Letters

The New Jerry Lewis

I just read your article on Logan Smalley (winter 2008). Thank you for putting the spotlight on this humble gentleman. I have the privilege of knowing Logan. In fact, he will be the speaker at my son’s graduation from the Jackson Hole Community School this May. What I hope my son learns from people like Logan is that the most important thing we can do in life is to be of service to others and to make life fun, one day at a time. Logan does that. He also is the new Jerry Lewis, bringing awareness of this tragic, fatal disease. I am proud to be his friend.
Sophie Craighead

Kudos to Kira

This woman is the type of individual we need in our schools — committed ones! God Bless Ms. Orange-Jones (winter 2008).
Rod Hudson

Proper nouns that end with the letter s in the possessive have an apostrophe s. This statement, “Orange-Jones’ goal is straightforward. She wants them to take on more responsibility for the quality of public education in New Orleans,” should be: “Orange-Jones’s goal is straightforward. She wants them to take on more responsibility for the quality of public education in New Orleans.”
John Williams

Editor’s note: There is much debate about how to properly punctuate a possessive noun that ends with the letter s. Ed. magazine follows The Associated Press Stylebook, which uses only an apostrophe (with one exception: St. James’s Palace).

More Talk?

It was like a breath of fresh air to read the article “Can We Talk?” (fall 2007). This should be required reading in graduate schools of education, as well as inside every functional, working classroom from seventh grade on. In fact, I suggest it be expanded into a longer work to guide those less facile in talking about race. Last Tuesday night, in the graduate education course I teach at City College (CUNY), an article that I passed around was deemed “too white.” What followed was a spirited discussion on how decisions on what materials to use in the classrooms were made. Turns out, not only is it necessary for urban teachers to consider the educational and interest value of outside resources, we have to check its race pulse. I admit this was a new one on me.
Maggie Hill

As a former Ed School student, I remember many students and faculty felt awkward discussing issues of race while having a faculty and student body that lacked significant representation of our country’s diversity. However, I appreciate those that still chose to face the issue. Ironically, I felt more hesitant to speak up in class even when I saw my professors and classmates willing to have an honest productive conversation about race, its role in education, and its impact on society. My hesitation, I believe, came from a period of depression that I faced while at Harvard. During the first weeks, I came to realize that there were very few domestic Latino male students and hardly any Latino professors. This was a shock after coming from an undergraduate institution, UC Riverside, with a 23 percent Chicano/ Latino enrollment and a high school that was more than 70 percent Chicano/Latino.

I am now back at UC Riverside and recently our Graduate School of Education had to confront the question of whether universities and colleges are truly committed to achieving a racially and ethnically diverse faculty and student body beyond political lip service and wishful thinking. UC Riverside has been profiled for achieving racial and economic diversity during an anti-affirmative action era and for being a campus of choice for minority students, some of whom turn down invitations to attend UC Berkeley and UCLA. However, even this campus faces difficult issues with racial diversity. On campus, several students, faculty, staff, and alumni held a press conference alleging that UCR’s Graduate School of Education practices institutional racism for not doing enough to recruit and maintain a diverse faculty. Later that week, students expressed disdain about a Greek fraternity party called “Lean Like a Chola” where students dressed in costumes depicting stereotypes of Latinas.

My question is: What is the role of our white peers, faculty, and staff members? Can we as minority students expect members of the white community to be supportive and to actively organize educational forums and projects to educate their own community about racism and their role in it and their ability to make a difference? Or do we accept complacency and denialism from our white counterparts? The onus is not just on minorities nor just on white people; it is on all of us to see each other as members of the same community. We need leaders for this movement, especially from the ranks of deans, chancellors, and presidents of our national universities. This may prevent episodes like the one described in the last issue, which I am sure occur across the country every year. Perhaps then, we will see more productive discussions about race in the classrooms and a change in society.
Cesar Oyervides-Cisneros, Ed.M.'07

The article “Can We Talk?” calmed my nerves because I had a very similar experience when I was in college at Claremont College. I am a white middleclass female from San Diego. In college, I took a course about Chicano/Latino education. I wanted to pursue my interest in education, and I thought it would be a valuable experience. I enjoyed most of the semester, but my enjoyment ended near the end when we were required to complete a research project of our choice with a partner. My partner and I created a survey that we passed out to students in the dining halls. We shared the results with the class. We asked for feedback on any ways that we might improve the study before making our results public. I expected some criticism, but what I got was much more. They were appalled at my attempt to support racism — something which I did not know that I was doing. For example, many of the questions in our survey asked about being “white or nonwhite.” The students told us that saying “nonwhite” only succeeds in centralizing whiteness in society. I recall my professor sitting quietly to let the class have a discussion. Why hadn’t my professor said anything to me? Why did the students think that they needed to speak so harshly to me? It felt like they had no faith that I would be able to understand that I had been wrong.
Jessica Rodgers

Thank you for writing the amazingly interesting article “Can We Talk?” As a graduating senior at Johns Hopkins University and a prospective Ed School student, I often find myself bringing race to the forefront of many class discussions, even when other students can’t see how race relates; they are the ones who think that race is invisible. While I agree that we need to devise better ways to talk about race, I don’t think that the main subjects, those who are being attacked during the discussion, are exempt from doing “something.” One reason I have been able to eliminate a great deal of the animosity that students have about my many sociological assertions is that I have managed, and learned over time, as a black male student, to articulate my point from both sides of the bench. I am sure Professor Elmore’s first class would have been more successful had Jessica, the Latina girl in your article, asked, “Alice, why don’t you think these issues are as racially based as they are made out to be? How do you think your own experiences have led you to believe such an idea?” Again, by doing this, students can prohibit discussions about race from getting “heated,” thus allowing students from all ethnicities to participate in the discussion.
Candido Brown

Depth Perception

I enjoy getting Ed. magazine periodically. However, I offer a suggestion for your consideration. Instead of the skimming of the surface approach, I urge you to think about using fewer articles that go into depth on a particular subject. Other topics could still be treated quickly and then refer the reader to a website for further information.
Bob Morrison, Ed.M.'57