Return to Homepage.
|
 |
Michael Kadish
I think it goes without saying that most Americans want to be "accepting of others," and I assume that this holds true for all of you. Being brandished as racist, or prejudiced, or hating is something that we all want to avoid, as our culture tells us how evil those labels are. You all also know that you have at least "that much" prejudice inside yourself. If there was a class that the population would take that would cement into our minds, and everybody else's, that we really are no better than the others because of our race, then that would be great. If the class can't be for everybody, fine, it can be given to those who educate and prepare the up and coming generation. The teachers can relay the messages that they learned in the class to the children, and implement them. However, I don't think our class does anything near what I just said, in fact, I think it goes in the opposite direction.
In this class, we learn to deal with the tendencies of peoples. We read studies, and we learn how to act on them. We see the general practices of a people, and we prepare for the results. In other words, we see racial inclinations, and determine what our policy should be. In other words, we make decisions about how to deal with people, due to their cultural heritage. That simply means, that we are taught to be racist. I don't feel that I'm stretching anything that far. I, frankly, don't see much of a difference between assuming that a black individual probably comes from a broken home, but has respect for his elders, so long as he or she is allowed to speak at will, and saying that the individual probably enjoys rap music, is a good dancer, and enjoys watermelon.
I think teaching about cultures in the classroom causes incredible problems as well, if it is not done with extreme caution, in such a way that I can see no teacher being able to prepare to pull it off smoothly. If you divide the children up to teach their various heritages, then congratulations, you've just segregated the class. It may not be a hostile segregation, but a division has been made along racial lines, which by my eyes, is what we want to avoid. Teaching the holidays, or heroes of a culture is considered minimalist to be considered multicultural. However, teaching these is dangerous as well. When the teacher teaches Chanuka, and students then learn that Chanuka is considered by Jews to be a rather insignificant holiday, the Jewish beliefs are then considered less valid by the students. Putting Martin Luther King Jr. on a pedestal as a symbol for the black movements of the sixties, will lead to a lesser view of blacks, when they hear that he was a womanizer, or as some people claim, a communist. Furthermore, there's the aspect that every culture has different schools of thought within itself. If a student is Iranian, you have to know if the individual family supported the Ayatollah or the Shah. If you teach the culture supporting the one that the child's family disagreed with (and don't think for a second that you can teach history objectively) then you have just told the kid that he or she is wrong on a subject that they very well may know more about than you do. Iran was an easy example to deal with, it's bipolar, one or the other. I know that for, nearly, every Jewish leader you can name, there isn't a consensus about the individual. Furthermore, since there is no possible way to teach the culture, we're just giving the students little anecdotes. It bothers me to think that a race, culture, belief, ethnic group, or religion can just be minimized to a few bullet points.
We're only being taught to bridge the gaps of the cultures in the room. To an extent, that's the only option. There are around 150 nations in the United Nations, each generally with at least a few national cultures each. But we're not told to empower the various groups, the focus is to be on the individual students in the class. My mother was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. As a substitute teacher, she occasionally worked at Central High School, which by the late sixties, was, and is, in an almost completely black neighborhood. The students had no idea of the significance of their school. My mother, this young Jewish woman, was telling the students about the significance of their school to the African-American, if not American, community. To me, with the exception that the students were unaware of the history that had taken place there, this was a positive situation. According to the class, it should not have been taught. There was no culture conflict, they were all African-American, and at the same time, my mother became more distanced from them.
The problem is though, that I don't have a better plan ready. The melting pot is out, people should know their history, we don't want cookie cutter types; everybody is an individual. Separate but equal, by its name alone, is immediately discarded. If you want to call it a salad bowl, fine, but make sure that the foods don't somehow divide on the plate. If it was up to me to recreate the focus of the class, I suppose that instead of focusing on the race of the child, we look at the children individually. Each one of them had their own near infinite set of factors to create them at any given point. Society may treat somebody in a certain way because of their ethnicity, but we no longer believe that a given people have a natural benefit over another, so that the background can be presented, regardless of the child's race. If the standardized tests need to be fixed, then they should be fixed, that's not an educator's concern. If a student comes from a negative environment, the teacher is in no position to fix it, but to deal with it. When I teach, I want, despite this class, to be able to look past the races, into the faces, and deal specifically with the students in my class.
|
|