To Withstand an Earthquake
It is the age-old saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. It means that whatever is captured within a lens or on a canvas has a deeper meaning, more complex than a short explanation could give. I picture my time in Peru — the experiences, what I learned, and the people I met — like this. That is why I decided to put my thoughts and feelings on a canvas, in an attempt to make sense of and depict what I discovered in Peru, about myself and about education. After all, that is why I embarked on this trip… right? I cannot promise that the short explanation I write will be a thousand words, like the adage suggests, but I hope my attempt to explain my creative process refocuses my painting, beyond a surface-level assessment, to demonstrate its deeper connection to educational philosophy. I decided to title this painting “To Withstand an Earthquake,” which seemed fitting not only practically, the reason for which I’ll talk about soon, but also personally, because of what I experienced in Peru.
My canvas consists of three different sections: Inca, Spanish, and Pamplona Alta. To each of these sections I have assigned one of the three main questions from the course. The Inca section correlates to the question: what is a just education? The Spanish section correlates to the question: what is a high quality education? Finally, the Pamplona Alta section correlates to the question: what is equity in education? My thoughts and creative processes were different for each of these sections, and I want to underscore the artistic importance of this. When I first learned that the medium for the final project for this trip could be whatever I wanted, I knew that I wanted to paint. Throughout the whole trip, I wanted some way to let out all of the thoughts and feelings I experienced, in way which I could not do with words. Some of the things that stuck out to me the most about Peru on this trip were as follows: art, color, and rocks. The first two may not come as a surprise, but rocks? Where did that come from? These three things were the different inspirations for my canvas. Now let me tell you why.
The Inca
For each of the sections, I want to start off by detailing my creative process and the symbolism, and then move into its connection with what I read and experienced. A quick note about the design of the painting in general: my goal was to create my own rendition of Lima’s Wall of Shame, but depicting the wall with the Inca and Spanish foundations that I saw at Ollantaitambo as a testament to Peru’s past. In the background is Pamplona Alta, the present.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the inspirations for this canvas was rocks. It definitely seems out of place, but as I reflected on my trip, I could not ignore how often I thought of the geologic formations, the architecture, and the prevalence of rocks during my time in Peru. From the various Huaca and Inca ruins I visited, to the brickwork in the Catacombs of the Museo Convento San Francisco y Catacumbas, geology played an important, yet commonly overlooked, role in my experiences. One moment of the trip that, may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of this whole journey but, stuck out to me was when Marisol, Theresa, and I walked around the streets of Ollantaitambo after visiting the ruins there. I followed Theresa and Marisol as they guided us past the bustling streets filled with car horns and tourists to a quieter area, which was actually only a block away from the chaos. One block made a huge difference in the noise level, but also in the architecture. As we walked deeper into the streets, the foundations of the houses began to change. We first walked past foundations made with large rocks, the original feat of the Incas. When I saw how precise and perfect the cuts of the stones were, Theresa explained to me their purpose. She said that the Incas built and cut this way, not only with impeccable accuracy, but also with the knowledge that the powerful earthquakes commonly experienced there would damage the foundation. With this knowledge in mind, as Theresa explained, the Incas left crevices and holes in the foundation, precisely placed, to accommodate any shifting that would occur during an earthquake, so as to preserve the structural integrity of the foundation. For that reason, the original Inca architecture has withstood time, let alone earthquakes. This is the practical reason as to why I decided to entitle my canvas “To Withstand an Earthquake,” because of the mastery of the Inca craftsmen and the physical stability their ingenuity provided for their people. Hearing Theresa’s words and seeing the stones sitting so perfectly, undisturbed, made me feel connected with an integral part of Peruvian history and culture. Here is a picture I took of the foundation, made solely out of rocks that have been cut to fit together perfectly, without any bonding agent and having gaps only when structurally necessary to withstand earthquakes.
With this knowledge and experience in mind, I wanted my painting to reflect the intricacy and delicate nature of the Inca design. With time, the original rocks have been damaged at certain points and I wanted to depict that to stay true to the original image I captured of the foundation. However, there are only three places where there are significant damages or cracks. Only three. This was one of the things I found truly incredible about the rocks and foundation. In painting the Inca rocks, I wanted to highlight the smoothness in the way the Incas cut the rocks to fit together and I also wanted to emphasize the type of rock chosen, sedimentary rock, by varying the colors I used, still reflective of the original image. This section was the most labor intensive because of the blending of the colors; however, it is my personal favorite for this reason in itself. The work I spent on this section and its tedious nature reminds me of the work put into the original foundation itself, each precise cut and the care put into making it structurally sound.
I decided to assign the question of a just education to the Inca section because of the Inca history. In the PBS/Nova article “Rise of the Inca,” anthropologist Terence D’Altroy details the consolidation and growth of the Inca Empire. He notes that the Incas adeptly incorporated peoples into their empire by portraying their management as a larger system of the local governments. He also discusses the advantages of living under Inca rule and the disadvantages, notably the loss of autonomy. The question of autonomy is applicable to the Inca Empire and also to educational contexts. Autonomy is closely aligned with value, flourishing, and communal betterment, three aspects which I think are important when considering what makes an education just.
I do not intend to answer the question of what a just education is, but I want to offer what I’ve learned about what it means to be just and what that means in an educational setting through the lens of my experiences in Peruvian educational contexts. I want to define ‘just’ with the help of Nancy Fraser and her piece “On Justice: Lessons from Plato, Rawls, and Ishiguro.” Fraser discusses justice and writes that “justice requires that all who are governed by a common set of ground rules be recognized as counting… all of [the people] deserve equal concern” (page 45). Therefore, a just system would recognize and, moreover, value all of its members. To relate this back to my canvas, the Inca Empire, embodied by the Inca foundation, consolidated power and took away its subjects’ autonomy in doing so, disregarding the premise of a just system, which recognizes each individual and their contribution to the system. This analysis is applicable to Francisco Pizarro’s, the conqueror of the Incas, actions as well.
Educational contexts and schools also replicate systems of recognition and value. In “Engaged Pedagogy,” Bell Hooks discusses this idea. Hooks states that “students want [teachers] to see them as whole human beings with complex lives and experiences rather than simply as seekers after compartmentalized bits of knowledge” (page 15). By recognizing students and acknowledging their value, classrooms become more than places where information is exchanged, but become just spaces for learning. Obtaining information is not learning; instead, learning is actively seeking, engaging in, and connecting material with personal experience. This can only happen when shared value is recognized by both students and teacher. Looking at education and learning as obtaining information relates to another point that Fraser deems as unjust. Fraser discusses personhood and says that a person “deemed to possess only extrinsic value, and thus to be a mere means to others’ ends, can nevertheless be elevated in status… into a being that is valuable and deserving of consideration in its own right” (page 47). Consequently, Fraser is arguing that, when seen as only have extrinsic value, like when student learning is perceived as only passively receiving information, a person, or student, cannot obtain value and recognition.
This, then, is inherently unjust, as it manipulates students and lessens their abilities, talents, and intrinsic value. Therefore, a just education must appreciate and actualize the value of each student in a classroom in order for that student to engage and thrive. The practice of recognizing each students’ value is closely tied with student flourishing. Harry Brighouse, in “Moral and Political Aims of Education,” lists flourishing as one of the aims of education. Brighouse discusses the importance of exercising talents and engaging with life’s challenges in cultivating flourishing. When students are able to do these things in an educational setting, their intrinsic value is being recognized. Bell Hooks underscores the importance of “teachers who have had the courage to transgress those boundaries that would confine each pupil to a rote, assembly-line approach to learning” (page 13). Consequently, when teachers move beyond the memorization and passive view of learning, they not only demonstrate that they value their students, but students are able to discover and utilize their talents and engage with challenges, two aspects of Brighouse’s flourishing.
Recognizing the value of each student was one of the things I saw at the Casitas program I visited in El Agustino. Maria was intent on purposefully allocating time to hear everyone’s opinions and perspectives. After the International Day of Play, each student at my Casitas was asked to write what they enjoyed, what they did not enjoy, and what they want next year. After giving the students time to think and write, we joined in a circle and shared opinions. Maria was careful about acknowledging what the students said and asking them to build upon their answers by posing questions. Again, at the end of each session, she asked each student to say what they enjoyed, what they did not enjoy, and what they congratulated themselves for that day. This was her way of recognizing each student and what they contributed to the program. The Casitas program exists to provide an after-school activity for students, designed to keep them away from violence and drugs. While Maria could easily let the students run wild and do what they wished within the time frame, she instead sets aside time to allow the students to express themselves, openly acknowledging their value and contributions to the Casitas environment and program.
Another aspect that I believe contributes to a just education is providing students the tools they need to be successful. While the intangible and tangible skills students need to learn from school are practical, their importance cannot be understated. In Harry Brighouse’s chapter, “Moral and Political Aims of Education,” he lists contributory effectiveness as one of the aims of education. Contributory effectiveness is the idea that students should be self-sufficient but also cooperative in their society, which aids in the betterment of the community, a process which Brighouse ties to the development of self-worth. John Dewey, in Experience and Education, also discusses the role preparation plays in education. While one purpose of schools is to prepare students for their futures and to enable students to productively engage in and better their communities, Dewey suggests that the notion of preparation is flawed. Dewey notes that “when preparation is made a controlling end, then the potentialities of the present are sacrificed to a suppositious future” (page 13). He posits that the rigid idea of preparation looks too far in the future and disregards the present circumstances and learning opportunities available. Instead, it essentially pigeonholes students and biasedly controls their experiences. Dewey argues that, since we can only act in the present, the value of each present experience, regardless of what regimented preparation’s intent for the future would decide, should be seized. This, I believe, is one of the most important ways that teachers can help students to be contributing members of society, and is an important intangible skill that will enable students to be successful.
At Tupac Amaru, a public school in Villa Maria de Triunfo, the idea of giving students the tools necessary to be contributing members of society seemed to be one of the purposes of education. Tupac Amaru emphasizes future technical careers, where students pick from a variety of different trades so that, once they finish school, they can enter into the workforce and help better their community. Since Tupac Amaru is in a working class neighborhood, this purpose of education is very practical and suited to the community’s needs. The article, “Breaking the Paradigm: Technical Education in Peru and Latin America,” discusses the aim of contributory effectiveness in relation to the need for more technical certifications and institutions in Peru and Latin America. The author, Hans Frech La Rosa, cites that in Peru in 2016, “70% [of students] chose to study in a university, while 30% chose a technical or vocational institution… given that there is an increasing demand for more technical professionals than university graduates, around 40% of professionals in the country are over-schooled, under-payed or occupying positions that do not correspond to their academic degree.” Clearly there is a disconnect in what the communities and country, as a whole, need; additionally, as the author suggests, the negative association with technical education results in a lack of people properly trained for important, necessary jobs and also people whose qualifications do not match their job. Therefore, the aim of contributory effectiveness, an important aspect of a just education, is diminished or absent for many workers. At Tupac Amaru, it seems like the administration has carefully considered their community’s needs and created a school structure and curriculum accordingly to benefit their students, after their schooling, and their community.
However, I wonder if their application of the idea of preparation is contradictory to what Dewey posits about preparation. Since we only visited Tupac Amaru for a few hours, I know that I do not have all the information necessary to make a judgment about the type of preparatory education. With the information I do have and with my experiences from visiting, I question if their implementation of preparation with the goal of contributory effectiveness leans more towards Dewey’s definition of preparation, which deemphasizes pigeonholing students, or if it leans more toward the traditional definition of preparation, which focuses students on one path with little room for exploring other options.
The Spanish
In all honesty, painting the Spanish section was my least favorite, I think because of what it represents. Again with the rocks in this section! Give it a little more time, you’re almost to the part where my other inspirations, art and color, have their chance to shine. During my conversation with Theresa, she also mentioned that, after the conflict between the Spanish and Incas, the Spanish settled in and built on the preexisting Inca structures, hence why there are many buildings, especially in Ollantaitambo, that have Inca and Spanish foundations. The Spanish foundation, however, is cruder than the Inca. In traditional conquistador fashion, the Spanish, with disregard for the care and elegance of the Inca foundation, took their seemingly superior mortar and slapped it on top of the Inca structures. They scattered small rocks or pieces of bigger rocks throughout the mortar to provide stability. However, the Inca rocks, in my opinion, have weathered better, not to mention longer. The mortar, while stable and holding, is riddled with cracks.
When painting this section, I was frustrated. I thought about the time, effort, and care that I had taken when painting the Inca rocks, each with their own unique shape and cut, and felt that the mortar I was painting took much less attention to detail. While I worked to blend the colors and detail the rocks in the Spanish section, it was mostly for artistic effect. The actual process of and work that goes into mixing and laying down mortar is labor-intensive in a very different way. Additionally, when painting this section, I purposefully did not wash or wipe off my brush. Therefore, each rock in the Spanish section, with the exception of the mortar, shared paint. I did this in an attempt to subtly replicate the haphazard nature of the rocks in the Spanish mortar, that they exist for stability but were not hand-picked, not hand-carved like in the Inca section where each rock was unique with its own colors and paint. Painting the cracks in the mortar was also an aspect of the image that I wanted to emphasize. As I mentioned previously, there are a considerable amount of cracks in the Spanish mortar and, to me, this was symbolic again of the care, or lack of, put into the architecture. Pictured here is the photograph of Inca and Spanish rock from Ollantaitambo that I used to create my canvas.
It seemed logical to assign the question of what a high quality education is to the Spanish section because of the conquistador attitude and general attitude of Europeans during the colonization. The idea of the civilizing mission applies more so to colonization efforts during the Scramble for Africa but can also be interpreted and found in colonial efforts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its basis is rooted in the idea that indigenous peoples were uncivilized and primitive and that it was the responsibility of the Europeans to bring civilization to these peoples, providing a justification for imperialism, colonialism, and expansionism, three processes that took off after technological developments improved sailing and exploring. In later centuries, the same idea became known as the “White Man’s Burden,” after a poem of the same name authored by Rudyard Kipling. When Francisco Pizarro killed the last Inca king, Atahualpa, the Spanish conquered the Incas in the name of their God but with the motivation of greed. They forever altered the development of Inca, and Peruvian, history. The Spanish brought over various goods and implemented practices that they deemed as superior, disregarding the preexisting richness of the Inca Empire. This foreign sense of superiority and disregard for indigenous culture, which has now become an integral part of Peruvian history and is demonstrated by the Spanish use of mortar foundation, is why I related the Spanish section of my painting to the question: what is a high quality education?
The components of a just education that I have suggested also, for me, help to paint a picture of what a high quality education looks like. Without valuing students, enabling them to flourish, and providing them with tangible and intangible tools to succeed, the very foundation of a high quality education would crumble. In my time in Peru, I was able to see very wealthy schools and poorer schools. The opportunities afforded to students at Roosevelt and at La Inmaculada were incredible. At Roosevelt, students had access to the “FDR Fab Lab” for creating and building, which included a 3D printer. They also had a very large list of extra-curriculars to choose from, some of which offered international travel for competitions, like Model United Nations and various sports teams. At La Inmaculada, the students had a zoo, a fully-equipped gymnasium, and several soccer fields. All of this wealth and privilege is in contrast to Fe y Alegria, where students in the Andes did not have those kinds of opportunities. While I’m sure any student would enjoy being on a travel team for soccer or going to their school zoo for science class, that is not how I am going to define, or attempt to define, a high quality education. Material wealth, at least for me, does not constitute good pedagogy or necessarily better learning. While not all-encompassing, I want to offer that a high quality education consists of the following: emphasizing student and contextual assets, allowing for collaboration, and encouraging involvement.
John Dewey discusses the importance of a child-centered education in The School and Society. He discusses how traditional schooling works, and summarizes its hallmarks: “its passivity of attitude, its mechanical massing of children, its uniformity of curriculum and method… the center of gravity is outside the child” (page 35). The rote memorization and the passive listening without any room for interjection are things that many students, unfortunately, are familiar with. Instead, Dewey argues that education should be child centered and he makes the analogy that education is actively getting information and experiences from students, instead of handing it to them passively. He uses the example of cooking an egg and notes that, when students cook an egg and are told exactly how to do it, without any cultivation of experimentation and excitement, there is no genuine learning happening there. Conversely, when students act on their own to figure out what they want and when they work to discover and experiment, that is genuine learning. Dewey’s child centered education is contingent on recognizing student assets. When teachers recognize what each student has to offer in their classroom and is able to capitalize on those talents and abilities, they are going to be more able to help their students genuinely learn.
A high quality education should acknowledge the contextual assets in addition to student assets. One example of this that I saw in Peru was at Fe y Alegria, a bilingual (Quechua and Spanish) school. Quechua, while deemed culturally inferior by many Peruvians, is the language and culture of the Andean people. The Jesuit social project at Fe y Alegria is insistent on maintaining Quechua’s cultural relevance and importance in students’ lives. The teachers speak Quechua and the school encourages the continuation of different cultural practices, like weaving. In her book, A White Teacher Talks About Race, Julie Landsman reflects on her own teaching experience in Minnesota and how she saw perceptions of race, poverty, and culture blending in her school and classroom. One quote from her book is particularly relevant both to the importance of incorporating contextual assets into a classroom as well as to my chosen career as a History teacher. The quote is as follows:
So many of the… students I teach are absent from our texts. The working white and black men on their hands and knees laying wire for the new concert hall are not shown in our history books… the Native-American men who hang up above the others in the balcony, adjusting the velvet on the box seats, and the white women who climb to install the chandeliers: they are nowhere to be seen when we look at the pictures of the elegant hall. (Landsman 31)
Landsman is not only talking about many cultures and races being left out of history books. Of course that is important to note, but that is only a consequence of a larger issue: systemic racism and prejudice born from one culture deeming other cultures inferior. At Fe y Alegria, teachers and staff are making a conscious effort to validate and appreciate the Quechua language and culture that is an integral part of the Andean culture. They may not be rewriting the history books, but as a bilingual school, they are putting Quechua and Spanish on the same plain, validating their students’ culture. This is essential in not only perpetuating the existence of Quechua, but also in helping their students discover and appreciate their identities.
Another aspect that I believe constitutes a high quality education is the presence of and emphasis on collaboration between students and teachers. As I’ve discussed earlier, Dewey talks a lot about what traditional education looks like: listening, passivity, and rote memorization. Instead of this, the classroom should be a collaborative space, where teacher and student work together to learn, because teachers should always be striving to learn something, not just to teach something. In Vivian Chavez and Elisabeth Soep’s article, “Youth Radio and the Pedagogy of Collegiality,” the authors talk about a Youth Radio program that is collaborative and student-led but guided by adults. The authors reference Bell Hooks’ idea of ‘engaged pedagogy’ and note that this idea is central to Youth Radio’s pedagogy. They note that “rather than expect only students to learn and change, teachers are also transformed… when teachers offer their own narratives or interpretations, they cease to function as ‘all-knowing silent interrogators’” (page 418). The idea of collegiality at Youth Radio insists that learning is a transformative experience for both youth and adult, enabling students and teachers to work together in an interdependent way to accomplish their projects successfully. Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of Freedom, also discusses the importance of changing the traditional student-teacher relationship. Freire talks about transfer knowledge, which is linked with traditional conceptions of education: the idea that, at school, teachers transfer knowledge to students. Freire disagrees with this idea and suggests that teaching should be about creating the space and environment that promotes the discovery of knowledge. He writes that “in the context of true learning, the learners will be engaged in a continuous transformation through which they become authentic subjects of the construction and reconstruction of what is being taught, side by side with the teacher, who is equally subject to the same process” (page 6). Therefore, Freire not only defines learning as an active process, but emphasizes the importance of the teacher being a collaborative and also moldable figure in that process.
In Matthew’s classroom at La Inmaculada, I feel like I was able to see some pieces of this process happening. The boys in the class were working on gender inequality and comparing and contrasting gender inequality in Peru with another country. In their groups, the boys were asked to draw a Venn Diagram and then write a paragraph, using their diagram, to practice their English. Matthew seemed to hand over the responsibility of coming up with an argument and the claims to the students, but he was always watching and checking to see if he needed to step in. When he would step in, he would not tell the students they were wrong, instead, he would frame his suggestions differently, in a way that made the students think about their claims and their writing. He did not want a specific answer from them but wanted them to think for themselves. In doing this, he learned what his students were thinking, not what he wanted them to think, allowing him to discover and learn from his students instead of feed them an answer. For me, the class I observed seemed radically different from the passive classroom where the teacher gives the students information. Instead, the classroom was noisy and the students were busy working together and with Matthew guiding them to discover more about gender inequality and English grammar.
The last piece of a high quality education that I want to offer is cultivating involvement. In school it is not only important for students to learn material, but it is also crucial that students learn to advocate not only for themselves but for others as well. Therefore, it is essential for teachers to help guide students to be involved and actively engaged in their community and the world around them. Wheeler-Bell discusses this in his article, “Educating the Spirit of Activism: a ‘Critical’ Civic Education.” He talks about fostering a sense of justice in students and encouraging them to engage in social movements, an attitude which he calls the Spirit of Activism. Specifically, Wheeler-Bell states that a high self-esteem is directly linked to developing a spirit of activism. Consequently, a high quality education should have a positive influence on their students’ self-esteem and also aim to cultivate a sense of justice and a desire for communal involvement. In this way, a school can serve as a learning environment and an environment for creating social change to better society. David Pariser, Juan Carlos Castro, and Martin Lalonde discuss the idea of civic engagement in their article, “Mobilities, Aesthetics, and Civic Engagement: Getting At-Risk Youth to Look at Their Communities.” The authors describe civic engagement as an example of social capital and agree with the following definition: “by civic we mean activity aimed at addressing social and/or community issues that are not political by nature but nevertheless, are conducive to the collective well-being” (page 214). The findings of Pariser, Castro, and Lalonde, however, suggest another form of civic engagement in addition to active participation in the community. The authors state that their project, meant to engage at-risk students with problems in their community, achieved this goal, not only by having students go into their community, but by having students think critically about their experiences in the community via art. The realizations that the students had, only after a type of reflective exercise, reminded me of the emphasis placed on reflection during our time in Peru and by the Jesuits, like at La Inmaculada.
In my own experience, I think I learned a lot about social justice and involvement especially in high school. My school placed an emphasis on social justice and participating in social change. We did service but connected our experiences to our class material. In my senior year social justice theology class, our curriculum was based on examining social issues in relation to our service experiences. Having a space for reflection in my classes fostered a passion for working to make a change and being able to critically examine social justice problems. The pastoral program at La Inmaculada, while oriented toward building relationships with students across socioeconomic lines, also seems to share this purpose. Three steps in the Jesuit Pedagogical Paradigm are: experience, reflection, and action. The experience from their relationships and the reflection from their classes theoretically enables students to act in the future. While not the primary intent of the pastoral program, it seems to me that a positive consequence of the program could be that students who have the ability and capacity to produce dramatic social change would recognize the stark inequality just over the Wall of Shame, if their spirit of activism was cultivated and fostered by their teachers at La Inmaculada.
Pamplona Alta
Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the trip was visiting Pamplona Alta. We were there for a short time and it was rainy (but really misty compared to Wisconsin weather) and muddy. We climbed the stairs, which wove their way up the mountain, and met with a woman who had recently opened up a tienda there. She was incredibly proud of the work she put in to opening her store, and it showed. We traveled from her store to the Casitas program, where the kids greeted us with hugs and handshakes. They worked on their homework and played in a small yet colorful room. While I wanted to stay, the students needed to get their work done, and we were on our way back to the bus, as it was getting late. On our way back, just over a retaining wall, I could see the scape of Pamplona Alta. It was incredibly foggy and gray, so only the first few rows of houses were remotely visible. The lights, however, I could see up the mountain, shining and gleaming despite the heavy fog. Here is the photograph that I took of that scene, and the one I used to paint this section.
In painting this section, I wanted to replicate the vibrant colors of the houses that only peaked through the fog at the very bottom and also the grayness of the fog that was moving and consuming all of the mountain. One of the challenges I faced in painting this section was the balance between letting the buildings towards the bottom peak through the fog but also have them be covered by some degree of grayness, like in the photograph. It took me several tries and layers of paint to accomplish this. However, my dissatisfaction with the original fog I painted and the need for re-layering reminded me of the Wall of Shame’s purpose, which Belen Desmaison describes in “Lima’s ‘Wall of Shame’ and the Gated Communities that Build Poverty into Peru.” Desmaison notes that “the Wall of Shame was built to exclude poor and disadvantaged citizens from more affluent areas of the city… Pamplona Alta is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Lima.” The purposeful and physical barring of the poor from the rich was something I thought about a lot during my struggle to find balance in my painting of Pamplona Alta. I started off painting buildings rich in color and covered them in gray, dull fog. From my experience in Pamplona Alta, although short, I gathered that the community was hard-working and culturally vibrant, maybe not monetarily rich, but rich in other ways. The fog, like the Wall of Shame, swallowed and hid it from sight.
My decision to assign the Pamplona Alta section the question about equity in education is based off of the blatantly obvious inequality that exists between Pamplona Alta and Sucro, physically separated only by a wall. Before I attempt to discuss equity in education, I want to distinguish equity from equality, a difference which came up in one of our seminars. When talking about equality, it is the idea that everyone gets the same thing. Equity, however, is not about having the same thing, it is about having what is needed to enjoy the same quality of life as another person. When considering race, socioeconomic status, gender, religion, and a multiplicity of factors, implementing measures to achieve equality may not always accurately achieve the goal of equity.
Like when discussing a high quality education, I do not believe that increasing access to material gains in education is enough to obtain equity in education. Adding new technology and implementing a better curriculum is only one part in a complicated process. In Gloria Ladson-Billings article, “Landing on the Wrong Note: The Price We Paid for Brown,” the disconnect between equality and equity is something she considers. Ladson-Billings argues that one of the problems with Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) was that it dealt with the surface-level issue of the fact that separate but equal is inherently unequal. Brown ruled in favor of integrating schools, rightfully so, but the ways in which desegregation was implemented had several flaws. Instead of focusing on the education students were receiving, the ruling was focused mainly on fixing the fact that schools were segregated. While trying to be equal, it was not equitable. The Brown ruling had many unintended consequences. Importantly, Ladson-Billings notes that “had the Supreme Court’s remedy focused on the quality of education students received, White working class and poor students could have been folded into the classroom in a way that might benefit them rather than underscore the adversarial relationship between Blacks and Whites” (page 8). In focusing on the quality of education in addition to the issue of segregated schools, Brown would have been more effective in dealing with racism and resistance. Ladson-Billings’ argument reminds me of equity in education because her assessment argues that the Supreme Court ruling, while entirely necessary, would have been more effective if it would have encompassed more than integrating schools. I find this argument applicable to the question of equity in education as well because simply handing poorer schools newer technology and a better curriculum may make it equal, but because these schools may not be pace with other schools in different ways, these additions may not make education truly equitable.
One way that I think education could be more equitable is by tailoring curriculum and teaching to be context specific. This means that every sixth grade classroom in a district will not look the same, but they should not look the same because the students in each of those classroom will be different. As I mentioned when talking about a high quality education, student assets and contextual assets need to be considered. In the narrative inquiry, “Gloria Ladson-Billings: Igniting Student Learning Through Teacher Engagement in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” the authors discuss Ladson-Billings’ perspective on equity in education in regard to cultural and student context. They note Ladson-Billings’ emphasis on teachers being aware of their students’ lives outside of school and they cite her as follows: “different children have different needs and addressing those different needs is the best way to deal with them equitably… the same is true in the classroom — if teachers pretend not to see students’ racial and ethnic differences, [teachers]… are limited in their ability to meet their educational needs” (page 25). One of the limitations of Brown that Ladson-Billings mentions in “Landing on the Wrong Note,” is that desegregation resulted in job loss for Black teachers. During the Plessy era, when school segregation was legal, Black teachers were able to integrate and weave their culture into their classrooms for their students. When Brown was enacted, Black students integrated with White students and White teachers, who knew little about incorporating various cultural identities into the classroom. That is not to say that the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown was wrong, but it did not account for these contextual and student assets; consequently, it isolated students while trying to include them. Avoiding this mistake and, instead, accounting for various assets contributes to making education equitable for students because it validates who they are and creates an open and inclusive learning environment.
One of the arguments for achieving equity in education is to better our public schools. The response I have heard to this answer is: why not just send your child to a private school? However, there are many misconceptions about the difference in the educational effectiveness of public and private schools. As the article, “Worldwide, Public Education is Up for Sale,” discusses, the flaws in public schooling are being used to advocate for increased privatization. The article notes the rise in privatization and also some important results: the advent of charter schools and voucher programs. However, despite the push for private schooling, student results do not necessarily correlate with its promises. Balarin’s paper, “The Default Privatization of Peruvian Education and the Rise of Low-Fee Private Schools,” addresses this point. Balarin notes that “Peruvian test results show that private schools located in areas with high concentrations of pupils from poorer families tend to have similarly low, and in some cases worse results than public schools operating in those same areas” (page 12). That trend is not unique to Peru, it’s applicable to the United States as well. I have spent my entire life in private schooling and, even before knowing the comparative statistics about public and private school performance, I would not have said that, because my high school was private and Catholic, it directly impacted my ACT score. Instead, my academic performance was directly impacted by the dedication and work of my teachers and the administration, in addition to my personal commitment to my education. Consequently, equity in education has little to do about where a school gets funding, but equity is a systemic issue. However, I do think that schools have the ability to counteract the broader problems on their own. One way they can do this is through their mission and commitment to student achievement. I realize that this sounds idealized, but I believe that administrative commitment to actively bettering their students’ school experience is essential. In my opinion, Fe y Alegria seemed to be committed to this. As I already mentioned, the Jesuit social project and mission at Fe y Alegria seemed intent on giving their students a holistic education that, in some ways, seemed more impactful and beneficial than what I saw at more privileged schools in Lima. However, Fe y Alegria is a charter school with the Jesuits playing an important role in the students’ education. I am not suggesting that Jesuit control over education is necessary to produce a kind of equity in education, I am merely advocating for replicating the concept of cura personalis and administrative commitment to student achievement in a secular fashion.
My time in Peru has changed the way I think about education and my role as an educator. It has introduced me to a new culture, language, and place that I may have never known. I miss Peru immensely, but I know that I will take what I learned with me and use my experiences to better myself, my pedagogy, and add a different depth to my future classroom.
Print Work Cited
Landsman, Julie. A White Teacher Talks About Race. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2009.
