ABSTRACT
It is with pleasure that I write this brief commentary on the SJEP, whose work I have admired since its inception. As Julio Cammarota mentions in his section of the chapter, the SJEP project has commonalities with the “Funds of Knowledge” research my colleagues and I have conducted (González, Moll, and Amanti, 2005). In much of our work, we attempted to document the knowledge base of households by establishing relations of trust that would allow us to interact with families in ways that we could learn from them. SJEP also depends on developing such relations, in its case with adolescents, while displaying a deep sense of respect for their intellect, which I consider a key aspect of its pedagogy. In contrast to the dogmatic pedagogies sponsored by the state, with its stultifying testing regime and rigid curricula, the SJEP engages students in challenging, relevant, and compelling intellectual work with practical and political consequences. Th ere is nothing “compensatory” about these eff orts; it involves rigorous inquiry about issues that matter to the students and their communities.
