Meier, "Why can't she Remeber that"

Meghan Haggerty
Talking Points

"Despite their diverse backgrounds, all children bring to school rich linguistic abilites aquired through social interaction in their homes and communities"
This is such a true statement and it really shows you how important it is to interact with your children while they are developing so they have an easy time knowing how to interact with others and especially children their own age.

"From book reading experiences, many children acquire an extensive book-based vocabulary an absorb important cultural lessons about things like gender roles, family relationships, and the nature of friendship"
It is important to read to your children when they are younger and developing because this another way they learn how to interact with others by how the characters in the story interact with each other, some of the story should show postive ways of interacting with each other but also show how not to act with other too. It is teaching them right from wrong and other moral situations by a story that they will enjoy.

"Children who do not have many early book reading experiences learn their cultural lessons through interactions with family and other community members, from oral stories, and from observations of other people's behavior"
Meaning that if the family is not orientated in this way they have other ways of experiencing the culture and interactions they need without being read to every night.


What I made of this from reading the article that it is very important to make sure that your children are informed of not only their culture but of other people's. It is good to read to them about experiences of friendship in other cultures and teach them right from wrong through social interactions and stories. But even if your child does not have the opportunity to have a book read to them every single night it is okay to teach them through interactions in the community and oral stories too, just do the best that you can with your children and make them culturally aware so they are not blind to the realities of the world.

McIntosh "White Privilege" Talking Points

Meghan Haggerty

• "Through work to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged."

I think men do this because they do not want to give up the powers of influence that they know they have so therefore they are willing to be able to sympathize with the women and try and make her feel better but they will not actually take any less power away from themselves to give to the women.

• As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege which puts me at an advantage

When you are a white person you never actually realize what you do is taken for granted and a lot of people would love to take you place. I also think you can not truly understand racism unless you have experienced it, witnessing it and reading about it is totally not the same.

• My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.

She never knew that she maybe oppressed others and could be taken as a racist because she never thought she was doing anything wrong. She never saw herself as an advantaged person because she never realized or was around an environment that showed her that she truly was blessed and had a better chance at life than others. She always just thought that she was an individual with goals and morals to succeed.


McIntosh seemed like most white people when it came to realizing white privilege, they don't see that it is all around us because they had never been put in a situation before that showed them that some people are at a more disadvantaged then they are. She had learned about racism in school but she never thought that she had been an oppressor because she was just trying to live up to her goals and never thought she was getting more opportunities because she was white. And in the beginning of the article we see that the men have a greater advanced than women do, especially white men they are on top. This is most like the Johnson article we read with SCWAAMP and with Delpits Culture of Power, they talk about white privilege and the order of life and how some people see how people should live and who should be on top.

All about me :)

This is my first blog!

My name is Meghan Katherine Haggerty and I am a sophmore at Rhode Island College. So far my classes are going okay but my life seems to be a bit hectic due to being a full time student and working two jobs, trying to keep up with a social life is sometimes difficult. But as the semester goes on I know that it will be easier to deal with. When I'm not in class and when I'm not at work you can usually find me watching tv and doing my homework with casey martel, or michael haggerty :). I love to coach cheerleading and reading is one of the only ways I know how to relax, that and shoe shopping because its very fun, retail therapy is the greatest!

Well thats all for now :)

- Megg