I
understand many of the experiences in “Decolonizing the Classroom”,
an article by Wayne Au, because I've had many of the same
experiences. Not so much being a Chinese student at a 50/50
Black/White school, but because most of my educators have been
monologists, just talking to themselves, with little interaction with
the students, nor facilitating dialogue, or creating new friendships.
Vygostsky's sociocultural theory points to the schema we carry as
individuals, and how through social interactions, we form those
schema, those prisms of subjective perspectives, based primarily on
our social circles. "You'll never fly as high as Eagles if you're
hanging out with a bunch of Turkeys." ~Liz Jones
Garfield
High School was considered a “Black school”, similar to how
Central High School and Iroquois High School are considered Black
schools in Louisville. Wayne Au was a Chinese man going to a 50/50
White to Black ratio student body at Garfield High School, with a few
Latinos and Chinese peppered here and there. Garfield High School,
located in Seattle's historically African-American neighborhood,
which was the Central District. Mr. Anderson, a World History
“educator”, called the Lychee Fruit differently than Wayne Au
did, and instead of Mr. Anderson recognizing his culture and heritage
as he had lived it, instead he berated him in class, and told the
class that Wayne Au was wrong for pronouncing the name of the Lychee
Fruit differently than himself. So Mr. Anderson, the fake World
History teacher, was a monologist, with a huge ego. Only his opinion
mattered, and it was incorrect. Wayne Au's personal experience was
valid, just on those grounds: they were his experience. So since Mr.
Anderson only considered his own opinions valid, he invalidated real
opinions, and imposed a Eurocentric colonizer's prescription onto his
oppressed students. By having an engaged, and active, and lively
class, this creates the conditions for real discussion, and by having
a multicultural education, this allows the students to have a more
truthful, more useful, more important education, and by seeing what
one can gain from a real education, the students will, hopefully,
resist any other educators who tries to talk AT them, instead of
talking WITH them.
Compare
Mr. Anderson to Mr. Davis, who taught “Language Arts 10b” and a
“Social Studies elective”, where the counselor would give
resistance to any student who wanted to take the class, since it was
know that those class names were really a Harlem Renaissance class,
and African Studies. So the class was a “secret” class, and
Professor Bruce Tyler taught Black History at University of
Louisville, and he said that he had to teach it, since nobody else at
the University wanted to. I guess folks would rather not tell the
horrific treatment, the racial totalitarian dictatorship, Black folks
have received throughout the vast majority of American history.
To break
the spell of the disease of whiteness, white folks need to figure
out, and talk about who they actually are. Where they came from,
what's their genetic make-up, and if they don't know, then to figure
out, how come ? For some reason, many of my German cousins dropped
the rich, accomplished, smart German culture, in exchange for an
inbred, redneck, racist, backwards, white supremacist culture of
ignorance. It makes no sense to me. Germans have accomplished many
great feats, in engineering, science, politics, architecture, and in
many words we use, such as Hamburger, Frankfurter, and Fahrenheit. It
doesn't make sense to me why anybody would drop the one rich culture
for the culture that is completely void of meaning anything else,
except white supremacy. My cousin, Robert Dearing, told me that he'd
kill himself if he was Black, and at the same time, he couldn't see,
that we both were sitting on the back of the mechanical tobacco
setter, that we literally were the slaves. No wonder racism pervaded
that culture. As long as the white child slaves felt like they were
better than Black folks, then they wouldn't rebel. They were happy
House Negroes, and why rebel, when the Massah treats us to very nice
here... Prejudice is taught. Kids only hate naps, not other folks who
look different than them. The norm is to be different.
By
knowing how prevalent homophobia is in our culture, when a student
tells another that they're “gay”, then something major will have
to happen in order to combat the homophobia that may arise from such
an incident. The playground taunt of being “gay” doesn't
necessarily mean that the other person is being a homosexual, but
that they are not cool, or are lame, or are not macho. So homophobia
is so ingrained in our culture, that “gay” has been made to mean
a blanket insult for any and all behavior the hater doesn't approve
of. This isn't just one student saying it, but lots of students
saying it, and it needs to be quashed.
The
different between Mr. Anderson and Mr. Davis, is that Mr. Davis had a
real education. In Mr. Davis's class, critical thinking was utilized,
and relationships among the other students were linked together,
through dialogue. Mr. Anderson's class wasn't real, and was
destructive. It insulted the author as a young person, and it was
teaching the white kids information that was not correct. “The Gods
Must Be Crazy” is Mr. Anderson's idea of African culture. In the
movie, a Coke bottle transforms the simple and primitive African
culture into something more sophisticated. By not showing anything
else about Africa, the impression is left that Africa has lots of
primitive tribes there, but no civilizations, and cultures. Mr.
Anderson forced them to read a lot of the textbook, so comprehension
and memorization skills were utilized, but not critical analysis.
Over 1/3 of college students are not learning critical thinking
skills. This is because, in my many years of education, I've never
been expected to analyze or interpret much of anything.
I would
make sure that multicultural education was an approach I would do in
my classroom. By combining as many sub-groups into my timeline of
American history as possible (such as African-Americans,
Chinese-Americans, Irish-Americans, Queers, Jewish folks, Native
Americans, etc.), to make sure that all the student's are
represented, and to bring about a fuller, more comprehensive view of
American history. I would also teach multicultural education by
having a revolutionary humanist set-up, where democratic values are
utilized, feedback and risk-taking (“Can I hear from somebody who
hasn't spoken before?”) are encouraged, and dialogue, and
relationships are valued. I would lecture some, but hopefully, I'd be
able to get them to read, and study the material themselves, and pull
the information out of them. I'd be a referee for dialogue, a chair
for democracy, where we have a positive, encouraging environment, to
read, to study, to engage, and to dialogue intelligently. By
encouraging relationships, new friendships are created, such as
having the cool kids work with the nerd kids, and to forge ahead with
one of the few instances of when they will actually get to experience
democracy in America. By having this education, they will be more
aware of oppressive conditions, and if they are in doubt by being
isolated, their friend's perspectives will help them to understand
what they are looking at. A multicultural perspective is more
truthful. A multicultural approach to education confronts racism, and
white supremacy, and represents an anti-racist struggle, and had the
young person understood what a real education looks like, where their
dignity was respected, then they wouldn't accept a bigoted
colonization of the classroom from any future educators.
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