‘In Your Life Forever’
If we end up showing politicians and policy makers precisely how to address the “problems” existent in urban education and public schools – and no one allows us the resources to do so – things will get very, very ugly, very, very quickly. Not a threat by any means. Simply the truth as I perceive it.
I also can’t help but notice that when the interviewer begins speaking about what “a group of socially conscious Asian American film festival organizers” have crtiqued about Jeff’s work, his body language seems to (ever so slightly – to me at least) imply that he is ready to go on the defensive…and I do not blame him for a single second. It is not beyond my scope by any means, that a large number of Asian Americans (myself inculded today) have found relative comfort within (assimilated?) middle-class American identity. I would argue that what this means is that in order to not become/remain what Paulo Freire termed the “sub-oppressor,” we must actively, humbly, humanly, imperfectly work to (as an eloquent wordsmith once put it) “chiggity check y/ourself before I/we wreck y/ourself.”
With safety comes complacency, conformity, cowardice, and even worse, indifference to the suffering of others. It hits me dead in the heart when Jeff speaks about the ways in which the young people he loves and serves actually do more to educate him and assist him in his own growth and healing than he does for them. Earlier today, I quite literally reminded a young sister I have been working with for the past year that, “I will have your back for the rest of your life and I am honored to work with and learn from you.”
Love and education are similar in that the more you give, the more you receive.
In Your Life Forever (should you require it),
C
Posted on June 2, 2011, in dem(hyp)ocracy, Doin' it Movin', MIS/EDUCATION, Read a Bucking Fook, S/HEROES, YAY AREA and tagged critical pedagogy, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Urban Education. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
We need more allies working in the public policy sector to produce research regarding what the community needs; or else those who are currently policy makers will continue to skew data for their own interest.