wendylychen's blog
Lingering thoughts from the discussion
Black/White Paradigm? What about Asians in America?
As an Asain, I wasn't quite sure about how I personally related to the discussion of "white privillege" and black opression. How do Asian Americans such as East Asians and South East Asians fit into the picture because the black/white paradigm does not fit the Asian American experience.
As an individual from a privileged background as well, I guess I would probably associatte myself with "whites" but at the same time Asian Americans also had a history of being oppressed when they first arrived in America. In that sense, Asian American can be considered "black" as well because they were also heavily discriminated against, such as the Chinese Exlcusion Act (1882) where the U.S banned Chinese Immigration and the Japanese Internment Camps (1942) where 110,000 Japanese Americans were were forced to live in "exclusion zones".
It's interesting to see how Asians have been excluded or neglected from all my U.S History text books throughout my education. Despite the fact, I went to a predominantly Asian school with an American educiation system in Shanghai. We learned about White colonization and Black slavery but our curriculum never taught us anything about Asian American (Yellow?) history/oppression. It seems that while Blacks deal with second-class citizenship, Asian Americans are viewed as outsiders whom access is denied.
Critical Analysis of Freire
“I am a ‘conditioned’ being, capable of going beyond my own conditioning”
There were many times while I was reading The Pedagogy of Freedom, where I was nodding in agreement to many of the theoretical concepts discussed by Paulo Freire. The book may have seemed a bit excessive in really “hammering” the main points repeatedly, and some of the concepts could have benefited from more relatable examples to help the readers who struggled with abstractness of his thinking. However, personally I felt that the book really encompassed my perspectives on the pedagogy, duty and the responsibility of what it means to be a teacher.
My Educational Autobiography
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Television Schooling- Sesame Street, Barney, Disney, Thomas The Tank Engine, Mary Poppins
Chapter 2: The First Day of School- Montessori School
Chapter 3: The Big Move to China- Crying in Chinese Local School
Chapter 4: The School Next to the Zoo- Rainbow Bridge International School
Chapter 4: The Carefree Elementary Years- Yew Chung International School
Chapter 5: The Bittersweet Years - Shanghai American School
A Place Unlike My Own
Chapter 6: Untititled - Bryn Mawr College
A Place Unlike My Own
