Are you where you are today “because of” or “in spite of” your ethnic background? A mix of both?
Stanford University released a study by Thomas S. Dee, Sade Bonilla, and Emily K. Penner that suggests “because of” can be a significant driver of success under certain educational curricula, specifically, a ninth-grade ethnic studies course. * Not a haphazardly thrown-together course, the ethnic studies class was planned carefully in a collaboration between university and high school teachers. The students who took the class had higher rates of graduation and better success in their high school classes, and a higher percentage of them went on to enroll in college. Sounds like a success story based on “because of” since the course was designed to incorporate ethnic information germane to the lives of the students, supposedly taught by staff in a sensitive and tactful manner that allowed debate without contentious ideological biases or condemnations.
So, having read that, I reminisced about my own ninth-grade history class, except I could not remember it. Instead, I recalled my eighth-grade history class. The teacher—I’m not good at names—was a middle-age woman who spent most of, if not all of, the classes facing the board on which she daily copied her notes in a neat and level handwriting. Having used chalk on a chalkboard, I can say that her writing in horizontal lines was a task beyond my abilities. Invariably, my writing slanted upward to the right as I wrote—but that’s a matter for another blog. Anyway, I recall the class of usually jumpy eighth-graders as being quiet, all the heads bouncing up and down as though we watched a vertical tennis match, our bobbing going from looking at the board to looking at our notebooks on which we wrote exactly what she wrote in chalk. And from that class I developed a love of ancient history, having learned about the following ethnic groups: The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. And since the Romans were by composition largely a multicultural group—what with all the imported slaves, the remnant Etruscans and Greeks, and the eventual inclusion of Lombards, Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, and other invaders and migrants—hold that thought…
“No Italians?” you ask. Where was the ethnic group from which your immediate family derived, a group you can trace to the eighteenth century and one that ranges from the middle to northern Apennines?
No, not really. There was some note-taking about the Renaissance, about Galileo and DaVinci, but not much that I can remember. I wish I could find those notes to see what I learned about my own ethnicity. I don’t think I learned much. And then, having gone to a “German” high school in the neighboring state, I had even less “formal” instruction on my own ethnicity. The languages taught there? Latin and German. How in the world did I become what I became? Where was the encouragement based on my heritage? My immigrant grandparents spoke a flawless western Pennsylvanian dialect, my parents and their siblings, also. The only hint of an Italian dialect I heard was from the little old priest in the neighborhood, Father Albanese.
Maybe the times have changed beyond my comprehension. I grew up thinking my ethnicity was “American.” I grew up with historical knowledge of the cultures that had made the “melting pot” of my youth, and for whatever reason and in spite of an insidious bias that kept “Italians” from joining the local country club, I thought of all my contemporaries as “Americans.” I thought of my dad and uncles who volunteered to serve in WWII. Such is the naïveté of youth. My eighth-grade history teacher of forgotten name and face—hard to remember a face when all I ever saw was the back of her head—had made me intellectually a “citizen of the world” and culturally a citizen of America.
That’s not the whole truth, of course. She made me a citizen of the Western World and its Mesopotamian origins. I learned little about Native Americans save the Aztecs, Incas, and Maya in the following year. I felt a tie to histories not my “own,” and not to a single history. Essentially, my eighth-grade history teacher set me to thinking as a “Greek,” to learning about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and to appreciating writers like Homer, Vergil, and Cicero. She opened me up to appreciating the Hall of Architecture at the Carnegie Museum, and also to its Egyptian collection of sarcophagi and those mysterious markings called hieroglyphs.
So, I think I might have become what I am today “in spite of” my lack of ethnic studies. But I can’t ignore that those on the other side of the country, the students of San Francisco, profited from a course that incorporated their ethnic histories. I suppose that I might have benefitted from a little “Well, if-your-ancestors-could-do-it, then you could, too.” Encouragement mixed in with knowledge is mostly a good thing—depending, of course, on the knowledge imparted. I believe that if I had a Native American heritage, I might have profited from tales of pre-Columbian civilization. Certainly, there was greatness in the cultures of the Mound-builders, the Pueblo, and in other ethnic groups. Certainly, I would have found ethnic pride if my teacher noted the positive traits of my ancestry.
But would it have made a difference? Yes, the kids who took the ethnic studies class in San Francisco did better than their classmates not enrolled in the class, but what of those outside the general assessment? To say that one group had a graduation rate of 90% vs the other group’s 75% doesn’t acknowledge the successes of individuals in the 75%. Were there not successes “in spite of”? Let’s make it personal: Are you one who succeeded “in spite of”?
The complexity of our personal histories makes “because of” and “in spite of” a Gordian knot. We can engage in historical introspection in an attempt to untwist the intertwined influences of encouragement and indifference to find the roots of our present. But to what end? Will indifference we met along the path of learning stand as a greater influence on who we are than the encouragement we garnered? Encouragement is the “because of,” whereas indifference is the “in spite of” in our personal histories.
Of course, encouragement is a good thing. Applause enhances performance. There’s even the effect of a cheering crowd on a weightlifter, a home team, a runner. I think of the kids’ animated show Dora, the Explorer and what one of my granddaughters said on a trip to the park. She climbed onto the monkey bars. Pretending that she had scaled a Mt. Everest, I said, “Oh my! You’re taller than the sky. I don’t know if I can get up there.” A fan of Dora, she echoed the key line repeated in that show. “Come on PapPap, you can do it. Yes, you can.” With that encouragement, I ascended the monkey bars. And she exclaimed, “I knew you could!”
Did I need such encouragement in eighth or ninth grade? Could I have been more than what I am if I had been encouraged to do more on the basis of my ethnic heritage that included Galileo, DaVinci, all those great artists. architects, writers, philosophers, and people like Marconi and Fermi? Maybe. But then there’s something to be said for succeeding “in spite of.”
*Stanford University. 6 Sept 2021. Ninth-grade ethnic studies helped students for years, researchers find. Phys.org. Online at https://phys.org/news/2021-09-ethnic-student-engagement-high-school.html Accessed September 7, 2021. See also: San Francisco State University. 23 Dec 2020. Ethnic studies curriculum tied to increased graduation, retention rates, study finds. Phys.org. Online at https://phys.org/news/2020-12-ethnic-curriculum-tied-retention.html Accessed September 7, 2021.
Stanford University released a study by Thomas S. Dee, Sade Bonilla, and Emily K. Penner that suggests “because of” can be a significant driver of success under certain educational curricula, specifically, a ninth-grade ethnic studies course. * Not a haphazardly thrown-together course, the ethnic studies class was planned carefully in a collaboration between university and high school teachers. The students who took the class had higher rates of graduation and better success in their high school classes, and a higher percentage of them went on to enroll in college. Sounds like a success story based on “because of” since the course was designed to incorporate ethnic information germane to the lives of the students, supposedly taught by staff in a sensitive and tactful manner that allowed debate without contentious ideological biases or condemnations.
So, having read that, I reminisced about my own ninth-grade history class, except I could not remember it. Instead, I recalled my eighth-grade history class. The teacher—I’m not good at names—was a middle-age woman who spent most of, if not all of, the classes facing the board on which she daily copied her notes in a neat and level handwriting. Having used chalk on a chalkboard, I can say that her writing in horizontal lines was a task beyond my abilities. Invariably, my writing slanted upward to the right as I wrote—but that’s a matter for another blog. Anyway, I recall the class of usually jumpy eighth-graders as being quiet, all the heads bouncing up and down as though we watched a vertical tennis match, our bobbing going from looking at the board to looking at our notebooks on which we wrote exactly what she wrote in chalk. And from that class I developed a love of ancient history, having learned about the following ethnic groups: The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. And since the Romans were by composition largely a multicultural group—what with all the imported slaves, the remnant Etruscans and Greeks, and the eventual inclusion of Lombards, Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, and other invaders and migrants—hold that thought…
“No Italians?” you ask. Where was the ethnic group from which your immediate family derived, a group you can trace to the eighteenth century and one that ranges from the middle to northern Apennines?
No, not really. There was some note-taking about the Renaissance, about Galileo and DaVinci, but not much that I can remember. I wish I could find those notes to see what I learned about my own ethnicity. I don’t think I learned much. And then, having gone to a “German” high school in the neighboring state, I had even less “formal” instruction on my own ethnicity. The languages taught there? Latin and German. How in the world did I become what I became? Where was the encouragement based on my heritage? My immigrant grandparents spoke a flawless western Pennsylvanian dialect, my parents and their siblings, also. The only hint of an Italian dialect I heard was from the little old priest in the neighborhood, Father Albanese.
Maybe the times have changed beyond my comprehension. I grew up thinking my ethnicity was “American.” I grew up with historical knowledge of the cultures that had made the “melting pot” of my youth, and for whatever reason and in spite of an insidious bias that kept “Italians” from joining the local country club, I thought of all my contemporaries as “Americans.” I thought of my dad and uncles who volunteered to serve in WWII. Such is the naïveté of youth. My eighth-grade history teacher of forgotten name and face—hard to remember a face when all I ever saw was the back of her head—had made me intellectually a “citizen of the world” and culturally a citizen of America.
That’s not the whole truth, of course. She made me a citizen of the Western World and its Mesopotamian origins. I learned little about Native Americans save the Aztecs, Incas, and Maya in the following year. I felt a tie to histories not my “own,” and not to a single history. Essentially, my eighth-grade history teacher set me to thinking as a “Greek,” to learning about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and to appreciating writers like Homer, Vergil, and Cicero. She opened me up to appreciating the Hall of Architecture at the Carnegie Museum, and also to its Egyptian collection of sarcophagi and those mysterious markings called hieroglyphs.
So, I think I might have become what I am today “in spite of” my lack of ethnic studies. But I can’t ignore that those on the other side of the country, the students of San Francisco, profited from a course that incorporated their ethnic histories. I suppose that I might have benefitted from a little “Well, if-your-ancestors-could-do-it, then you could, too.” Encouragement mixed in with knowledge is mostly a good thing—depending, of course, on the knowledge imparted. I believe that if I had a Native American heritage, I might have profited from tales of pre-Columbian civilization. Certainly, there was greatness in the cultures of the Mound-builders, the Pueblo, and in other ethnic groups. Certainly, I would have found ethnic pride if my teacher noted the positive traits of my ancestry.
But would it have made a difference? Yes, the kids who took the ethnic studies class in San Francisco did better than their classmates not enrolled in the class, but what of those outside the general assessment? To say that one group had a graduation rate of 90% vs the other group’s 75% doesn’t acknowledge the successes of individuals in the 75%. Were there not successes “in spite of”? Let’s make it personal: Are you one who succeeded “in spite of”?
The complexity of our personal histories makes “because of” and “in spite of” a Gordian knot. We can engage in historical introspection in an attempt to untwist the intertwined influences of encouragement and indifference to find the roots of our present. But to what end? Will indifference we met along the path of learning stand as a greater influence on who we are than the encouragement we garnered? Encouragement is the “because of,” whereas indifference is the “in spite of” in our personal histories.
Of course, encouragement is a good thing. Applause enhances performance. There’s even the effect of a cheering crowd on a weightlifter, a home team, a runner. I think of the kids’ animated show Dora, the Explorer and what one of my granddaughters said on a trip to the park. She climbed onto the monkey bars. Pretending that she had scaled a Mt. Everest, I said, “Oh my! You’re taller than the sky. I don’t know if I can get up there.” A fan of Dora, she echoed the key line repeated in that show. “Come on PapPap, you can do it. Yes, you can.” With that encouragement, I ascended the monkey bars. And she exclaimed, “I knew you could!”
Did I need such encouragement in eighth or ninth grade? Could I have been more than what I am if I had been encouraged to do more on the basis of my ethnic heritage that included Galileo, DaVinci, all those great artists. architects, writers, philosophers, and people like Marconi and Fermi? Maybe. But then there’s something to be said for succeeding “in spite of.”
*Stanford University. 6 Sept 2021. Ninth-grade ethnic studies helped students for years, researchers find. Phys.org. Online at https://phys.org/news/2021-09-ethnic-student-engagement-high-school.html Accessed September 7, 2021. See also: San Francisco State University. 23 Dec 2020. Ethnic studies curriculum tied to increased graduation, retention rates, study finds. Phys.org. Online at https://phys.org/news/2020-12-ethnic-curriculum-tied-retention.html Accessed September 7, 2021.
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