RE: MULTICULTURALISM
- How are you supposed to integrate a whole unit on a different culture but still keep the main curriculum intact? Where is the time? (Rachel)
- How would you bring about the conversation with principals and parents that multicultural education needs to be brought into schools? Where do you start? (Molly)
- How can we gain administrative support to change the curriculum when administrators are so focused on meeting AYP and NCLB? (Larissa)
RE: RACISM
- Why is racism (historically and currently) always a black/white issue? Why is it that whites are always accused of being the problem? (Marla)
- What conditions still exist today that help racism continue? How can we as teachers work on discovering these conditions and help our students discover them, too? What can we (and our students) do to try to start changing these conditions? (Shannon)
RE: COLUMBUS/ZINN/HOW TO TEACH HISTORY (These also relate to the "To teach or not to teach..." post below.)
- How do you use A People's History and the issues it raises in a primary grade? How can you take this information and make it understandable to a first or second grader? (Sara O.)
- Obviously, teachers and others have glamorized and treated Columbus as a hero, omitting the harsh facts. How can teachers, especially at the primary levels, instruct students about brutal truths in history in a way that they understand? (Kaitlin S.)
- Is it really bad to sugarcoat certain aspects of history for younger grade levels? (Michelle M.)
- The real question is: Which culture is more advanced? Advanced does not necessarily mean technologically advanced or more wealthy. What is really savage? Is it killing people or living in huts? What does it mean to be civilized? (Mary)
9 comments:
In regard to Michelle M's comment, I do think it is bad to sugarcoat history for younger children. I think we are doing them a disadvantage for two reasons. 1. We are telling them something that is either entirely untrue or highly exaggerated. 2. We are forcing them to unlearn information that they re-learn year after year. I think it is better to students the truth from the start and to add the "horrors" along the way as they are able to emotionally handle it. So, for example, young students can study the origins of settlers in this country (even dating back to before Columbus) - note, in doing so, Columbus doesn't even have to be discussed. Then, as students reach the intermediate grades or higher, they can start to learn about some of the more devastating truths about our history. I know when I first learned of the truths in Middle School, I was furious because I felt lied to and curious because I wanted to know more about the truth. If teachers start implementing these models, and filtering it throughout cohorts of students, I think we as new teachers have the potential to make a really positive change in our educational system.
To comment on Marla's question, I just took a social foundations class last semester. It seemed that all we talked about in my EAF class was racism and why it exists. One day there was a particularly heated argument about whether other races can be racist, or if it is just white people who can be racist. There were several people, along with the teacher, who believed that other races besides whites did not have the ability to be racist because they did not have the ability to oppress whites. The way it was explained to us is that for someone to be racist, they have to have the ability to take away power from another race. We were told that since in the United States, no one could take power away from white people, then they could not be racist. I don't agree with this at all, and it is pretty obvious why this became such a heated discussion in class, but it may somewhat explain why whites are seen as the only one's at fault.
In response to Shannon's question about racism, I think that it is very difficult to pinpoint exactly how and why racism still exists. I think a good way to find out the views of students is to have a whole class discussion or have students write their answers. Obviously, racism is learned, and students are influenced by families, friends, and even teachers. It is important to point out racism in more than black/white situations. It is important for students to understand that almost all groups of people have been mistreated throughout history. What's important is to learn that these treatments are not right. It is so important for students to learn to be tolerant and accepting of everyone. People need to be educated and learn to think for themselves as well. Students need to learn to think for themselves and understand that being racist is not the way to be.
In regards to racism, I think that the racism that people experience today is very different than the racism that people experienced in years ago in American history. The way that your teacher was approaching racism, willit11, seems to me as an approach that would have been taken during the time of slavery. Back then racism was an issue of oppression. The whites kept the blacks under control through blatant cruelty and injustice. They physically enslaved them. Since the blacks could not physically enslave the whites, it would be fair to say that the whites were the only racist ones. But today, I think racism has become a much more complicated and multi-dimensional issue. In my opinion, it is more of a mentality than anything. It is a subtle look, it is the stereotypes imbedded in ones head, it is thinking or acting like you are better than someone else based on race alone. The cruelty and injustice cannot always be seen as it was many years ago. Thus, I think that it is possible for non-whites to be racist, and I think that it occurs often. Anytime that a person is in a environment in which they are part of the majority, regardless of what race they are, it is easy to slip into a racist mentality when someone of the minority comes along. It can happen with any race. That is just my opinion.
I agree with what Marla said about Michelle M's comment. I do not think it is okay for teachers to sugarcoat history for younger children. There are obviously things you should not tell young students, but I think that telling them false information, or making them believe what they've heard is the only view on a topic, is harming them in the end.
Going along with what Marla said in her second point, I think teachers are better off giving just a little bit of information to students about a topic. I am in a fifth grade classroom, and as I was looking through their social studies textbook, I noticed they have one page devoted to World War I and one page devoted to World War II, and half of each page is pictures. After I got over the initial shock about how little is written about each of these wars, knowing that they each spanned several years, it made me think about logically about what kind of information the students can handle. The basic information on each topic is there, but there is nothing written that isn't appropriate for fifth graders. Then, when the students reach middle school, they can build upon the knowledge they already have, rather than have to re-learn the information because what they were taught was not accurate.
As we try to eliminate world-wide genocide in Sudan, AIDS, and poverty, can't we take a step back from the personal issues such as "racist" team mascots, etc., look at ourselves and our criticizers, and find a larger perspective of the world? Take this quote from "Garden State:" It is not making light of issues strong to the individual, but it is saying that while you're struggling with the issue, live- laugh.
If you can't laugh at yourself, life's gonna seem a whole lot longer than you'd like. What do ya do? You laugh, you know, I'm not saying I don't cry... but in between... I laugh -Garden State
I can certainly see how issues of sports team mascots (and representation in children's books, for that matter) might seem relatively insignificant compared to larger issues such as poverty, genocide, and AIDS. For me, though, there's a connection. I don't think it's an either/or equation. I don't think it's a matter of working to solve the pressing social issues of the time OR being concerned about "smaller" cases of inequity or injustice. I think we can, and should, do both. As Martin Luther King put it, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Plus, if I thought the majority of schoolchildren were actually learning about the genocide in Sudan, the causes of poverty, etc., I might not be as concerned about what might be termed "the little things." But I don't see that. Plus, I don't think "the little things" (like an Indian mascot, for example) are little at all to the people who feel disparaged and disrespected by them. As teachers, I think we have to ask ourselves what our circle of influence is. We may not be able to end poverty single-handedly, but we can make a huge impact on helping the kids who walk into our classrooms each day become more aware, more empathetic, more concerned for "the common good," and more engaged in the world beyond their backyard.
In response to Shannon's question: A recent issue that has received a great deal of media coverage is the Jena Six. Six African American males were charged with beating a white male student. The instance arose when the white student hung nooses from a local school tree. Clearly, racism still exists today. Unfortunately, I do not feel that there will be a time when everyone in our world does not hold racist viewpoints. Racism is an issue that runs long and deep in many areas of the country and throughout the world. We as future teachers have been given the opportunity to make a difference. It is our obligation to promote the ideas of acceptance and tolerance in our classrooms. We must not only teach these issues, but more importantly, we must also model them. This can be accomplished through: class discussions about current issues and past historical occurrences, the actions that we show to others in our school and community and the guest speakers that we invite into our classroom. I feel that is possible to promote a classroom community that is centered on the acceptance of others and the idea that we can influence social change.
I agree with both Marla and Erika about sugar coating history. I believe there is a way to explain, truthfully the history to young grades and middle grades. I believe that sugar coating in a way that makes false statements going to hurt students in the long run. In class we were shown several different ways to teach about Columbus, some harsh in the content some still telling the truth, but not in a way that would frighten children. I think that the song 1492 in our course packet. I think that song was fine for children. It introduced the idea that Columbus did not truly discover America and opens the conversation. The song does not go into detail about the deaths and genocide, but it doe make the point that people were already on the land and it was not there for Columbus to discover. The song is not sugar coating the history, but it is making it understandable and less harsh for young children. All history can be honestly talked about in any grade it is just about the way it is presented and words used.
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