Educators as "Seed People" Growing a New Future

Abstract

In the following text of her Dewitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Distinguished Lecture at the 2003 AERA annual meeting, Lisa Delpit argues that educators must look beyond standardized test scores and scripted instructional programs if their desire is to educate all children. Educators must cease questioning the capacity of low income, students of color and, instead, create rigorous, engaging instruction based on knowing who the students are, including their cultural, intellectual, historical, and political legacies. Furthermore, they must look to pre-integration African-American institutions where “counternarratives” were developed to affirm Black intelligence and provide the motivation for students to achieve.