Delpit Article Response: Necessary Discussion

Question: One student asked, “Why do we have to discuss teaching minority children the language of power? Why not just teach everyone acceptance?” Respond.

Delpit’s article stresses that the culture of power in which affects how educators teach and that the varying backgrounds from which students come affect their learning. Thus understanding how those varying backgrounds affects students in the classroom is absolutely necessary to education. And while acceptance is important, there are so many other influences in a child’s life that teaching love and acceptance in school is not enough to change how a student learns. Knowing the paradigm from which students approach material is paramount to enabling them to succeed, and if students, especially from minority backgrounds, are unfamiliar with how to operate in the world of the majority, they will not succeed.

So, “Why do we have to discuss teaching minority children the language of power?” We must discuss the issue because it is an issue. The fact that students come from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds, etc. means that their knowledge and understanding of the world differs. And those differences must be understood to best serve the students’ needs.