Word: barbiana
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...enter the higher strata. Except for the most unusual of an already unusual group, the upwardly mobile are eager to abandon their lower class orientations and, through a subtle process of cultural osmosis, come to completely identify with the new social environment they desire. As the Schoolboys of Barbiana would put it in their book "Letter to a Teacher": "...they are received like brothers by the rich and are soon rewarded with all their defects. The final outcome: 100 per cent daddy's boys...
While the statistics cited in Letter to a Teacher specifically address problem of the Italian school system, the boys' observations are relevant to American education, too. Their school, located in a church in the farming village of Barbiana, was started for children who have failed or who have nearly failed public school. Because the parents of girls from town believe that a woman can live her life with the brains of a hen, only boys attend the school, which the authors acknowledge as "racism." However, like Herbert Kohl's sixth grade children in Harlem or the children in George Dennison...
| 1 |