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Puerto Ricans Are Not Taking It Any More
By Albor Ruiz, Al Día
Message to all those self-righteous individuals in Puerto Rico who made a show of being scandalized by the stones thrown...
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Why Colleges Don’t Hire More Faculty Of Color
It’s time for higher ed to change its ways
by Marybeth Gasman. The Hechinger Report
“The reason we don’t have more faculty of color among college faculty is that we don’t want them. We simply don’t want them.”
While giving a talk about Minority Serving Institutions at a recent higher education forum, I was asked a question pertaining to the lack of faculty of color at many majority institutions, especially more elite institutions.
My response was frank: “The reason we don’t have more faculty of color among college faculty is that we don’t want them. We simply don’t want them.” Those in the audience were surprised by my candor and gave me a round of applause for the honesty.
Given the short amount of time I had on the stage, I couldn’t explain the evidence behind my statement. I will do so here. I have been a faculty member since 2000, working at several research universities. In addition, I give talks, conduct research and workshops and do consulting related to diversifying the faculty across the nation. I have learned a lot about faculty recruitment over 16 years and as a result of visiting many colleges and universities.
First, the word ‘quality’ is used to dismiss people of color who are otherwise competitive for faculty positions. Even those people on search committees that appear to be dedicated to access and equity will point to ‘quality’ or lack of ‘quality’ as a reason for not hiring a person of color.
“The reason we don’t have more faculty of color among college faculty is that we don’t want them. We simply don’t want them.”
Typically, ‘quality’ means that the person didn’t go to an elite institution for their Ph.D. or wasn’t mentored by a prominent person in the field. What people forget is that attending the elite institutions and being mentored by prominent people is linked to social capital and systemic racism ensures that people of color have less of it.
Second, the most common excuse I hear is ‘there aren’t enough people of color in the faculty pipeline.’ It is accurate that there are fewer people of color in some disciplines such as engineering or physics. However, there are great numbers of Ph.D.’s of color in the humanities and education and we still don’t have great diversity on these faculties. When I hear someone say people of color aren’t in the pipeline, I respond with ‘Why don’t you create the pipeline?’ ‘Why don’t you grow your own?’ Since faculty members are resistant to hiring their own graduates, why not team up with several other institutions that are ‘deemed to be of high quality’ and bring in more Ph.D.s of color from those institutions? If you are in a field with few people of color in the pipeline, why are you working so hard to ‘weed’ them out of undergraduate and Ph.D. programs? Why not encourage, mentor, and support more people of color in your field?
Third, I have learned that faculty will bend rules, knock down walls, and build bridges to hire those they really want (often white colleagues) but when it comes to hiring faculty of color, they have to ‘play by the rules’ and get angry when any exceptions are made. Let me tell you a secret - exceptions are made for white people constantly in the academy; exceptions are the rule in academe.
Fourth, faculty search committees are part of the problem. They are not trained in recruitment, are rarely diverse in makeup, and are often more interested in hiring people just like them rather than expanding the diversity of their department. They reach out to those they know for recommendations and rely on ads in national publications. And, even when they do received a diverse group of applicants, often those applicants ‘aren’t the right fit’ for the institution. What is the ‘right fit’? Someone just like you?
Fifth, if majority colleges and universities are truly serious about increasing faculty diversity, why don’t they visit Minority Serving Institutions - institutions with great student and faculty diversity - and ask them how they recruit a diverse faculty. This isn’t hard. The answers are right in front of us. We need the will.
For those reading this essay, you might be wondering why faculty diversity is important. Your wondering is yet another reason why we don’t have a more diverse faculty. Having a diverse faculty - in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion - adds greatly to the experiences of students in the classroom. It challenges them - given that they are likely not to have had diversity in their K-12 classroom teachers - to think differently about who produces knowledge. It also challenges them to move away from a ‘white-centered’ approach to one that is inclusive of many different voices and perspectives.
Having a diverse faculty strengthens the faculty and the institution as there is more richness in the curriculum and in conversations taking place on committees and in faculty meetings. A diverse faculty also holds the university accountable in ways that uplift people of color and center issues that are important to the large and growing communities of color across the nation.
Although I have always thought it vital that our faculty be representative of the nation’s diversity, we are getting to a point in higher education where increasing faculty diversity is an absolute necessity and crucial to the future of our nation. In 2014, for the first time, the nation’s K-12 student population was majority minority. These students are on their way into colleges and universities and we are not prepared for them. Our current faculty lacks expertise in working with students of color and our resistance to diversifying the faculty means that we are not going to be ready any time soon.
I’ll close by asking you to think deeply about your role in recruiting and hiring faculty. How often do you use the word ‘quality’ when talking about increased diversity? Why do you use it? How often do you point to the lack of people of color in the faculty pipeline while doing nothing about the problem?
How many books, articles, or training sessions have you attended on how to recruit faculty of color?
How many times have you reached out to departments with great diversity in your field and asked them how they attract and retain a diverse faculty?
How often do you resist when someone asks you to bend the rules for faculty of color hires but think it’s absolutely necessary when considering a white candidate (you know, so you don’t lose such a wonderful candidate)?
Rather than getting angry at me for pointing out a problem that most of us are aware of, why don’t you change your ways and do something to diversify your department or institution’s faculty? I bet you don’t, but I sure hope you do.
Marybeth Gasman is a professor of higher education in the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions.
Your Editor Requests: Please tell us about diversity efforts you know of.
Texas Textbook Says Some Mexican Americans ‘Wanted to Destroy’ U.S. Society
After years of asking the Texas State Board of Education to give more space to Latino communities in its textbooks, scholars and activists have gotten their wish.
The result, however, is far from what they envisioned.
The board approved the inclusion of Mexican American studies textbooks in state curricula last year. Now, for the first time, according to the Associated Press, a book centered on Mexican Americans has appeared on the proposed list of textbooks for the 2017-2018 academic session.
But the text, called “Mexican American Heritage,” has been the subject of controversy since the Texas Observer originally cited excerpts from the online sample earlier this month.
Texas textbooks have long attracted scrutiny, particularly in regards to their handling of racial and religious issues. (One history book characterized slaves as immigrant “workers.”)
These incidents have prompted national concern because of the state’s outsize textbook market, which can influence textbook offerings across the country.
“Mexican American Heritage” is the latest prospective instructional text to incite outcry.
Latino scholars and activists say that far from being an accurate representation of Mexican Americans’ place in the nation, the book offers a distorted and, at points, offensive history of Mexico and Mexican American immigrants.
“Paradoxically, we pressed for the board to include texts on Mexican American studies, and we achieved it, but not in the way we were expecting,” Tony Diaz, a Houston radio host and Director of Intercultural Initiatives at Lone Star College-North Harris, told the Houston Chronicle. “Instead of a text that is respectful of the Mexican American history, we have a book poorly written, racist, and prepared by non-experts.”
The contentious elements of the text begin at its cover, which features a photograph of a man wearing a colorful headdress. As the Huffington Post pointed out, a web search reveals that the image, available for public use under a “Creative Commons” license, depicts an “Aztec Dance Look.” The indigenous dance is popular in Mexico, but is a misleading portrait of Mexican Americans, critics said.
Scholars also took issue with the book’s description of the Chicano movement, which fought for Mexican American empowerment in the 1960s. According to “Mexican American Heritage,” “Chicanos…adopted a revolutionary narrative that opposed Western civilization and wanted to destroy this society.”
The terms “Chicano” and “Mexican American” are often used interchangeably, but the book clarifies on an earlier page that its usage refers to journalist Ruben Salazar‘s definition: “a Mexican American with a non-Anglo image of himself.”
In other instances, the book links Mexican Americans to illegal immigration, and in turn to the illegal drug trade. Mexican pride is associated with creating divisions in society:
College youth attempted to force their campuses to provide indigenismo-oriented curriculum, Spanish-speaking faculty and scholarships for poor and illegal students…During the Cold War, as the United States fought Communism worldwide, these kinds of separatist and supremacy doctrines were concerning. While solidarity with one’s heritage was understood, Mexican pride at the expense of American culture did not seem productive.
While some parts of the text speak of Latin American immigrants as a homogeneous entity, others distinguish Mexican Americans as culturally separate.
“Cubans seemed to fit into Miami well, for example, and find their niche in the business community,” the book’s authors, Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle, write. “Mexicans, on the other hand, seemed more ambivalent about assimilating into the American system and accepting American values…The concern that many Mexican-Americans feel disconnected from American cultures and values is still present.”
Angle’s LinkedIn page lists her as a “Subject Matter Expert” at Momentum Learning, the book’s publisher. The AP reported that the company is owned by Cynthia Dunbar, a former member of the Texas State Board of Education, well-known right-wing activist and author of the book “One Nation Under God: How the Left is Trying to Erase What Made Us Great.”
In the book, Dunbar calls the public education system “tyrannical.”
Dunbar has not commented on the backlash against “Mexican American Heritage.”
Douglas Torres-Edwards, who coordinated a Mexican American Studies course approved by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), told the Chronicle that he won’t be recommending the textbook.
“Frankly, that author is not recognized as someone who is part of the Mexican-American studies scholarship and most individuals engaged in scholarship will not recognize her as an author,” Torres-Edwards said.
While any author can submit their book for curriculum approval, local educators told the Chronicle that they were not aware of a call for submissions on Mexican American studies texts.
Nicolas Kanellos, a University Houston professor who directs America’s largest publisher of contemporary literature by U.S. Hispanic authors, said “Mexican American Heritage” “appears to be blatant opportunism from certain people to make money and/or to water down the real Mexican American history.”
The TEA followed standard procedure when calling for instructional material submissions this year, spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson told the AP.
She added that Texans can submit comments about the proposed books until September, at which point a committee of teachers and administrators will review them and make recommendations to the state board of education.
Books that end up on the board’s recommended materials list need not be taught in schools, and some schools have already been using books that did not undergo the board approval process. One such text is F. Arturo Rosales’s “Chicano: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement.”
Can We Liberate Our Kids From Traditional Schooling? 2
By Mac Bogert
The last thing dedicated teachers want to think is that they’re fulfilling all the duties of a babysitter and not much else, says educator Mac Bogert.
“I’m often reminded of Mark Twain’s quote: ‘I never let my schooling interfere with my education,’ ” Bogert says. “Learning is among the most exciting and enjoyable experiences we have in life, yet many students and teachers herded into our school systems view school as something to be endured, as if the school day is one long detention.”
Recent findings illustrate the problem. In 2015, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed a decline in math comprehension from fourth- and eighth-graders for the first time since 1990.
“If you want to know how effective schools are, ask a teenager,” Bogert says. “Why do smart kids who enjoy reading and learning find school boring? We don’t need to make people learn, we need to free them to learn.”
Bogert, author of “Learning Chaos: How Disorder Can Save Education,” (www.learningchaos.net), and president of AZA Learning, which encourages an open-learning process for all participants, says our educational system is outdated. He proposes new methods parents can use to resurrect a love of learning from their kids.
- Ban rote learning. When preparing to teach within a traditional framework, we aren’t stimulating a child’s curiosity. Rather, we’re serving the framework of control. This sort of top-down, listen-without-interrupting teaching is limiting and alienates many types of learning personalities. Instead, foster engagement, which means an open environment where kids feel free to participate.
- Encourage children to sound off. Ever see an interesting news discussion on television? If no one is saying what you want to say, you can become frustrated to the point of turning off the conversation. Students who are shy or otherwise discouraged from engaging can shut down in a similar way. But when they’re included and encouraged to participate in a lesson, their minds stay focused. They feel they have a stake in the lesson.
- Take a cue from the Internet. We’re not starved for information; we’re starved for stories, which have lessons embedded within them. Simply sharing a story invites learning. That’s why you should allow a child’s narrative of inquiry to be more democratic than controlled. Allow him or her to pursue a line of thought wherever it may go, rather than controlled, assigned resources.
Ideally, your child will be a participant within a hotbed of ideas, rather than a passive listener in an intellectually sterile environment. That may not always be possible at school, but this kind of encouragement at home will help them later in life.”
About the author
Mac Boert founded AZA Learning to encourage teachers and students to become equal partners in the learning process, which he details in his book “Learning Chaos: How Disorder Can Save Education,”
How brave are our educators?
