I read about Nini Rostland, in chapter 7 of Affirming Diversity, and I felt like it brought up a lot of issues about people of mixed heritage that plague American history. What makes someone who has an African parent and a Caucasian parent less able to identify with a particular group? Moreover, why is it that particular group that makes it seem like the biracial person does not belong? It's really unfortunate if you ask me. Sure, there are commonalities between people of like ethnicities or heritages, but if someone identifies with a certain heritage but doesn't look the part, why exclude them? It seems kind of sad that race still plays such a large part in things sometimes, even with the strides that our country has made. Stereotyping and profiling are still such large problems, just in different ways.
Now, Nini was from a fairly well-adjusted home and had parents who really helped her to see both sides of her heritage, but what about homes that are not like that? What about single parents of biracial or bi-ethnic children? How do those children come to understand both sides of their heritage?
And what does this all mean for schools? We have a set curriculum in a lot of schools that makes learning about heritage fairly limited, I think. Should we occasionally stray from the curriculum to try to help our students understand the differences between people? Maybe we should fight for it to become a part of our schools' curriculum, rather than just "Black History Month," or other commemorative months. Schools are not like the summer camp that Nini attended, where it was geared toward Multi-ethnic children.
Another thing that disconcerted me in this "Snapshot," was when Nini said her other classes (other than art, that is), were boring because it was all memorizing facts. When did school become solely about memorizing facts? I remember having a history teacher who was always able to somehow make school and concepts we were learning interactive and fun. Students will perform well on tests if they've been properly taught the material... memorizing facts has never been effective for long term concept learning and development. As a music specialist my field is a little bit different in that I have to teach interactively, but even music can be taught in a boring manner, and wouldn't you want to try to make a boring concept more interesting? I know I would have paid a lot more attention in grade school if that were the case...
Black History Month was a topic of discussion in our classroom the other day. A student who identifies both as "black" and Puerto Rican pointed out that it seemed pointless to "devote" a month to the topic, and then forget about it the rest of the year. I'm still not sure how serious he was when he continued to point out that February was the shortest month, so getting it as "their" month was kind of a slap in the face. I however, am a fan of the month, maybe not the length devoted, though, but at the very least, it is a yearly reminder about not just a culture's struggles, but also their immense triumphs.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s
ReplyDeleteI really like this quote by Morgan Freeman, and completely agree with him. History and human culture should be taught as an integrated system. There is no one culture that stands on its own with no interference from another. So one might focus on different times, geographic locations, or civilizations, but race shouldn't be a defining factor. Instead of having discriminate sections on each race, students should be taught how everything integrates together.