Where were the "moderators"?

Waiting2exhale
Sat, 19 Mar 2016 05:29:51 +0000

The person up-thread who said that Black kids don’t respect authority and that’s why they don’t learn/don’t listen, etc., was almost directly quoting, though out of context, the words of someone interviewed and showcased on NPR in the last two weeks.

The core of the radio guest’s message, though, was to take note of his own techniques at counseling young Black school kids (I think they were in high school), realizing that the methods of operation in a classroom setting (compliance, consideration, inquiry and request) were in direct opposition to the methods of survival the kids had to use out in their neighborhoods (resistance/defense and/or offense, single-minded self-preservation, demanding and unyielding insistence).

Understanding this dichotomy in the kids’ lives helped this counselor know how to introduce new forms, methods and figures of authority to them, and how to get the kids to term them to be such, and in so doing, to interact differently by understanding that in that place, in his counseling sessions and in the classroom, it was okay to operate under the new norm.