When there’s no Yellow Brick Road

Authors

  • Gloria Ladson-Billings University of Wisconsin, Madison

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v28.2967

Abstract

I have framed this essay based on one of my all-time favorite films, The Wizard of Oz. I actually saw the film in the theater at a Saturday matinee and I was fascinated by Judy Garland’s journey from a small Kansas community to the magical land of Oz. When she ended up in Oz Dorothy was directed to “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” as a way to get to the Emerald City. For a working class, Black girl like me growing up in the pre-Civil Rights era, there was no yellow brick road to follow to the Emerald City. I was going to have to actually make the road. Fortunately, I would encounter “road pavers” along the way that made my journey possible. This essay describes a version of that journey.

 

References

Ladson-Billings, G. (1990). Like lightning in a bottle: Attempting to capture the pedagogical excellence of successful teachers of Black students. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 3, 335-344.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The Dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. Jossey Bass.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2001). Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms. Jossey Bass.

Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97, 47-68.

Tate, W. F., Ladson-Billings, G., & Grant, C.A. (1993). The Brown decision revisited: Mathematizing social problems. Educational Policy, 7, 255-275.

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Published

2021-01-27

How to Cite

Ladson-Billings, G. (2021). When there’s no Yellow Brick Road. Education Review, 28. https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v28.2967

Issue

Vol. 28 (2021)

Section

Acquired Wisdom

License

Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas is supported by the Scholarly Communications Group at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review. Readers are free to copy, display, distribute, and adapt this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Review, the changes are identified, and the same license applies to the derivative work. More details of this Creative Commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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