Other People's Children Quotes

“We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment - and that is not easy. It is painful as well, because it means turning yourself inside out, giving up your own sense of who you are, and being willing to see yourself in the unflattering light of another’s angry gaze.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“The worldviews of many in our society exist in protected cocoons. These individuals have never had to make an adjustment from home life to public life, as their public lives and institutions they have encountered merely reflect a “reality” these individuals have been schooled in since birth.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“The purpose of education is to learn to die satiated with life.” That, I believe, is what we need to bring to our schools: experiences that are so full of the wonder of life, so full of connectedness, so embedded in the context of our communities, so brilliant in the insights that we develop and the analyses that we devise, that all of us, teachers and students alike, can learn to live lives that leave us truly satisfied.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“there are different attitudes in different cultural groups about which characteristics make for a good teacher. Thus, it is impossible to create a model for the good teacher without taking issues of culture and community context into account.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“To provide schooling for everyone’s children that reflects liberal, middle-class values and aspirations is to ensure the maintenance of the status quo, to ensure that power, the culture of power, remains in the hands of those who already have it.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“It is vitally important that non-minority educators realize that there is another voice, another reality; that many of the teachers whom they seek to reach have been able to conquer the educational system because they received the kind of instruction that their white progressive colleagues are denouncing.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“Currently, “minority” students represent a majority in all but two of our twenty-five largest cities, and by some estimates, the turn of the century will find up to 40 percent nonwhite children in American classrooms. At the same time, the teaching force is becoming more homogeneously white. African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American teachers now comprise only 10 percent of the teaching force, and that percentage is shrinking rapidly.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“A few years ago, I asked Oscar Kwageley, a friend, teacher Yupik Eskimo scientist, and wise man, what the purpose of education is. His response startled me and opened my eyes even more: he said, "The purpose of education is to learn to die satiated with life.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“If there’s someone who doesn’t understand what I’m teaching, I try to understand who they are.   A”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“This lesson was only one of many I received on learning to be a part of the world rather than trying to dominate it - on learning to see rather than merely to look, to feel rather than touch, to hear rather than listen: to learn, in short, about the world by being still and opening myself to experiencing it. If I realize that I am an organic part of all that is, and learn to adopt a receptive, connected stance, then I need not take an active, dominant role to understand; the universe will, in essence, include me in understanding. This realization has proved invaluable as I, an educational researcher, pursue learning about the world.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Updated Edition

“Our “trouble” cannot be resolved by “teacher-proof” curricula. The troubles of our country - indeed, the troubles of our world - can be addressed only if we help ourselves and our children touch the deep humanity of our collective spirit and regain the deep respect for the earth that spawned us. Perhaps we can learn from traditional African education, where the role of teachers is to appeal to the intellect, the humanity, and the spirituality of their students. 4”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Updated Edition

“When acknowledging and expressing power, one tends towards explicitness (as in yelling at your ten-year-old, “Turn that radio down!”). When deemphasizing power, there is a move toward indirect communication.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“success in institutions - schools, workplaces, and so on - is predicated upon acquisition of the culture of those who are in power.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“I do not demand, as one white academic said, that children of color give up what they are to become something else. Nor do I, as he continued, “reject the concept that liberation for poor kids and linguistic minorities starts with accepting their culture and language and helping them to build on it.” Indeed, that is what I do advocate.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

“the Hyde School’s message to students is: - that they have an important purpose on this earth and the unique potential to fulfill it. - that their true worth is measured not by their social status, intellect, or talents, but by the strength of their character. - that we admire their attitude and effort, and care less about their actual achievements, because these will come with time if they develop character traits like those emblazoned on the Hyde School shield: Courage, Integrity, Concern, Curiosity, and Leadership.”
― Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Updated Edition