Culture of Power

The teachers want to be responsive to all of their students. However, it is evident there is a culture of power and some students who do not share the dominant middle class cultural background of the teacher are unwittingly silenced (Delpit, 1988). In this section, I show how some middle class teachers look at life through their middle class lens and may fail to recognize the perspective of low-income families. This culture of power serves to maintain the more powerful middle class group above the low-income families.

The school, as an institution run by the middle class, promotes middle class values, beliefs and ways of acting. Delpit (1995) feels that the educators are oblivious that this is even happening since they cannot see those different from themselves, looking through "their own culturally clouded vision" (p. xiv). At times, these teachers become frustrated trying to understand and explain the behaviour of low-income students, often not fully aware of the circumstances of their lives and the many challenges and barriers that they face on a daily basis. Data from this section was drawn from my field notes, classroom observations, informal discussions I had with the school staff and interviews with the parents.

Delpit (1988) proposes the inclusion of the following five aspects of power in her definition of the culture of power: (a) enacting power issues in classrooms; (b) learning the code for the culture of power; (c) defining the rules of the culture of power; (d) acquiring power; and (e) recognizing the power. Each of these will be discussed individually in the sections that follow.