Blog #6: Kohn and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Our classrooms are a respresentation of us: what we like, how we think, or even how we function outside of our classroom. 

The guidelines that Kohn gives in his document are just that; guidelines. Though most of them are good, some are subjective. For instance, one of his guidelines states that "Textbooks, worksheets, and other packaged instructional materials predominate; sense of enforced orederliness" is a red flag for classrooms. He also states "Room overflowing with good books, art supplies, animals and plants, science apparatus; sense of purposeful clutter" is a good thing to see in a classroom. While too much of both can be seen as a bad thing, I believe that it is a subjective matter. You wouldn't expect to see art supplies or animals and plants in a high school classroom. Alternatively, you wouldn't expect to see a bunch of textbooks, worksheets, or heavy educational material in an American elementary school classroom. This is why I believe the guidelines, while made with good intention, are subjective to the environment that they are placed in.

The video on culturally relevant pedagogy approaches the matter from the elementary level. A nice quote that I liked was, "sutdents approach learning not as cultural blank slates". The narrator then explains that sutdents already have their own background to build off of. Most schools use the "one size fits all" method as the narrator explained. This could be detrimental to students because not every student will learn the same way. Looking back to "Precious Knowledge", those students were given a Chicano studies class. Before the class, the drop out rate was over 50%, and the graduation rate was terrible. The students felt like they didn't belong, and that the school didn't care for them. After the class, however, those rates started to change. Less students were dropping out, and in turn more were graduating. This shows a direct correlation with students who learn with the influence from their cultures did better than those without.