Read on Twitter
Thread on why I didn't name the book or author in my most recent tweet:
Because honestly, it's not about one person, or one book. It's about the wider narrative surrounding disadvantaged children - the working class, and (especially in the US) students that are not white
It's a narrative of deficiency. One wherein we need to be fixed. One wherein we're relegated to the back behind the middle class ideals because we have nothing to give or offer and we need your pity for our poor, poor,families.
'Please help save me!' Is what you hear
'Please help save me!' Is what you hear
But that's not it. We have dreams. Our families do the best with what they can, they love us. I'm the daughter of a woman that didn't finish the 9th grade, but all of her children went to college, 4 of her 5 children have bachelors degrees, 2 of them have masters degrees
But that's not the point. we all made it college, but it was **because* my mother first told us the importance of education. When this deficit narrative comes, it offends me personally(& no doubt others) because if I had been in your classroom what would you have said about me?
What assumptions would have made? Would you have held me in such low esteem? Would you have claimed that my family didn't know the importance of education, that we didn't value manners, that my family didn't have rules or standards or common sense because we didn't have money?
And this isn't a prog vs trad thing- it's on both sides. Progressives do it and lower expectations because 'they love them' and Trads do it and they pity us.
Do not mistake me: Relationships matter, and I do care about my kids. But not because they 'need it'.
Do not mistake me: Relationships matter, and I do care about my kids. But not because they 'need it'.
It's because I know what their futures can hold. Because I want them to have control in deciding their future, because where you come from or what you look like should not a determining factor in the trajectory of your future.Because when I see them in their seats I see myself
Poverty comes with its own issues, but dont conflate it with lack of love, or lack of dreams, or lack of hopes.
We don't need your pitiful paternalistic love.
We need you to teach and support us- like our families first did.
We don't need your pitiful paternalistic love.
We need you to teach and support us- like our families first did.
