Tracy O'Connell Novick Profile picture
Sep 12, 2018 30 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Next up in #amreading: “White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America” by Margaret Hagerman.
(And yes, this one I bought. Usually, I am a devoted @CWMARSinfo user.)
You might have seen @MaggieHagerman’s interview in @TheAtlantic theatlantic.com/family/archive…
“...this book seeks the examine white families with the intention of addressing critically the role that white families play in the production and reproduction of white racial power”
“The parents in this book have access to nearly unlimited resources that allow them to make almost any decision they desire for their children...”
“As such, I can show how ideas about race inform the decisions parents make since their choices are less about availability for resources, or what they can afford, and more about what parents truly think is important or ‘best’ for their child.”
“how do ideologies get socially reproduced by children who benefit the most from the maintenance of these ideologies, and how do ideological positions themselves shape choices involved in raising a child?”
“...white families are the first places where the newest generation of whites learn ideas about race, racism, privilege, and inequality in the United States.”
“While some parents of black children are teaching their kids how to navigate racism to stay alive, some white parents are teaching their kids that race no longer matters in the United States.”
“Further research demonstrates how private businesses and policy makers seek to retain middle-class families in urban schools, valuing them more highly than their working class or poor peers.”
(Where have I heard THAT before? 🤨)
“these parents make decisions that maintain advantage for their own kids that simultaneously have the effect of perpetrating racial equality”
“justifying avoidance and drawing on a veneer of fairness”
Hagerman quoting one of the parents: “they don’t want to give up what they’ve got.”
“evidence of the idealogical costs of private schooling comes from the voices of these kids themselves—kids who can speak fluently and critically about race and racial inequality in the United States...
“...but who simultaneously believe they are better and more deserving than anyone else.”
On volunteering and what children may absorb. Hagerman earlier writes of parents teaching (or not) “about systems that have created these racialized patterns in the first place.”
“This is of course the logical outcome of color-blind ideology: kids who have been told that they should not recognize racial difference feel bad that they do.”
Four years later...
“Racial violence has persisted in this country, but suddenly, over the past few years, there appears to be a newly perceived need for white parents to talk about race with their white children.”
Hagerman adds the importance of white parents “thinking about what they *do* in addition to what they *say*.”
The paradox facing white parents of privilege: “good parent” v “good citizen”
(She then points out that one cannot give up hope and stop trying, and that of course, giving up is not an option open to parents of color.)
“...rejecting the idea that their own child is more innocent and special than other people’s children are.”
“Indeed, placing value in children collectively rather than individually is the most important way white parents challenge ideologies of parenting that are deeply entwined with the legacy of white supremacy in the United States.”
“accept the radical notion that the happiness, success, health, and well-being of other children is as important as that of their own.”
“the challenge ahead is to rethink taken-for-granted assumptions about what constitutes a ‘good’ school or a ‘good’ neighborhood or even a ‘good’ kid and to decide instead that being a ‘good’ parent means being—and actively raising—a good citizen.”
/Fin

White parents: you need to read this book. #amreading
And white teachers, too.
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More from @TracyNovick

Aug 28, 2018
I mean, here's the thing on hot school buildings in New England:

A) we didn't build for this. We absolutely have not built schools that were intended to have classes running in them during weeks of 90 plus degree days until recently.
B) We didn't, because we didn't need to! We didn't HAVE classes running in buildings for multiple 90-plus degree days.
(Ergo, incidently, why A/C is in admin...they're there all summer.)
C) We do now, not only because climate change, but yeah, in part climate change (also the 180/900/990 requirements from the state PLUS caution around driving=tight scheduling timelines)
Read 13 tweets
Jul 31, 2018
“Wisdom, and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people,
“being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties;
“and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country,
Read 14 tweets
Jul 10, 2018
Okay, I just stuck the House foundation budget bill in my Dropbox here: dropbox.com/s/9keifw8ws54q…

thread following
#FBRC said in-district to 3.75% for regular; 4.75% for voke
House bill says in-district to 4%; 5% for voke

That's your sugar to help the medicine go down, because there is no other good news here.
Health insurance change DOES add retirees and ties to three years of GIC, so...sure.
Read 18 tweets
Jul 10, 2018
Okay, the House is going to take up a "foundation budget reform" bill, we're told.

For what should #MAEdu be watching?
Well, the first thing is, while we may pick it up, so far the House is being pretty careful about references to the Commission (which I'm echoing by not tagging them with #FBRC).
Where's the references to the Commission?
Three years out.
Work of more than a year.
Hours and hours of testimony.
Pages and pages of research.
Hours and hours of discussion.
Read 21 tweets
Jun 6, 2018
4 o’clock. Tea time. Time for some #FBRC myth busting.
The first objection I hear all the time to passing an #FBRC bill is:

"We don't have the money!"
Read.
The.
Bill.

The bill calls for a phased-in implementation done by annual meetings to agree among Gov-House-Senate on that year's implementation.
It's a commitment and it's a plan.
Read 27 tweets
May 29, 2018
Heading Worcester City Hall-ward, as the school budget is before City Council at 4-ish.

Tweeting to follow.
Liveblog will go up here: who-cester.blogspot.com/2018/05/worces… Some "things to look for" already posted.
if you're a WPS budget bingo player, you'll want to have:

"largest sector of the Worcester budget"
(the person saying it gets minus points for somehow thinking they're allocating Ch.70)
Read 35 tweets

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