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Dream Not of Other Worlds
Huston Diehl
Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School,1970
University of Minnesota
April 2007
On Sale: April 1, 2007
276 pages ISBN: 0877459967 EAN: 9780877459965 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Historical
When Huston Diehl began teaching a fourth-grade class in a
"Negro" elementary school in rural Louisa County, Virginia,
the school’s white superintendent assured her that he didn't
expect her to teach "those children" anything. She
soon discovered how these low expectations, widely shared by
the white community, impeded her students' ability to learn.
With its overcrowded classrooms, poorly trained teachers,
empty bookshelves, and meager supplies, her segregated
school was vastly inferior to the county's white elementary
schools, and the message it sent her students was clear:
"dream not of other worlds."
In her often lyrical
memoir, Diehl reveals how, in the intimacy of the classroom,
her students reached out to her, a young white northerner,
and shared their fears, anxieties, and personal
beliefs. Repeatedly surprised and challenged by her
students, Diehl questions her long-standing middle-class
assumptions and confronts her own prejudices. In doing so,
she eloquently reflects on what the students taught her
about the hurt of bigotry and the humiliation of poverty as
well as dignity, courage, and resiliency. Set in the
waning days of the Jim Crow South, Dream Not of Other
Worlds chronicles an important moment in American
history. Diehl examines the history of black education in
the South and narrates the dramatic struggle to integrate
Virginia's public schools. Meeting with some of her former
students and colleagues and visiting the school where she
once taught, she considers what has--and has not--changed
after more than thirty years of integrated schooling. This
provocative book raises many issues that are of urgent
concern today: the continuing social consequences of
segregated schools, the role of public education in American
society, and the challenges of educating minority and poor
children.
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