I get that. But…well, all cultural standards and mores are indoctrinated. I teach my kid according to what I believe is best for him and for society, which I obtained in part from my sociocultural and familial indoctrination when I was young. That’s how growing up works: you’re indoctrinated by your family and your environment.
So I’m still leery about where to draw the line. “Negative consequences” is a good start, but sometimes–most of the time–seeing the consequences as negative is itself a result of cultural indoctrination. My objection to eating dog or horse is a result of my upbringing (and constant reinforcement by my culture), and it’s hard for me to view doing so as a positive thing, at least on an emotional basis. But is it a negative consequence?
Obviously it’s clearer when we’re talking about obviously oppressive things, like FGM or slavery (although my opposition to those is again rooted in sociocultural indoctrination). But what constitutes a negative consequence can get awfully murky. There are plenty of people who would argue that the views with which I indoctrinate my son are wrong, or even harmful. They’re wrong, of course, but the argument exists.
We had a couple lessons covering Islam in high school, yes, and a Muslim student gave a presentation. No hijab, but then she never wore any.
Thanks to her, I can still say the shahadah in Arabic, list the Pillars and know the whys and wherefores of the Shia/Sunni split. Which, granted, is about as useful as trigonometry in my daily life, but still. A little knowledge is always superior to no knowledge.
And of course, now that I’m studying medieval history, we go in a little deeper than a show and tell :p.
Honestly, it’s hard for me to keep track of who the terrible people are on here. Except for the really egregious ones like Starving Artist, I don’t usually notice. I can’t even remember which was the one that basically bragged about raping his friend’s girlfriend - I want to say Shagnasty, maybe because it seems appropriate, but I could be wrong.
And some were beaten in Brooklyn. There was a woman in my critique group around then who wrote a story about it. She was understandably very upset by the hatred that came out of some good old average Americans.
This may shock you, but in the schools around where I live there are a lot more Hindus than Catholics.
When I was a kid no one came in with a menorah or latkes - but we Jews were like 80% of the class. The point is that it is great to have any kid who is a minority in a particular class have a chance to explain his or her culture to the others. Not only for the benefit of the kid, but because a lot of the majority kids probably have questions about the culture they have never asked.
It helps when stances are based on logic, reason, and empirical evidence, not “God said so.” I get so frustrated when ostensibly/otherwise progressive people decide to kowtow to sexism/homophobia/sex-negativity (which has real, tangible, negative consequences) because it’s tied to some minority’s religion. Again, religion is a choice. It’s not race. I remember seeing an article one time in Parade which had some selection of diverse youth voices, and some shrouded girl was talking about how “there is so much pressure on girls to wear revealing clothing”, as if her odious rag was the only alternative… plus, what’s with the shaming?
Yes, the 95834 neighborhood of Sacramento is. We are #10 on this list, and #1 on this one. These lists are both a couple years old, but I don’t think much has changed since 2012.
This is for the neighborhood/zip code, not the entire metro area.
“It’s not OK to learn about other people’s culture” That’s literally what you are saying. Learning about other cultures is not OK? Really? We’re not asking you to agree with these practices. We’re not asking you to endorse them. We’re asking you to have some tiny awareness of what other people are like. And even that is apparently too much for a good number of people. There’s a good reason for the “ugly American” stereotype.
I thought of an experience we had, I guess it was middle school. We had a Maasai man come in and talk about himself and his culture. Some of which is pretty unambiguously considered “wrong” in the west, in particular lion hunting and female circumcision, both of which he talked briefly about. Does that mean that it’s wrong to have him talk to us? That it’s wrong to have us learn about his culture, which yes, has some norms very different than our own? Of course not. It was a great experience for us, and (at least as far as I know), nobody complained about it.
We did have Muslims talk to us about their religion and culture. Those talks were actually pretty boring, pretty much just a canned powerpoint, I think the same one both times. We had an orthodox Jew come talk to us both about her beliefs, but also about her stance on the Israeli conflict, which is obviously something very controversial. In that case the teacher did point out that many people had different viewpoints. Learning about someone else’s culture and values is never a wrong thing. I guess I’m glad that the fuckwads in this thread never got word of what we were doing.
I have no problem with “Comparative Religion” or “Comparative Cultures” classes in public schools. I don’t think they’d merit a full quarter or semester, but I can see them filling a week or two in a World History or Geography course.
