Due Tuesday, May 4, 2004

1) Locate a passage in Tan and a passage in Baldwin that helps you think about the idea of a “self-fulfilling prophesy” in the following Richards quote. “Like many faculty members at the college, including other minority professors, I too have casually assumed that black students do poorly or fail in the sciences or in any subject that demands high levels of analytic thought, like foreign languages. The assumption of that inadequacy may create a self-fulfilling prophesy, leading to slackened standards and lowered demands for minority-student achievement” (Richards 634).

2) Baldwin writes that “a child cannot be taught by anyone whose demand, essentially, is that the child repudiate his experience, and all that gives him sustenance, and enter a limbo in which he will no longer be black, and in which he knows that he can never become white” (534). Can we see Tan’s decision to become a writer as an example of someone who refuses to “repudiate” experience in pursuing learning? Write a paragraph that connects Tan and Baldwin to explore the issue of teaching and learning.

3) Locate one more connection between Richards and Baldwin.

4) Locate one more connection between Richards and Tan.

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