Ethnography and education

This week's reading, the second part of Heath's Ways with Words (1983)  made me change my mind a little bit regarding ethnographic studies. While the first part of the book was a general study on the two towns (Roadville and Trackton) the second part focuses on the educational context more specifically, which I found more interesting. In fact, among the different materials that ethnographic studies provide us with, the evaluations and notes taken by the teachers (chapter 7) and the stories written by the students are one of the most descriptive and informative ways to understand the sociocultural context of a particular situation.  For example, by reading the notes taken by teachers in pages 268-271, we get first hand information about the learning and teaching processes of both teachers and students and what type of issues they think they are facing.
One of the texts that struck me the  most was one note written by a white teacher (270), who mentions that black students were like foreigners to him/her. While (s)he realizes that it was because of his lack of sensitiveness towards black students what caused misunderstanding issues and not "ignorance or lack of education", the comparison (s)he employs (that of foreigners) is still (kind of) racist. However, I must admit that for that period of time, realizing that was more than enough. Would this statement be equated to current examples of discrimination in educational settings? How would we react if we replaced blacks for "hispanos" in that sentence? From my point of view, a declaration like that would not be very politically correct. It is interesting to notice how education is linked to history and Heath's study is a good example to helps us understand it and to realize that ethnographic studies could be particularly useful when trying to implement changes in education.

Another example that I found very informative is the one in which a black girl talks to a white teacher and claims for a fairer way to be understood: "why should my 'at home' way of talking be 'wrong' and your standard version be 'right'? (271). Maybe the answer to this question would be what the black principal says"we were more concerned with our own public image than the kind of pupils we turned out" (271).

Apart from these notes, Heath describes specific methods that were starting to be emplyed in the classrooms in order to promote a different approach towards learning. For instance, in pages 285-286, a teacher explains how she carried out a reading activity which made students start to think about this particular skill as something not only useful but also enjoyable. teachers, then started to motivate students to use reading and writing skills in their daily lives (289). Moreover, teachers became aware of cultural issues , as we Heath describes in page 290, and also she describes one particular example in which children from both communities interacted and listened to each others (291).