NYC Professor Believes Current Grading Policies Favor White Students.
School, a place where everyone learns the basics. Where students who study hard are rewarded with better grades, but one Brooklyn College professor believes otherwise.
She thinks that rewarding students based on their ability to do the work and learn the material should not merit better grades. The Professor believes that the current grading system is set up for minorities to fail and for white students to succeed. She feels the current grading system is a pro-white racist system.
Laurie Rubel, a former High School Math Teacher, now college professor has written an article claiming that “meritocracy” in math classes is a “tool of whiteness.” She claims that due to the better scenarios that most white people are raised into they are at an advantage in the classroom, while minorities are at disadvantage because of their environments.
Rubel Claims that the current system that is in place is supposedly “colorblind” which ignores the “systemic barriers and institutional structures that prevent opportunity and success” for minorities.
“To mediate this, Rubel recommends that math teachers incorporate more social justice issues into math lessons, but warns that even “teaching for social justice” can be a “tool of whiteness” if teachers are not sufficiently attuned to the experiences of minority students.”
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Rubel thinks teachers need to start “confronting fears of people of color to learn about students and their communities.” Teachers need to start making the lessons more relatable to the students. She feels that the lesson plans do not accommodate minorities and should cater to their needs more.
Rubel states that “branding of urban schools using names that include words like “success,” “achievement,” “aspire,”
“strive,” or “ascend” communicate deficit views of students.”
It’s clear that Rubel cares about teaching and wants to find better ways to get her lesson across, by relating to students. But she is reaching with her claim that the current grading policy favors white people. Is this fair to minorities to change the lesson plan to cater to them?
Isn’t it painting with a large stereotyping brush, to assume that minorities can’t do the work?
Wouldn’t the better option be to offer extra tutoring or help? Students should be taught by the same standards if not it’s discrimination. No one is forcing white people to study more or less just as no one is forcing minorities to be less engaged in math class.
