Defensive Teaching

In my view, we have finally reached the most important section in the book. It’s true that knowledge about discrimination, classroom behavior, and students’ identities are very important to teaching, but in the end it’s how we go about our jobs that will define the profession.
I strongly agree with McNeil’s examination of defensive teaching(392). “Teachers reduce requirements to avert opposition and gain compliance, omit or mystify curricular content for students, and fragment or grossly oversimplify course content.” Standards have become the buzzword and the students have been left in their wake. No Child Left Behind is the current policy and until there is a collective push to rid students of this, teachers will continue to fail their students.
Is every teacher failing their students? Of course not, only those that don’t have the courage to challenge the current system. It certainly seems that schools are more interested in “churning out workers and helping them become the citadel of corporate ideology”(413). Evidenced by the exorbitant amounts of money the U.S. recently poured into corporate bailouts, it is clear that business is much more important to the policy makers than the education of children.
Totally off the topic, there was a statement that caught my eye. “There was also my role as a white, male professional teaching Latino, working-class youth and trying (presumptuously?) to help them develop positive social and cultural identities”(447). I think that the inclusion of the question mark denotes that Gutstein himself believes that he is in fact presumptuous. I think that Gutstein reads too much into the cultural differences he has with his students. It’s obvious that his role is to help his students develop positive social and cultural identities. He would accomplish this by providing his students with the best education possible, not by highlighting the cultural differences they have.