All the different European cultures aren’t one big Caucasoid group any more than different parts of Africa are all the same, and so forth for “Asians.” These terms are misleading and annoying. Instead of Festival of Africa, we should have something for at leasst several of the ethnicities of Africa including customs of certain parts of Madagascar, and Egyptian differences. Why do we never see Latvian Month anyplace, it’s always Hispanic Month, and “Hispanics,” “Latinos,” “Ladinas,” also terms that are too comprehensive. Why not have Scottish Contribution Day so I could wear the kilt of my ancestors? Or the quaint peasant costumes of Sodermanland on one side of me and Varmland on the other for my Swedish ancestry? And what of my Belgian great-grandfather, we could celebrate his heritage of being an innkeeper. The Belgian contribution to Chicago alone would be worth TWO days, for they were mostly janitors cleaning and sweeping and taking care of the machinery in the buildings. They formed the Belgian Janitors Club, which later changed its name to something like Belgian Heritage Club. Unfortunately, they’re the French-speaking Belgian kind, evidently, as the club doesn’t answer me when I write them. I’m looking forward to Ruthenian Appreciation Day. The most famous person with Ruthenian background is Andrew Warhola, or Andy Warhol. We could pictures of him around, and have readings from his books.
We do kinda have that in Pittsburgh. Like Polish Week at Kennywood.
When I was in high school several millenia ago, I read Catcher–utterly forgettable work IMHO–and I remember thinking, so what? Everyone has problems, big fucking deal. I couldn’t relate to Holden, but then I didn’t care about him either. He seemed contrived and stale and to some extent a very much one-dimensional character. Reading that book taught me that I could read so-called “canonized” literature, not be able to relate to it, and disagree with it being canonized. It led me to question the notion of canonized literature in general. THAT was a good learning experience. I’m not advocating teaching crap, just teaching critical thinking about any texts you encounter.
As to whether or not Catcher or any other text for that matter applies to multiculturalism or not, well I think that depends on HOW A TEACHER HANDLES TEACHING IT. The key is to get students to come up with either their own experiences or to go out and find other ethnic/cultural/racial experiences of angst, alienation, blah, blah, blah, to fill in those multicultural spaces, and I think it’s safe to say that teens have few problems in that arena.
I advocate multiculturalism no matter what you teach because it allows for an ever more enriching experience for students that does a much better job of preparing them to interact with people. To some extent the problem with school curriculum design is a mix of the texts advocated for certain grade levels; the way the teachers teach them; and the School Board/Administration who do not allow teachers/students more of a voice in choosing the texts to be taught.
Orn’r’y Oscar said:
"So we have to resort to the “classics,” such as TCITR, which are nearly 70 years old. There are three reasons we have difficulty finding literature that “reflects multiculturalism:”
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The teachers today read too little and have to much to do with administrative and political matters.
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We don’t include ANY contemporary literature in the curriculum of high school students. (I think we’re afraid of it).
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Local School Boards are too involved in the minutae of daily classwork. (Let the teacher decide!")"
I agree with what you say, Oscar, especially point #2. There are so many interesting and valid contemporary texts out there, and they aren’t necessarily books either. The curriculum could and SHOULD BE SUPPLEMENTED with texts like rap music or other types of music. This is just one example, you could just as easily have them analyze the dramatic aspects of a popular television show or movie, or the socio-cultural aspects of folklore. However, song lyrics are after all poetry, are they not? I think that students are not taught to think critically about the things that they see and hear everyday. So why don’t they try analyzing lyrics by Eminem, or Queen Latifah, or Snoop Doggy Dogg to see what themes/issues/poetic devices these artists employ, and how do these themes/issues/poetric devices relate to other so-called canonized texts they have read?
Yes, I know that a lot of teachers don’t listen to or know much about music or tv shows that are popular right now, but as epoynmous wisely said to me in another debate: “LEARN from your students”. If instructors don’t know much about contemporary texts, then that is an opportunity to let the students be the “experts” and teach the class. Actually I do this quite regularly in the classes I teach. I don’t lecture, but rather allow students to carry the discussion, occasionally prodding them along with questions. Not only does this invest them more firmly in the class discussions, but it empowers them by allowing them to see that they do have plenty of consequence to say. And I get to learn about perspectives I never would have considered.
One final thing about multiculturalism, I often wonder why multiculturalism is instituted primarily at the post-secondary level. Why not incorporate multiculturalism from kindergarten throughout high school? This way more material can be covered and spread throughout a child’s developing years so that s/he can grow up with a broader, more realistic view of texts and the cultures that produce them. Just a thought. <:-(
I know I’m being idealistic, and there’s not a chance in hell that the things I propose will happen anytime soon, but I wanted to put them out there.
Analyzing Eminem lyrics? I don’t think so. That’s hardly what I call “multiculturalism”…
Why not listen to World Music instead? Pop music is all fine when studying pop culture, but I don’t think it’s as important as some might think. Yeah, I’m coming across as an intellectual snob, I suppose.
Why not read books from around the world? Depending on what good literature is. But Snoop Dog doesn’t speak for the entire world.
Guinastasia, I was just using Eminem & Snoop Doggy Dogg as examples of American popular culture. I don’t know much about what kind of lyrics either of them produce besides the fact that they’re rather graphic and offensive, but this is what a lot American teens listen to. I was just saying that students should analyze the song lyrics to popular songs that THEY HEAR AND TAKE FOR GRANTED EVERYDAY to see what issues/themes come up and talk about how these issues/themes relate to other texts they’re reading.
Personally, I’d be curious to find out what the allure of these artists and their graphic lyrics is. But also with rappers like Snoop & Eminem, there are other issues (e.g. the commodification of the gangsta image). In the investigation of these texts students may either shed some insight on cultural issues OR come to the conclusion that the lyrics have no merit at all. Who knows? The point is to get them to THINK CRITICALLY. Of course students should study world music as well as other texts from other countries.
You were talking about how THE TEACHER should do this and THE TEACHER should do that, which is what is wrong with education. Education should be about what the STUDENT is to do, since YOU GET OUT OF SOMETHING ONLY WHAT YOU (EG., THE STUDENT) PUT INTO IT. You said the TEACHER must “GET” students to relate (to books, etc.) WITH THEIR OWN EXPERIENCES! Face it, the “experiences” of a child or a teenager in our society, unless they have already been reading the classics, are pretty unrelatable to anything worthwhile, nor have they been TAUGHT to think, for that matter. American education has been certified since the 60’s and 70’s if not before as being the WORST in the WORLD, counting third world countries, and our students have among the lowest scores. This is because well-meaning teachers have been dominated by this business of “bringing the student in,” “relating to student needs,” and so on. What should go on is TEACHING them something.
As for your attitude about CATCHER, holding back from something a teacher tells you is supposed to be good and failing to listen to what the teacher says is in it and then seeing if you can UNDERSTAND that and SEE it in there is not what we call LEARNING something. Why do you think that there are some students who do nothing but complain about their teachers and others who never had a bad teacher? The attitude of the student is more important than anything, and this whole idea of oh I as a teenager have my rights and if I don’t LIKE MOBY DICK because I can’t RELATE to it like parents and teachers told me I SHOULD, therefore MOBY DICK is NO GOOD. I know of this one teen who was supposed to read the ODYSSEY and write what she LEARNED about it from lectures and her own thoughtful consideration of the literary terms and the story. Her essay goes, “I couldn’t get into it… it was wordy… it jumped around too much in flashbacks.” Teachers told her to have this kind of reaction and that it was worthwhile. Teens don’t come up with this kind of lack of concentration and inability to put themselves into things, by themselves. Like prejudice, being an airhead has to be taught. They have been taught to block learning about things they aren’t immediately interested in. They have been taught to be sure at all costs to limit themselves to their little group of teens who think they are rebelling by being rude, stupid, and fashionable in their outfits and hairdos, piercings, tattoos (which are not objectionable by themselves but only when WITH the nasty attitude) and by demanding from demanding teachers that they give them credit for their brilliant observations muttered and scrawled in broken English. How low do reading and mathematics and history and geography scores have to go before the next several generations wind up unable to do anything? American workers have already been pretty much replaced by imported foreigners in medicine, engineering, and every other demanding field, because our teens have been taught since they were born that it is their sacred OPINION, however thoughtless, that really counts, and they have a God-given right to it; learning any skill of mind or body doesn’t count, because that is totalitarianism, it is unfair. Then when they get out into the world and their bosses just fire them they can’t figure out why the boss isn’t considering their precious feelings and opinions, since their teachers always did. They say, “Duh.” In education in the past the idea was the BREAK DOWN the childish, naieve, uninformed, thoughtless opinions of children so that they would not serve as blocks to incoming knowledge and incoming ways to think. Now this tough sense of identity that children have been encouraged to have, ie., to be and to remain children forever, is unbreakable and they are what used to be called SPOILED.
And any teacher that sees things this way would be fired on the spot. Whatever you and I think about the whole thing, the pendulum will swing back and “educators” (!) will be actually recommending things like “rote learning,” onlythey will be calling it something else. Theyhave already put phonics back here and there but they call that something else, fearing that somebody might remember that is the way they used to teach reading. Etc. etc.
To don willard:
The most positive thing I can say about your post is that you appear to be passionate about teaching and having the student actually learn something, and I commend you on that attitude. It also sounds like you’ve been through the mill with some bad attitudes on the parts of your students. Unfortunately attitudes both good and bad come with the territory of teaching. Even though my ideas and experience are different from yours, I too share a passion for teaching and having the student learn. Yours is an interesting perspective, and I wish more teachers who’ve had experience dealing with the public school system would post on the SDMB. However, I take issue with some of what you said.
I really disagree with your assertion that students have no worthwhile relatable experiences unless they’ve been reading the classics. Even if they have not experienced directly war or hunger, they have experienced conflict of some sort, whether it be intra-familial (e.g. mother-daughter or father-son conflicts) or extra-familial (e.g. racism, prejudice, class conflicts, or a fallout with the school bully). Students certainly have access to stories (however exaggerated or unrealistic they actually are) of conflict in the music they listen to and in the popular television/movie/periodicals/internet materials they have access to. Name me a classic that doesn’t deal with intra- or extra-familial conflict of the kinds I just mentioned, and I will concede your point. I don’t think you can. To reassert my original point, get students to use the conflicts they see and hear about to relate them to the classics they read in school.
When you say they haven’t been taught to think, I would maintain that THEY HAVE NOT BEEN TAUGHT TO THINK OR EXPRESS THEMSELVES CRITICALLY. Students are capable of doing both if the teacher models the behavior of thinking critically and then gives them assignments/situations that require them to express themselves critically. For example, you mention that a student excuses a poor interpretation of a text by saying she can’t relate to it because “it was too wordy . . . it jumped around too much in flashbacks.” Again the key is in how the teacher handles the student. At this point, the teacher should get the student to justify her response with specifics from the text. Give me an example of wordiness or an annoying flashback. Why is this example ineffective in its present location? Why do you think the author put it there? Ask the student how she would improve the example she’s cited. Then require her to come up with some justification to oppose her view of the example(s) she cited. Give her an exercise that would make her accountable for her position on the text. In the process of analyzing the text, she may change her position and/or come to a better understanding of the text. Students don’t seem to realize that they’re not going to understand everything on the first reading; they must re-read the text. The places that strike them as annoying or whatever are the very places they should return to and analyze. They should learn to trust their instincts. If they rise to the challenge, then I don’t see how this could not be excellent preparation for the job market. The hypothetical student we’ve been discussing is going to have to understand that although she’s entitled to her opinion, whether or not her opinion goes against the status quo, she’s going to have to come up with a tight argument to justify her claims. And more importantly, she’s going to have to learn when it’s more expedient to keep her opinions to herself. If the student doesn’t rise to the challenge, well too bad. You can’t reach them all, but then again, you never know what a student actually learns from a class. S/he actually may learn more from a failure to understand the text.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by the following: “As for your attitude about CATCHER, holding back from something a teacher tells you is supposed to be good and failing to listen to what the teacher says is in it and then seeing if you can UNDERSTAND that and SEE it in there is not what we call LEARNING something.” If what you mean by this is that I didn’t listen to/respect my teacher’s perspective, you’re wrong. I DISAGREED with her perspective. In order to disagree with something, you have to LISTEN. I considered her perspective, but in the final analysis I disagreed with it.
You talk about students who complain of good and bad teachers. I think that students rate teachers as good or bad based on the ATTITUDE the teacher brings to class as well as the ATTITUDES the students have in general about the subject and/or learning in general. If a teacher’s attitude is bad (s/he thinks the students are stupid and won’t learn because of X reason), then the majority of the students will strive to meet that expectation. If however, a teacher demonstrates that s/he has high expectations and holds the students to his/her high criteria, then the majority of the students will strive to meet those expectations. Do not underestimate them, students are very sensitive to teacher attitudes. Of course, there will always be students whom a teacher won’t reach for whatever reason. You certainly have no control over how well or badly raised students are. If parents do not discipline their kids and instill in them the proper respect for learning and the authority of the teacher in the classroom, then there’s not much more you can do, given that there’s not much in the way of effective disciplinary measures in the public school system. You do the best you can given the amount of support the administration gives you.