards society enacted and people were acting as oppressors similar to how love describes – but there was more to it.
From Susan Woolley’s piece “Boys Over Here, Girls Over There” I retrospectively understand that there are “practices of dividing students by biological sex or gender into binary categories” that which “limit possibilities for students’ identification and representation” (Woolley; pg. 376). The simple fact of me, a man, roaming around campus in a skirt was something that created tensions for those who witnessed it as I was breaching gender stereotypes. Similar to how bodies are surveyed by individual oppressors in Love’s piece, Woolley argues that this is due to the fact that “surveillance of bodies as binarily gendered is taught to young people from the very first days of schooling and continues throughout secondary school as differences between boys and girls become more and more accentuated” (Woolley; pg 377).
As a cisgendered male in college, I felt the forces of individual oppressors yearning for me to conform to typical gender stereotypes. However, in the end I was able to liberate myself from oppressing values like gender and racial stereotypes through experiencing the deviation from the norm first hand.
Conclusion:
School can be a wonderful place to foster healthy relationships with friends, learn about the world, and learn about yourself. Through one’s academic career, there are many opportunities to pursue new interests as well as combine passions with curiosities, and I would argue that this makes school not just good – but great. Despite society viewing good schools as places where one can achieve high academic success and acquire the tools necessary for entering into the world, it stretches far beyond the subjectivity of that process. With a process such as adequate yearly progress teaching students common surface level skills, there is no place for one to break away from the shackles of commonalities. A good school allows for students to foster traits that make them unique through pursuing topics that they never thought they would appreciate. In my head, these are traits of good schooling.
However, in reflecting on my academic career and the education I received, I continue to return back to Gloria Ladson-Billings piece, “Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education?”. Here Ladson-Billings discusses critical race theory, how it emerged, and how it surfaces the notion that “racism is normal in American society” while simultaneously critiquing “liberalism and argues that Whites have been the primary beneficiaries of civil rights legislation” (Ladson-Billings, 1998; pg 7). However, I keep returning to the idea that CRT is a challenge to the white normative histories of superiority in the education system. Furthermore, I am constantly thinking about Reva Jaffe-Walter and Stacy J. Lee’s work, “Engaging the transnational Lives of Immigrant Youth in Public Schooling: Toward a Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy for Newcomer Immigrant Youth” because of its sentiment that “by recognizing and engaging students’ transnational knowledge, experiences, and attachments, educators are engaging in culturally sustaining pedagogy that prepares students for our changing globalized world” (Jaffee-Walter and Lee, 2018; pg. 1). For educators and education systems to recognize difference and celebrate it through teaching subjects that deviate from the norms allows for students to walk into the world with eyes capable of clearly seeing, celebrating, and empathizing with people who have alternative marginalized experiences.
Now the reason I continue to return to both of these pieces is because I believe that, aside from schools being considered good based on the academic success of students as well as helping to foster places for youth to grow as human beings – school is good because it is a place to learn about the world. This may sound broad or stupid, but the reality is that it enables people to experience and hear alternative stories that contrast the subjective story they are living. More importantly and in parallel to the messages of Jaffe-Walter, Lee, and Ladson-Billings, what makes a school good is that it cultivates an environment for someone to unlearn. We grow up in a world where, in many ways, we are in a bubble. However, we can refrain from viewing life this way if we choose. With a postmodern mindset, the life we are living, the education we receive, the experiences we have, and the stories we live to tell are all truths – but they only make up a piece of the truth. School allows for someone to gain the tools to unlearn biases and constructs and enter into the world with a more empathetic and understanding approach to difference as well as the tools to comprehend that other truths exist. We choose to participate in dominant and oppressive story lines and are allowed to participate in a world that departs from them – we just have to be brave enough to try.
Word Count: 3262
Bibliography:
Leonardo, Z., & Broderick, A. (n.d.). (2011) Smartness as property: A critical exploration of intersections between whiteness and disability studies. Retrieved December 11, 2021, from https://www.academia.edu/6420322/_2011_Smartness_as_property_A_critical_exploration_of_intersections_between_whiteness_and_disability_studies
Yoon, I. H. (n.d.). Haunted trauma narratives of inclusion, race, and disability in a school community. Educational Studies, 55(4), 1. Retrieved December 11, 2021, from https://www.academia.edu/43860196/Haunted_Trauma_Narratives_of_Inclusion_Race_and_Disability_in_a_School_Community
Labaree, D. F. (2010). Someone Has to Fail : The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Menken, K., & Solorza, C. (2014). No child left bilingual: Accountability and the elimination of bilingual education programs in new york city schools. Educational Policy, 28(1), 96–125. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904812468228
Lesko, Nancy. “Feeling abstinent? Feeling comprehensive? Touching the affects of sexuality curricula.” Sex Education 10 (2010): 281 - 297.
Love, B. L. (2014). “I see trayvon martin”: What teachers can learn from the tragic death of a young black male. The Urban Review, 46(2), 292–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-013-0260-7
Woolley, Susan W.. ““Boys Over Here, Girls Over There”A Critical Literacy of Binary Gender in Schools.” (2015).
Ladson-Billings, Gloria. (1998). Just What is Critical Race Theory and What’s It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. 11. 7-24. 10.1080/095183998236863.
Jaffe-Walter, Reva, and Stacey J. Lee. “Engaging the Transnational Lives of Immigrant Youth in Public Schooling: Toward a Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy for Newcomer Immigrant Youth.” American Journal of Education, vol. 124, no. 3, 2018, pp. 257–83, https://doi.org/10.1086/697070.