Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete

Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete
By: Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade

  • Hokey Hope: If urban youth just work hard, pay attention, and play by the rules, then they will go to college and live out the American Dream. This kind of hope ignores the lis of inequalities that impact the lives if urban youth.
  • Mythical Hope: Believing that a single event can provide the healing for long term suffering. An example is Obama being elected means racism does not exist anymore. Mythical hope denies the suffering by celebrating individual exceptions. 
  • Hope Deferred: Misinterpretations of research. Instead of blaming the victim, they hope for a change of a future reformed society. Teachers offer this hope by asking their students to set their sights on a distant future well being, which is often highly unlikely. When students realize this, their hope is deferred. 
  • Critical Hope: A committed and active struggle against the evidence to change the inequalities. 
    • Material Hope: Comes from a sense of control young people have when given the resources. Teachers best "material" they have to offer is quality teaching. Teachers can do this by taking the time to make things relevant for students. Teach using life. 
    • Socratic Hope: "Requires both teachers and students to examine lives and actions within an unjust society to share the sensibility that pain may pave the path to justice." Treat righteous indignation as a strength rather than something to be punished. 
    • Audacious Hope: "First, it boldly stands in solidarity with urban communities, sharing the burden of their undeserved suffering as a manifestation of a humanizing hope in our collective capacity for healing. Second, critical hope audaciously defies the dominant ideology of defense, entitlement, and preservation of privileged bodies at the expense of the policing, disposal, and dispossession of marginalized “others.”"

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