Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School,1970 (Sightline Books) - Hardcover

Diehl, Huston

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9780877459965: Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School,1970 (Sightline Books)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0877459967 ISBN 13: 9780877459965

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2007

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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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About the Author:

Huston Diehl is professor of English at the University of Iowa and a
Collegiate Fellow of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. An
award-winning teacher, she has published a number of essays on pedagogy
as well as many articles on Renaissance literature. She is the author
of An Index of Icons in English Emblem Books and Staging Reform,
Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern
England.

From Booklist:

In a case of a teacher learning as much if not more than her students, Diehl remembers a particularly meaningful period in her life--a relatively brief period, to be sure, but one with resonance. Right out of college with no training for the job at hand, she was hired to teach fourth grade in a segregated black elementary school in rural Virginia. Diehl was not a southerner and admits she had no previous exposure to black culture. Added to that, she was her students' first white teacher. She insists her tenure in that school was a failure, but that is debatable; without question, her book is not a failure. Learning to comprehend her students' dialect was the first hurdle, but establishing authority over them without resorting to spanking proved equally difficult. Woven into her at-once serious and humorous account is the history of black presence in the county in which she taught and background on how she came to write this book. Brad Hooper
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

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