Best 9 quotes of Lisa Delpit on MyQuotes

If the curriculum we use to teach our children does not connect in positive ways to the culture young people bring to school, it is doomed to failure.

Progressive white teachers seem to say to their black students 'Let me help you find your voice. I promise not to criticize one note as you search for your song'. But the black teachers say 'I've heard your song loud and clear. Now I want to teach you to harmonize with the rest of the world.

Those with power are frequently least aware of -- or least willing to acknowledge -- its existence [and] those with less power are often most aware of its existence.

We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment -- and that is not easy ... but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue.

When one 'we' gets to determine standards for all 'we's' then some 'we's' are in trouble.

One still-vivid example is when one of my professors asked me about my educational background. I explained to him that I grew up in an all-black neighborhood, had gone to segregated all-black schools, with all-black teachers until my last years in high school. With a smile of what I am sure he thought was encouragement, he asked, "How in the world did you ever learn how to write?" He had no clue that he had insulted my community, my family, and my teachers.

Successful instruction is constant, rigorous, integrated across disciplines, connected to students' lived cultures, connected to their intellectual legacies, engaging, and designed for problem solving that is useful beyond the classroom.

We all mouth the mantra "All children can learn." I would modify the chant to "All children do learn." It’s just that some of them learn that we expect them to be successful, and some learn from us that they are dumb. Whatever we believe, they learn.

While it is certainly true that inequity, family issues, poverty, crime, and so forth all affect poor children's learning opportunities, British educator Peter Mortimore found that the quality of teaching has six to ten times as much impact on achievement as all other factors combined.