I had never read/heard about the dismantling of the multiculturalism taught in Arizona until I read this article. I had heard of books being banned in the past for various reasons, but this seemed absurd to me. Throughout all of my classes and studies as an educator we are taught to find connections to our students lives' and teach to diversity to create warm, safe environments that give students a reason to learn. So why would they get rid of this? Jeff Biggers references books banned written by Mandela in South Africa and the fact that we knew this was to stop people from beginning a movement against the government, and continues that with the question, "What is the Tucson school district afraid of?" I found that question interesting, especially since it seemed to teach the students public discourse where the students used their rights to express their opinions. This topic appears to me as a topic that should be taught from the very beginnings of school. Learning about everyone's cultures. How we came to be a nation, especially with the history down there. Unless the teacher is sending the message that Mexican-Americans should begin a revolt to make this area part of Mexico again, what is the problem? We want our students to be critical thinkers and learn how to make decisions. That is the big push with 21st century skills. This hinders that ability by only allowing one view be taught with critical discussions. Rather, the students will read on their own in the libraries and create their own opinions with no guidance.
The next topic was very disheartening and a hot topic in the news today with the controversy over same-sex marriage. It is sad and disheartening that it has to be about this. The fact of the matter is there is a large percentage of people that fall into the LGBTQ category. There is no need to dance around it. The articles that included arguments against the teachings about this were majority religious people. Schools are supposed to separate church and state. There is no reason not to. However, in my school (since this is probably the only sort of diversity that we have) the principle gets extremely nervous and discourages teaching about anything with this topic because of parents. One time, we watched Channel One and it spoke to creating alliances and he had a fit. His argument was maybe it would be okay for older children. However, we had several students in that grade that were already speaking about being gay. I believe, as did several other teachers, that if we danced around the topic the unknown is weird to the overall student population and the students would get bullied.
Overall, my impression is that a lot of times touchy subjects are not taught because parents might get angry. However, they are/become touchy because they have always been the topics that educators and the general population skirt around. If intertwined into the curriculum in subtle ways, overtime, these topics become less touchy. If parents object to this, then I agree with the articles that parents should have the right to have their kid set aside for that. Or if it involves a reading lesson or something, an alternative approach. Similar to students that have certain religious beliefs that sit out during the pledge or during celebrations.
Extension
This is a book that could be used to teach multiple persepectives in a Social Studies classroom. I had to read it in my MLE program and it was by far the most interesting book I had read to that time about Social Studies because this was the FIRST time I was exposed to information that was not the classic british, american, male point of view. There are numerous books that he makes. There are numerous GLCE's that would work for this and other touchy subjects in Middle Grades such as
7 – H1.2.4
Compare and evaluate competing historical perspectives about the past based on proof.
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Volume/dp/1583227598
First off, I love you mentioned separation of church and state. I went to Catholic school my entire life before college, and I proudly remember a speech I did in high school about how schools need to respect that distinct line where church and state should absolutely not blend because it creates more harm than good. I don't know if it was because I was destined to be a teacher that I felt this way and did this speech, but I was disgusted to read about how some schools continue to dismiss the humanity of students who are gay because there is this dangerous infusion of church within the curriculum, albeit hidden curriculum, of a school. I think schools sometimes need to remember that these lessons of "church" should not be in the school setting because, sadly, it sometimes contributing to other issues like bullying (but I am not trying to say all religious people are evil or dangerous here; I am trying to say that some of the curriculum we are teaching has a hidden agenda that reflects the community's church ideals, and in many cases, I think that should have nothing to do with what we teach. Morals-yes. Religion-no. History of religion-maybe).
ReplyDeleteI also like your last paragraph and discussion of parents. I complete agree that the issues of controversial curriculum are related to parents and how we "dance" around this issues for fear of angering parents. However, I think we need to slowly integrated these touchy issues and let the parents know this is what our district believes is important. Yes, they could "opt out,." but we can no longer deny that these issues are occurring and they need to be discussed. Thanks for the deep reflections! Amber
Andrea,
ReplyDeleteBoy do you cover a lot of ground here! Such a dense subject this week that, I think, your post does justice to by really exploring some of the layers to this issue. Your summary comment is very compelling, in my opinion. The notion that subject folks think of as "touchy" are constructed as touchy or, in other words, made to be touchy, simply by the fact that they are ignored or pushed to the margins because they might be challenging to discuss. However, I think you hit the nail on the head when you note that students totally pick up on this. Like we read last week in Eisner, students totally pick up on the stuff we DON'T talk about and they learn something from that. By avoiding subjects, students learn that they must not be worthy of discussion or, worse, that they flat out shouldn't be discussed because they aren't "normal" or "good". As you mention early on in your post, this creates a situation where there is one view that becomes the dominant, normalized view. This, obviously, creates a narrowing of our curriculum and foreshortens opportunities to broaden and deepen students understanding about a wide range of subjects.
So, my question to you is this--what do you think we should do about this? How did you and your teaching peers interact with the principal after the concern about Channel One? How do we begin to have conversations that help us to move in productive directions and mitigate the fear that some people feel about teaching "controversial" topics? Do you think that might mean we have to prepare teachers differently? I also wonder what you think the best approach might be to teaching such topics?
Thanks for sharing,
amanda