| She spoke to me of Heaven
And an Angelic Host
She spoke of God
And the Holy Ghost
She spoke of Christ's teaching
Of man's brotherhood
Yet when she had to sit beside a Negro once
She stood.
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In this poem, we see (as simply as it is stated) the kind of attitude that seems
to be permeating our culture today, a sort of "Do as I say and not as I do"
kind of attitude. With a poem as simple as this one, you can start topics that
vary from racial intolerance, to homophobia, to religious bias, to socioeconomic
inequality. How do you see yourself starting this discussion with your students?
Can you think of any examples like this from your own experience? How can
you teach students tolerance and diversity when they are being indoctrinated with
this idea that one has to say the politically correct thing, but can turn around and
do something that goes completely against that?
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This is a question that I don't know I will ever have a concrete answer to. We live in a day in age where one has to be politically correct about every issue that plagues this country, but how do we deal with students whose parents have instilled negative thoughts and ideas in their heads without causing a conflict. I grew up in a very small town, there was one African American family, and very few homosexual people around. It wasn't until I moved to a bigger city that I was immersed into observing "different" peoples ways of life. This was something that was never addressed where I went to high school because it wasn't an "issue". So I am always on the search for any advice I can get to help convey to my students that open-minds and hearts is the correct way to live life, and to "never judge a book by its cover".
ReplyDeleteThis topic is very touchy, and I do feel that it would take a lot of care and thought before attempting to discuss it with students. Using it for face value would be the easy way out, and some teachers might use that approach and skirt around the real problem at hand. I would talk to my students about prejudice and ask them if any of them have encountered this in their own life? Off of that, I would use their experiences as examples to a larger discussion about prejudice and then have them formulate ideas about tolerance and ask them how they would act in specific instances. Then I would bring in stories or whatever literature that pertained to this subject. Since they have knowledge about this issue, then they can go about interpreting things from a different perspective. This is just a tentative idea that first came to my mind when I thought about the issue of prejudice and teaching it. I know there are probably different ways, but this along the lines of how I would handle this situation. ASHLEY
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