Delpit Talking Points

Lisa Delpit, the author of Other People's Children, argues that children can be best taught not by way of skills or process, but with a combination of methods including skills, process, and input from adult members of the culture of the children being taught. She claims that “the culture of power” is prevalent in all classrooms by way of textbooks, curriculum development, intelligence assessments, and teachers having power over students. Within her text, Delpit provides some wonderful examples of how effective teaching is implemented in some classrooms where children who are not part of “the culture of power” are in the majority.
Delpit begins her article by suggesting that there is a debate of whether teaching methods of skill or process are more effective in teaching children who are not part of the "culture of power." She argues that black teachers’ opinions on this issue are often ignored by white teachers, and therefore; many black teachers have given up trying to prove that their methods of teaching are more effective. White teachers tend to base their methods of teaching on research while black teachers base their methods of teaching on experience, which appears inferior to the arguments of white people, who make up "the culture of power."
Delpit suggests that there are implicit codes in “the culture of power” that people outside of our culture are not aware of unless they are explicitly expressed. She claims that white parents and teachers tend to give more implicitly expressed directions to children, while black parents and teachers give more explicit directions. This can become very confusing for a child who is black and in a white teacher’s classroom.
Lisa Delpit expresses that black parents want their child to learn different things in school than white parents. White parents want their children to learn how to become independent thinkers, while black parents want their children to learn how to become successful living and working in “the culture of power.” In conclusion, Delpit claims that people of different cultures appreciate different methods of teaching. They want to be able to maintain their own culture, while learning the codes of “the culture of power” in order to obtain credibility in a white middle and upper class society.