Nearly three decades ago, researcher Gloria Ladson-Billings set out to understand what effective teaching of Black students looks like. Too often, she said, Black children were considered deficient and deviant鈥攂ut in some classrooms, they were thriving. What were those teachers doing differently?
The need for Ladson-Billings鈥� work still holds true today, as Black students continue to lag behind their white peers on standardized test scores and are disciplined at higher rates, particularly by white teachers. A body of research has affirmed Ladson-Billings鈥� conclusions鈥攖hat the practices of culturally relevant teaching can lead to students, and especially students of color, having more academic success, increased engagement in the content, better attendance, and a stronger perception of themselves as capable learners.
Even so, some of this work has come under the microscope, as conservative lawmakers across the country push to restrict how race is discussed in classrooms. The crusade against the academic concept of critical race theory鈥攐f which Ladson-Billings is a leading scholar鈥攊s underpinned by the fear that children are being taught to view themselves as oppressors or the oppressed. Some school programs or curricula that refer to culturally relevant teaching have been called into question by parents, policymakers, and other community members.
Education Week spoke to Ladson-Billings, who is a professor emerita of urban education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about what culturally relevant teaching looks like in the classroom and her thoughts on the national debate about critical race theory and schools. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How do you define culturally relevant teaching in 2022? Is it different from how you originated this work?
I think it鈥檚 still the same. There are three components. One, of course, is student learning鈥攜ou have to have a focus on student learning, that鈥檚 the reason people send their kids to school, that鈥檚 our reason for being.
The second is what I call cultural competence. By that, I mean the ability of students to draw on their own backgrounds, languages, histories, customs, and experiences as they gain fluency and facility in at least one other culture. If you think in terms of Black and brown kids, that one other culture is usually going to be the mainstream culture, but we don鈥檛 want their home language denigrated, we don鈥檛 want their home customs denigrated. We often use those home customs and traditions as analogies or metaphors for understanding this new culture. Also, I want to be clear that when I say cultural competence, it doesn鈥檛 leave white middle class kids off the hook. Even though schools are pretty much organized around their culture, they are going to have to be able to communicate with people in a lot of different places, in a lot of different circumstances.
The third piece is the piece that I call the most-ignored鈥攃ritical consciousness. People think, 鈥淥h, I don鈥檛 want to get involved in that. I shouldn鈥檛 have anything to do with politics.鈥� Well, you shouldn鈥檛 have anything to do with partisanship. But the truth of the matter is, we live in a political context. The critical consciousness is what I call the 鈥渟o what鈥� piece. We teach kids all kinds of things, and kids will say, 鈥淥K, so we learned this, so what? We鈥檙e not going to have to use this, what is this any good for?鈥� And we tend to give them very weak answers. We tell them things like, 鈥淥h, you鈥檙e going to need this one day.鈥� Well, somewhere around 4th grade, they figure out, 鈥淚鈥檓 not ever going to need this.鈥� So we鈥檝e got to be able to show our students that what they are learning can have applications to the problems that they are confronting in their daily lives.
What I think has changed over time is when I did this research starting in the late 1980s, I was in elementary classrooms. What I was missing was the influence and the impact of youth culture. You can be talking about contributions of Black people鈥擱osa Parks, Sojourner Truth, whatever鈥攂ut teenagers are making culture. They are making culture through music, through art, through fashion, through language. So I would say that in this iteration of my work, I鈥檝e been looking very carefully at the role that youth culture plays in informing students and in shaping what I would call a culturally relevant approach to teaching.
You people may ask, 鈥淲ell, isn鈥檛 what you described just good teaching?鈥� And your response was, 鈥淚ndeed, but why does so little of it seem to occur in classrooms with mostly Black students?鈥� Do you think that鈥檚 still the case, almost 30 years later?
I wish I could say no, but if there鈥檚 anything that I think Black and brown children suffer from, it is under-teaching. So much of their school day is caught up in policing their bodies鈥斺�渟it here, keep your mouth closed, put your hands there鈥濃�攖hat very little of it is really pushing them intellectually. Even just the insistence that everything has to be geared toward a standardized test so bankrupts the educational experience. 鈥� It鈥檚 as if we believe we can punish our way to success.
Particularly in those districts serving our most-vulnerable kids, all we keep hearing about is, 鈥淲e gotta get the reading scores up. We gotta get the math scores up.鈥� With that particular mandate, it鈥檚 very difficult to do more-innovative, more-creative鈥攏ot just teaching, but assessments. Why does the assessment have to only be a test? Why couldn鈥檛 it be a performance? Why couldn鈥檛 it be an exhibit? That鈥檚 exactly what happens to kids in private schools鈥攖hey get all kinds of opportunities to display their knowledge and skills.
I鈥檝e seen critics saying that culturally relevant teaching is a rebrand or a part of critical race theory. What do you make of that?
Well, I have to laugh at that. I really do. Critical race theory doesn鈥檛 have anything to do with K-12 curriculum. At all. It鈥檚 interesting because Christopher Rufo from the Manhattan Institute said in his own words that . Guess what else they said is critical race theory? Social-emotional learning. It鈥檚 everything. If I don鈥檛 like it, it鈥檚 critical race theory. It鈥檚 probably feminism. It鈥檚 probably special education. It鈥檚 probably bilingual education. It鈥檚 whatever I don鈥檛 like.
I just think it鈥檚 very sad that people are not reading deep enough to see that they are being misled, and that this is misinformation that is being fed to them.
You鈥檙e one of the first scholars to apply critical race theory to education policy research. Was your work with culturally relevant pedagogy informed by critical race theory tenets?
No. I started that work earlier. Culturally relevant pedagogy, I wrote that proposal in 鈥�88, it got funded by the Spencer Foundation in 鈥�89. I didn鈥檛 start reading critical race theory until 鈥�91 when I got to Wisconsin, and I didn鈥檛 publish anything until 鈥�95.
Yet some of the legislation that鈥檚 been introduced could limit culturally relevant teaching in schools. How do you respond to that?
The attack on anything that allows more participation and moves us toward equity is going full force. I don鈥檛 know that there鈥檚 anything that will persuade someone who is convinced that somehow they鈥檙e not getting a fair shake. That giving someone else an opportunity diminishes them. I mean, that鈥檚 the mindset. If you do this with these kids, then you鈥檙e not giving my kids [the same opportunity], or you鈥檙e indoctrinating my kids. Those sentiments really reflect the larger public debate, and what鈥檚 starting to happen is, no matter what the issue is, we have people who decided they鈥檙e going to take the opposite side. 鈥� It鈥檚 hard to have an actual deliberative debate if people don鈥檛 even know what they鈥檙e talking about.
So where does that leave schools that are trying to do this work?
I think that schools that are segregated for the most part鈥攁nd unfortunately 60 percent of Black and brown kids do attend segregated schools鈥攚ill be fine because nobody cares what we teach them. We [as a society] really don鈥檛. We spend little time in their classrooms. The only thing we care about with these kids is that they鈥檙e not out in the streets hurting somebody. That鈥檚 our image of those kids.
The place that becomes difficult is the place where I think the work is most needed, and that is in segregated white schools. 69传媒 in the suburbs, schools serving the wealthiest kids. Unfortunately, what happens is we avoid these topics. We avoid these issues, and then [the students] go to college, and they鈥檙e confronted with people from all over and experience people who鈥檝e had different experiences. And then they鈥檙e angry because, why didn鈥檛 I know this? Why didn鈥檛 anybody tell me this?
I think a perfect example of the conflation of the notion of critical race theory and 鈥渁nything I don鈥檛 like鈥� is . That woman [author Nikole Hannah-Jones] has nothing to do with critical race theory whatsoever. And in fact, nobody was [saying it was] until someone decided we鈥檙e just going to put this in here with all the stuff we don鈥檛 like.
I did a talk for Stanford about this debate about 1619 versus the 1776 [Report, released by a commission appointed by then-President Donald Trump that emphasizes 鈥減atriotic education鈥�]. And I said if I were still teaching the adolescents U.S. history, they鈥檇 have to read both documents. I don鈥檛 have a problem reading a document that disagrees with my perspective. But we鈥檝e got to be able to look at, what does the evidence say? What is it that is so objectionable about one versus the other? That鈥檚 how you develop this critical consciousness. The idea is not to have students come up believing what you believe, but it is to have them in a place where they can defend what they believe.
Culturally relevant teaching is probably one of the biggest [drivers] of parent involvement and parent engagement. While the debate is about, 鈥測ou鈥檙e not letting parents have their say,鈥� culturally relevant pedagogy has always encouraged parents and community members to participate in schools and classrooms. If that鈥檚 something people feel like they鈥檝e been walled off from, culturally relevant pedagogy is not what鈥檚 done it for them. I鈥檝e always said that parents should be in classrooms and engaged in what鈥檚 happening and raising questions and participating and sharing.
