Sonia Nieto Quotes

My greatest challenge as a teacher educator has been to help white students and students of color understand that racism is not simply a personal attitude or individual disposition and that feeling guilty or “being nice” are not enough to combat racism.

Mary Ginley, a gifted white teacher, articulated this idea beautifully in a journal entry for one of my classes: "School is a foreign land to most kids (where else in the world would you spend time circling answers and filling in the blanks?), but the more distant a child’s culture and language are from the culture and language of school, the more at risk that child is. A warm, friendly, helpful teacher is nice but it isn’t enough. We have plenty of warm friendly teachers who tell the kids nicely to forget their Spanish and ask mommy and daddy to speak to them in English at home; who give them easier tasks so they won’t feel badly when the work becomes difficult; who never learn about what life is like at home or what they eat or what music they like or what stories they have been told or what their history is. Instead, we smile and give them a hug and tell them to eat our food and listen to our stories and dance to our music. We teach them to read with our words and wonder why it’s so hard for them. We ask them to sit quietly and we tell them what’s important and what they must know to 'get ready for the next grade.' And we never ask them who they are and where they want to go.

Teachers may think of caring as unconditional praise, or as quickly incorporating cultural components into the curriculum, or even as lowering standards. On the contrary, others have argued, an “ethic of care” means a combination of respect, admiration, and rigorous standards.