WEEK # 11
From our text, Race, Class, and Gender, we read Unit III D: The Structure of Social Institutions; Education: Historical Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation, and the Need for New Integration Strategies; “I Hate It When People Treat Me Like a Fxxx-up”: Phony Theories, Segregated Schools, and the Culture of Aspiration among African American and Latino Teenagers; Across the Great Divide: Crossing Classes and Clashing Cultures; and How a Scholarship Girl Becomes a Soldier: The Militarization of Latina/o Youth in Chicago Public Schools. In addition, we read three essays by Mr. Al Condeluci Ph.D., The Critical Nature of Social Capital; Community and Social Capital; and The Process of Culture Shifting. The first four readings from the text show how education is an institution in crisis. Perpetuating and deepening the inequalities of race,
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I returned to higher education as a non-traditional student. My wife and I were reasonably educated and enjoyed a healthy marriage. When I returned to school to complete my bachelor’s degree things changed. I was “jazzed” with the reading, writing and critical thinking. The sharing of ideas and discussions that helped me explore the experiences that had formed who I had become.
My wife and I had what could be outwardly viewed as successful middle class white collar careers. I as a uniform wearing union member and she as a licensed professional. We however had become firmly rooted in the blue collar, working class culture. As the author suggests, “(a) here and now sensibility, in activities and worldview.” We had become the working class, blue collar family that rarely (if ever) explored opposing world view except with the occasional “Jib Jab” head nods of pretend understanding. I was deep within the authors defined “crossover” experience, the existential