i am a high school english teacher. (don't really know where to post this, but this seems as good a place as any!) my girls are from urban areas, and have obviously dealt with much injustice. however, they make these crazy blanket statemnts. today the class (of just 10, and i believe this to be the undefined remedial class) unamiously agreed that pakastani's are nasty because they're 'ugly' and 'stupid.' oy...how the hell do i deal with the lack of knowledge of these girls? how can i possibly show them the danger of making such comments? i want them to feel free to express themselves; otherwise, how would i know what to teach? but still...this issue is so deep, i truly do not know where to start. how do you teach your children about the issues of diversity? this school is quite segregated.
How about using your medium. There are a lot of great multicultural books out there. Can you get ahold of any of them and either do read-alouds for ten minutes a period, or assign them a book report with set questions that need to be answered like : What do you have in common with the main character, and did you like or dislike this character and why? I grew up in a really segregated area too 96% white. One of my journalism professor's had a black man (mixed African and Hatian heritage I think) come in as a speaker. At the end of the lecture she opened the floor and said we could ask him any questions we wanted about being black or black culture. It was really liberating to ask all those questions that you are supposed to feel guilty for even thinking about. It was a neat way to teach cultural acceptance and that its okay to think about differences in a realistic way. Also Oprah has a good video made in the early 90's I think, on prejudice. It has questions at the end of the video. H
