Gilligan and Hehir Comments!

Sorry this is just getting onto my site, I had some set backs this weekend!

This weeks reading was interesting to me for a few different reasons. One of the first things that caught my attention was in Hehir’s article “Eliminating Ableism.” The definition of ableism that he first gives is, “Laura Rauscher and Mary McClintock (1996) define ableism as ‘a pervasive system of discrimination and exclusion that oppresses people who have mental, emotional, and physical disabilities… Deeply rooted beliefs about health, productivity, beauty, and the value of human life…” (Hehir, 2005, p. 12). One of the first times I had heard about this word was in my Deaf Studies class I took at Northern Essex Community College. The teacher was Deaf and he used ASL (American Sign Language) the entire three-hour period. Because we were beginners there were interpreters in the class the entire time. He talked to us about ableism and how it affected the Deaf community and him as a person. This was so eye opening because here was someone standing in front of me telling me about his life, you cannot get a more specific example than that.

In his life he had experienced many moments of ableism against him, one included a moment in a restaurant when the waitress did not think he was able to read a menu just because he was deaf. Moments like this are really insane to me, I cannot imagine someone doing this to me, and I think that is something else I learned from these readings and examples. I do not know what it is like to experience true ableism, but it is my job as a teacher to make sure it does not occur, ever. So the more I learn about this and hear about it, the better, because I will never know what it is like to have a disability on a more severe level. I mean that in no offence to anyone, but I know what it is like to be called “four eyes,” but I do not think this is nearly as bad as what some people go through every day.

Another thing that I took from the assigned reading is that women and men have different values when it comes to appearance and opinions. “Women not only judge themselves in a context of human relationship but also judge themselves in terms of their ability to care” (Gilligan, 1982, p. 17). In comparison to this, men are afraid to be seen as a weakling or afraid. These ideas have been around for ages and are not going to change over night. They need to be worked at and people need to see the advantages of each other’s ideas. Men do not hold relationships in high regard because of what they have learned from many years of society pressuring them.

Between Hehir and Gilligan I was pleasantly surprised to learn new things and refresh my mind on concepts that I have heard of before. I really think that over time we as teachers can help our future students to understand that they do not have to follow society’s ideas and values, they can make up their own as they grow and learn.

Works Cited.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hehir, T. (2005). Eliminating ableism in education. In L.1. Katzman, A. G. Gandhi, W. S. Harbour, J. D. LaRock. Special Education for a New Century. Cambridge, MA; Harvard Educational Review, 11-38.

Comments on "Unraveling the 'Model Minority' Stereotype"

The reading this week by Stacey J. Lee, “Unraveling the ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype” was really interesting to me. As I read I learned a lot of new things that I hadn’t before about the students at Academic High, the different view that Korean-Asian’s had and even the reasoning for name changing. I really enjoyed Lee’s work here and I think it can enlighten its readers to the many changes and struggles that are going on with these different groups.

One idea that really resonated with me was the idea of these subcategories within students’ ethnicities. As Lee points out there are Korean-identified, Asian-identified, Asian new wave-identified, and Asian American-identified (Lee, 2009, p. 26). Although they are all Asian, each group has specific traits and characteristics that make them uniquely different. This reminds me of when I was in high school and my school had a large population of Black students. There was a huge assumption that they were all Haitian, but that was not true at all and once I talked to one of my friends about it I learned that they, as a group, would rather be called Black because they are not all Haitian. I had just assumed because of what I had heard, but once I went looking for the information I wanted I learned something new about my classmates. It is fascinating to see how many different ethnicities are really there rather than lumping them all together as one. As the book talked about this, and how Korean’s thought that they were above other Asian groups I thought back on my days in high school and was able to make that connection of the different subcategories.

Another topic that Lee mentions is the fact that many Asian students will change their name to something more westernized. This was interesting to me because I was just thinking about this after my classroom observation last week. As I sat watching a freshman English class, one of the international students was named Joe. That may have very well been his real name, but coming from another country it did not seem likely to me. This could be the explanation, he may have changed his name so that it was not made fun of or butchered or any number of reasons. I wish I had the chance to ask him about it. I understand the reasoning for it, but it really is too bad that students feel like they should change their name. It is too bad that so many other students would make fun of someone for their name. I think because my name is important to me, for small reasons, I feel like everyone should be proud of their name. These students may be very proud of their given name, but just find it easier to give another so that they do not have to deal with all the explanations. I guess it just depends on the person and what they want to do.

Overall this reading was really insightful and (at least for me and my group) will be very helpful on the group project. I really like Lee’s approach and her different ideas on the topic. I feel as though this is a book that many can learn from because there is so much that people don’t know about these stereotypes and the issues they can bring up.