Racism In Classroom

In my second grade classroom, my teacher interrupted my classwork one day, ti state that my traditional African hairstyle was distracting, and directed me to change it by the mext day. When the next day came, and the hair tying me to my culture remained, she pulled me out of class, sent me to the office, and called my mother. My mother, an educated white woman, was livid, and informed the administration of their wrongdoings, saying that the teacher targeting me and my hair was racism-a word I had never heard refering to our modern world. Issues such as racism, mass education, and low teacher expectations are often thought of as problems of the past; however, the challenges faced in education have merely changed throughout time, with some issues
One such problem is racism, which, as evidenced by my second-grade hair troubles, is still an issue to be reckoned with in the classroom, though in far less blatant ways than in the past. Too large classes and a lack of individual attention have also remained a problem through history, and teachers cpntinue to underestimate their students, though what they underestimate about their students has changed with time. These issues have been ctritiqued by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Malcolm X, and Francine Prose, and still affect classroom learning today, preventing students from reaching their full potential.
One of the most obvious ways students are blocked from reaching their potential is through racism in the classroom. Although most consider racism a solved issue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X’s time, it does still permeate modern classrooms. While black students are now recognized as equals, unlike what X faced in school shortly
In fact, Ralph Waldo Emerson critiqued the trend of mass-education in the 19th century, and yet students are still subjected to the generalized education he argued against. In my experience, the average class is around twenty students, and firends of mine in larger urban schools have classes up to twice as large, and this can diminish the education quality of the individuals within such a large class. As “[t]he teaching comes to be arranged for these many, and not for those few,” (Emerson, 105). The ratio of students to teachers limits individual attention, and they don’t get the specialized education they need to reach their peak potential. Classes tend to go too quickly for some students, who take longer to grasp the information, or too slowly for those who take to it rapidly. This decreases the quality of education for everybody, as teachers “have to work for large classes instead of individuals,” and therefore end up not even reaching the majority of the class, many of my friends sturggle with classes going to quickly, while others are frustrated as the course is too slow for them (Emerson, 105). This “departmental, rountinary, military” style of teaching is largely ineffective, but it merely serves the purpose of teaching the large numbers of students within our country (Emerson, 105). These ineffective teaching standards cause students to learn less, as they can’t learn with these teaching methods. Leveled