In the News (ABC News): “New research from New York University found that public school curriculum is falling short in providing “culturally responsive” education, a blind spot that researchers believe could be failing students across the country. …

“‘Culturally responsive’ education infuses the backgrounds, cultures, identities, and lived experiences of the students into the instruction of a classroom. These identities inform a teacher’s communication style, the tools they use in their lessons, and more, according to researchers from NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools.

“For example, educator and curriculum evaluator Sara Carroll-Muniz said in a press conference that when her students were having difficulty understanding allusion in poetry, she instead sought it out in songs they loved.

“‘We’re leaning on a lot of old, white poetry to try to get this message across and it just wasn’t clicking,’ Carroll-Muniz said at the press conference. ‘Hip-hop is rife with allusion … it’s just such a wonderful source for exploring that.’ “

How do you like the idea that, for example, arias in biology and lyrical songs in higher mathematics are being created? What will happen if we teach and instruct in this way?

Answer: Of course it will be clearer to the students.

Question: So they do not need to make any effort to understand?

Answer: None of this is needed. What for? It should get in easily in a sensory way.

Question: So we must work according to them, according to the students. If a student wants to, let him sing higher mathematics. What do you think of this way of teaching? Do you like it? Would you like to study in such a school?

Answer: I think it would help many people absorb mathematics, physics, and so on. All of this can be transferred to very simple things.

Question: You keep saying that the main thing is not even education, but the process of upbringing. Does it exist in this?

Answer: There is definitely the process of upbringing here. They teach students how to teach others, younger ones and so on.

Question: Can you say that when they sing together in class, then this is a process of rapprochement?

Answer: Rapprochement and adaptation. Of course.

Question: That is, is everything that is transferred to joint singing, to joint action, is collected in a “piggy bank”?

Answer: Yes, of course. Thus, in general, you can achieve a lot of success. But who needs it, just between us?

Question: You believe that it is so good that no one needs it as a result. And if it were bad, then maybe someone would need it?

Answer: This is how things work.

Question: So we do not want our children to rush to school to be willing to be together in class?

Answer: What is the point of this?! There is a thug waiting for them there, beating them, taking away their lunch money and things like that. I know that this is how it goes.

Question: Do we not need such a gentle upbringing?

Answer: We need a different upbringing. One in which the most ignorant students will understand that you need to be in good connection and in good relationships with each other. Otherwise, their society will reject them.

It is the most terrible thing when no one says hello to you, when you are rejected, when everyone laughs at you, and the girl you adored yesterday is puffed up and walks past you. These are all very good educational methods.

Question: So, suppose these are methods of education and upbringing. Do you mean tough methods of upbringing?

Answer: Yes, in the beginning this is what is needed, of course. If I am not connected with the collective by good ties, then nothing will help me.

Question: So are you saying to throw all education out of your head because nobody needs it? I exaggerate on purpose.

Answer: This is not an exaggeration. This is the foundation.

Question: And to start to take care of the connection in the classroom, the real connection, so that it becomes the most essential and important thing? And then add to this all the education, everything, absolutely everything.

Answer: Everything else will come on top of this.

Question: Will they ever want to implement this?

Answer: For this you just need good educators who know how to get into the students’ hearts, correctly distribute such roles among them, and somehow create such an atmosphere.

Question: Should educators themselves relate to each other in this spirit?

Answer: This is still far away, of course. And there is no way we can educate teachers! But maybe, it will be possible to come to an agreement with them so that they first unite in the teachers’ room, and then, in this state, go to the classroom. And then we will get good results in everything: kindness in the first place, mutual assistance, and the desire to study better.

Question: Will we get this too?

Answer: Absolutely, because otherwise we will let others down, and our students themselves will sneer at us. And so on.

Question: That is, our class should be the best, we should all be the best together. Is this also a conclusion?

Answer: Yes, but we should not point out that we should be better than others.

Question: Can educational bodies, ministries of education and upbringing, still take this as a basis?

Answer: No. This will be in real demand when you can pay teachers well.

Comment: To pay teachers, and then they will build the process like this? But they themselves should want this to happen in the classroom, right?

My Response: The point is that it will not last long because they do not have that kind of upbringing yet. You have to spark their interest.

Question: But money does have a serious effect here, doesn’t it?

Answer: Of course material interest does have an effect. That is, there are two components here: material interest and ideological interest.

Question: Can teachers spark each other with ideas?

Answer: I do not think so.

Question: Do you remember your first teacher? I remember you speaking about her with such warmth.

Answer: Oh! She was a special woman—young and married to a military man at the time she was teaching us. We lived on the edge of a military garrison. He often met her on the way back from work. I remember myself waving to him.

She was very, very devoted to us. She loved us.

Question: Maybe this is the key to real success?

Answer: Yes. But then the next year I moved to another school. It was a different life.

Question: If a teacher lives like this loving the class, loving the students… Or will this not last long as well?

Answer: This has stayed with me for the rest of my life. These are childhood experiences.

They gave me an example of what the first teacher could be.

Question: We started with rap, with an attempt to transfer the material to music understandable for a child, and then things will advance. What needs to be done to still have this atmosphere in the classroom?

Answer: If teachers can speak confidentially with children, then they can easily set the children on the right attitude to studies, to life, and to others.

Question: But in this way or another, you say it should go through the connection that exists in class?

Answer: Yes. This is the main thing. This is the basis.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 11/10/22

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