Concepts within Educational Inequality

Christina Trovato
Week 3 - Chapter 2
Vocabulary/ Concept Vitalizer and Idea Illustrator

Tracking: 

It has become increasingly clear that tracking is not simply a neutral practice to make teaching more efficient or student learning more likely (Nieto pp.56, 2010).

The issue of ability tracking has been a contentious one in recent years due to research showing that minorities are disproportionately represented in the lower tracks. Because these lower tracks have been shown to lead to lower achievement in later years, it is apparent that the tracking system perpetuates the inequities of race, gender, and SES in our society. (http://mste.illinois.edu/hill/papers/tracking.html)

Tracking is the most commonly used term for ability grouping, the practice of lumping children together according to their talents in the classroom. On the elementary level, the divisions sound harmless enough: Kids are divided into the Bluebirds and Redbirds. But in the secondary schools, the stratification becomes more obvious—some say insidious—as students assume their places in the tracking system.Opponents of tracking trace the practice to the turn of the century when most children attending public schools were from upper-middle-class families, but large numbers of black and working-class students were starting to enter the schools as the result of compulsory schooling laws and rising immigration. Tracking quickly took on the appearance of internal segregation. Today, though the world outside schools has changed, the tracking system remains much the same.  (http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/tracking/)

Deculturalization

Assimilation can result in what Felix Boateng (1990) calls deculturalization, a process by which individuals are forcibly deprived of their culture (Nieto pp.64, 2010).

The methods of Deculturalization are:

• segregation and isolation

• forced change of language

• curriculum reflecting the culture of the dominant group

• textbook content reflecting the culture of the dominant group

• exclusion of the dominated groups’ language and culture from curriculum and textbooks

• a teaching force made up of members of the dominant group    (http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/education/spring/spring03dse/chap05concepts.html)

Monoculture:
"They won't except you if you're not like them. They want to monoculture [you]," she said (Nieto pp. 67, 2010).

Monoculture describes systems that have very low diversity. The term is applied in several fields.
(http://www.metaglossary.com/meanings/488879/)

 Degradation: 

  The degradation of native languages has repercussions in the school setting, and it can be invalidating both for students' self- concept and learning (Nieto pp. 66, 2010). 

• the act of changing something into something different in essential characteristics

• an act that makes people primitive and uncivilized

• an act that makes people cruel or lacking normal human qualities

•  depriving one of self-esteem

• an act that debases or corrupts 

(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/degradation)

 Resistance:

 Another reaction to inequality is what has been called resistance. According to this theory, students resist schooling in sundry ways, vandalism, breaking school rules , and, in what is of interest in the present discussion , refusing to learn (Nieto pp. 73, 2010)

To strive to fend off or offset the actions, effects, or force of.
To remain firm against the actions, effects, or force of; withstand: a bacterium that resisted the antibiotic.
To keep from giving in to or enjoying.
(http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/resist)

Awesome Videos I Found regarding Inequality in the classroom: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGYd37xuefk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhXQDQZdKq4&feature=related

Below is a map I made visualizing many of the down fall bi cultural students face every day in school