This weeks reading had me consistently thinking about the ways in which the education system has been used to generationally oppress minority communities simply by not teaching their history. While I was reading Baker-Bell's "Scoff No More" I couldn't help but let my mind drift into how the lack of Ebonics knowledge from the students is a result of depravation of African-American history within school curriculums. Drawing from week 6, where we were talking about the ways educational policy has discriminated by linguistic ability and continues to do so, I kept connecting that idea to the sociolinguistic qualities of language, specifically the role of identity. Identity is heavily influences by ones culture and community history. Keeping the history of communities other than Americas white colonizers and founders out of the core curriculum is a political tool that has been used for forever to oppress communities and students from finding their identities within language. When I was in elementary school, a key component of the curriculum is learning about missions that were build. I distinctly remember the glorification of these missions as California history, but as I continued learning about Native American history in the region, it become more and more obvious that there were elements that were purposely withheld from the curriculum because that version of history wouldn't allow for the continued glorification because it would've exposed the injustices committed by the settlers of these missions to the surrounding community of Native Americans. I recognized how dangerous this was towards shaping my own beliefs as a member outside of the directly oppressed community, but the harm it causes within the community itself fosters the idea that 1) their history within the nation is unimportant, 2) their history needs to be narrated by the oppressor to be palatable and 3) it makes it more difficult for adolescent individuals to identify with their community as the purpose of this tactic perpetuates erasure, misinformation, and harmful stereotypes. I appreciated Baker-Bells approach of teaching Ebonics to students by mentioning the historical significance and calling out specifically where the linguistically oppressive elements began and how that trickled down into the systemic oppression that created the idea that Ebonics is slang and not a legitimate language. Talking through the history of language, but also the role of language within the community itself is very important to assert power, protect their narratives, and resist externally imposed definitions.
I agree completely with your response and it's really great that you were able to connect the reading to your own experiences learning history in the US public education system. What you wrote about with elements being withheld from the curriculum reminds me of what I learned in ED 14 where some teachers simplify history in order to make it more palatable for the students. However, as you pointed out, it does more harm than good for both those who aren't from that identity and especially for those who are of that identity to have their history and culture misrepresented. It also reminds me of the politicized funds of knowledge as teachers don't know how to bring up these "darker" topics in class. However, as I've said before, these topics are already impacting the student's life, so educators should make sure their classroom is a safe space for students to discuss and learn. Furthermore, students are often already seeing those misrepresentations of their culture in society, and it's the teacher's duty to dismantle these myths instead of reinforcing them.