It seems to me that many Independent Schools do, in fact wish to engage in
this issue but may be hamstrung by old models of "helping." In the case of
enormous economic disparities, and the inescapable fact that many of us
teach in privileged schools, there's plenty of guilt for us to deal with.
Guilt can be immobilizing, and lead to arms-length, intellectualized
responses.
Where we can gain traction, in my view, is to adopt more of a stance based
on solidarity. The SEED diversity program that some schools use is a useful
means of engaging faculty and staff in discussion and action plans
surrounding social and economic injustice.
It takes fairly mature thinking (I'm thinking of Kohlberg's levels of moral
development) for students to engage in discussions of justice and fairness
without assuming undue guilt, misassignment of blame, and so on.
s
-----
Steve Taffee | Director of Strategic Projects
Castilleja School | staffee@castilleja.org
1310 Bryant Street | www.castilleja.org
Palo Alto, CA 94301 | taffee.edublogs.org
650.924.1040 (Google Voice)
Women Learning, Women Leading
<http://twitter.com/sjtaffee> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetaffee>
You don't *really* need to print this do you?
On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Fred Bartels <fredbartels@gmail.com> wrote:
> Peter,
>
> Perhaps you are right about understating the problem.
>
> Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston shared some depressing (sorry)
> information on his blog today.
>
> http://tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8AGMUZ?OpenDocument
>
> So here is a question. How do we help the independent school leadership
> community stand up and show leadership and responsibility on this issue? I
> suspect many want to but don't know how.
>
> Fred
>
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Peter Gow <pgow@bcdschool.org> wrote:
>
> > Huge harm, I'd say, and I fear this interview even understates it.
> >
> > There are days when it feels like living in the last century or so of the
> > Roman empire; maybe that's just gray October talking, with some very
> > strange
> > political doings afoot, but those who make economic forecasts don't seem
> to
> > be talking about a return to rosier days while at the same time the
> biggest
> > money seems to be getting, if anything, a bit bigger as the rest of the
> > world looks for ways to tighten its collective belt.
> >
> > And we're all educatin' as fast and hard as we can, with every school
> > website awash in words like leadership and responsibility. Hope there's
> > really enough substance behind those words to offer some real hope of
> real
> > change before the lights start growing dim.
> >
> > Back to proofreading letters of recommendation. I promise to take a deep
> > breath and find something to laugh about before the day is through; being
> > around kids tends to help in that regard.
> >
> > Cheers--Peter Gow
> >
> >
>
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