Critical Reflection 2

In examining the issues revolving around the education of African youth, it is clear that the students are marginalized and oppressed due to the whiteness of the curriculum of the current schooling system here in Canada. It is hard for me personally to understand the feeling of this oppression as a white male because in school I was taught by this white curriculum in which white history, “successes” and so forth were illustrated resulting in a feeling of empowerment. African youth and those of the many races who attend school in Canada do not gain this feeling of empowerment. They are not taught of the countless contributions and the amount of success reached by people of their race, cannot identify and therefore they are oppressed. Because I am unable to relate, I will look at the issue of African youth failure rates, drop out rates and so forth with scholarly evidence from George J. Sefa Dei and then the interview/ debate on Afro-centric schools and then express my opinion of what may need to be done to move away from this continuing problem.

It is evident that there is a problem within the system in regards to African-Canadian youth education. “Schooling as Community: Race, Schooling, and the Education of African Youth” (Dei, 2008, p. 346-366) provides some illustrating qualitative and quantitative evidence of drop out rates, failure rates and so on. The amount of ethnoracial groups has raised to about 40% in 2001 and the amount of

Critical Reflection 1

Edward D Morris’ “Tuck in that t-shirt!' race, class, gender, and discipline in an urban school” allowed me to reflect on my experiences in schooling, it reminded me mostly of my experiences in high school. Morris’ (2005) main focus in his research was to “show how educators identified students deemed deficient in cultural capital, especially in terms of manners and dress, and attempted to reform these perceived deficiencies through regulating their bodies” (p.26). He illustrates how race, class and gender played a role in this process and how perceptions “guided educators” (Morris, 2005) assumptions of which students lacked cultural capital and which students required discipline. In this reflection I will focus on concepts from Morris and apply them to my experience of high school with some specific and first hand examples. 
 

I did not attend an urban school like the one that Morris works in for his research, however many of these concepts and ideas like bodily discipline and rules for clothing and so forth are still relevant as they are generally the same in most schools. I was enrolled in a rural area high school in which people from surrounding areas had to attend because their town didn’t have a high school. this meant that there was a mix of different sub cultures and style differences. The school was comprised of