TimWise

This week I would like to reflect on the “Dear White America” speech from Tim Wise. His speech last semester here at Tech opened my eyes to many different perspectives of the issue with the current regulations in higher education institutes. Reading the inclusive pedagogy articles: from safe spaces to brave spaces, identity and intellectual performance, and reducing the stereo type threats I cannot say that I disagree with their presented methods. However I am not sure if they are sufficient to address some of our current issues… Yes, changes in the educational system/exams/etc. can help, but this will not impact what students learn outside of school from the community that they are in contact with. We cannot neglect the fact that the interaction of students with each other is a major part of this equation… If a student does not feel comfortable in a classroom setting because of gender, race, or other categorization issues, restructuring the exams or the educational system will definitely have an impact on the performance of such students. However how are we moderating the interaction of the students with each other? How are we making sure that they are understanding of each other?  I think that it is very important to educate the teachers with the background and history of the ethnic minorities that they will be mentoring. I believe that this should be a requirement for all teachers and professors which will help them understand how some of these issues are impacting the society and how they can be best conveyed to students. Most probably I will be teaching a course in my last year of PhD here at Tech and I think that it is necessary to have a discussion with my students to open their eyes to some of these problems. As most people (alike myself) may think that this problem does not relate to them and since this problem may not be near and dear to the hearts of people who have not experienced it, they are less likely to learn more about it or work their way to finding some potential solutions to these problems.

One way to implement this change in higher education is to offer one mandatory course for all majors which discusses the background, culture, and history of various ethnic minorities and how the future of the nation depends on equal rights and opportunities for all current minorities which might be the majority of the population of the United States in the future (here’s an additional resource). Students enlightened with the true history of various ethnicities are more likely to perform better in their courses and therefore are more likely to perform better when they work in today’s global environment. Our graduates are the future generation of the CEOs, employees, teachers, professors, policeman, and policy makers. Although I think that this problem needs to be fixed from much higher place in the hierarchy of regulations. We in higher education can also impact this problem in many ways by understanding that our population blend will look very different in the future and that we need to find better ways of understanding and serving the minorities by both training our teachers and students…