Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Bishop
I just finished reading the Bishop article and overall I can see where the author was trying to go with it, but some of what Bishop was saying I did not agree with. One part of the anticipation guide mentioned about a counter argument that teachers should be color blind. I agree with this more. I do understand the need for multicultural literature in the classroom but I do not think that books that have characters that are Everychildren should be discredited or claimed to be not as helpful. I think the best way to beat racism and stereotyping is to show the commonality between races and other groups of people. The article bashed some of the stories and claimed they were not authentic. I do not think that depicting a african american girl with braids (messy or organized) is a way to judge a books authenticity. Some african american girls do wear their hair in the type of braids described by Bishop; not all do, but some do. I think this applies to any type of children. Some will fit into this category and some into another; one thing Bishop said that I would really agree with is that not one book or perspective can represent an entire group of people. But having said this, I wonder why Bishop is so critical of texts or images she deems stereotypical or useless. I could go on and on about this, overall I guess I just believe that treating everyone equally, while still valuing everyone's cultures (even the middle class white people's) is important to creating a classroom where everyone feels safe, comfortable, and with a sense of belonging.
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I agree with your comment about students being "color blind". I think the more attention is brought to the difference in skin color and cultural traditions, students begin to look at each other in a different way. Their friend is no longer a student with darker skin than them, but they could be a descendant of slaves or have a very different belief system.
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see what you're saying about the color blind comment, however, I think it is a little unrealistic to completely ignore that people have different cultures. We should definitely value each one of our students' backgrounds, but I think it is not necessarily right to think that their culture does not come into the equation for how they learn and interact with one another.
ReplyDeleteThe authenticity thing is something I struggle with. I think it will be very hard for me to decide what is authentic and what is not. There will always be a part of each culture that will believe that what I think is authentic, is not. And If I change me views, there will be another part of the same culture who disagrees. Again, we cannot please everyone guess so we have to learn to trust our own judgement I suppose.
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