Morals and the Status Quo

In Cathy Benedict’s article, she states, “We need to step back and check whether our assumptions about students---differences in their perceptions of discipline and of structure, differences between their sense of order and our own---stem from our particular dominant status quo experience.” I believe that this statement brings up the question of morals. Each of us was raised in a different experience with different morals and modes of proper behavior. These experiences could have to do with our religious beliefs, culture, or location of childhood. People with similar upbringings tend to have different morals in their later years. Benedict states that we must be aware of our students’ different morals and proper behaviors. However, this is extremely difficult. Because 90% of teachers are white, those teachers were raised with similar morals. Therefore, the white middle class moral system is taught in the classroom. I do not believe that teachers are trying to retain the status quo. The issue of schools repeating the dominant power structure could be due to the teachers’ individual morals.