Our students will come from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds that may or may not be apparent to the teacher at first glance. As a teacher, it is important to be aware of the cultural and social backgrounds of your students so you can present content in a sensitive way to the culture. This would be apparent in a history class, but what if you have a Math or Science class? It's just as important to be respectful and aware of students' cultural histories in these classes because it affects the classroom dynamic and in some cases, affects their performance (for example, Native Americans experienced trauma in residential boarding schools and this affects their sense of trust in the school system today and ability to perform with nearly a century of abuse by the U.S. government.)
Below is a video I watched about Japanese Internment camps. In college, one of my Chinese friends was badgered in a restaurant by a older Caucasian man who said snarled at her and called her a derogatory term for Korean. She corrected him but we left the restaurant anyways. The man was assigning his own personal anger to my friend who had nothing to do with his situation. I could see how these sorts of tensions could play out in a classroom in a similar way. A student can overhear a parent or grandparent making racial remarks and that transfers into the classroom in a dramatic and negative way, both latent and sometimes more obvious.
Personally, I had visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii and had heard stories from my Grandpa about being a pilot in WWII. I only heard one side of how the Japanese military attacked an killed U.S. soldiers. We did briefly review the Japanese Internment camps in high school history class, but there was still a lot I did not know. This video highlights some of the aspects pretty well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTV-WNNouws
What strikes me in this video is the pictures with the small children eating at the tables inside the camp. How would you even take care of a family through all of this when you have no sense of home or safety? The images of the family standing next to the smashed store windows of their business saying, "NO JAPS WANTED" is startling. I also noticed the sign outside the internment camp, the "War Reeducation Center." Anytime you attach "Re" to "Education," it can't be good. After this video was over, another video followed was a video with U.S. Propaganda about the reason the Japanese internment camps were started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OiPldKsM5w&t=103s
The government official in the video ways that the west coast of California was deemed a potential war zone with 1/3 aliens and 2/3 Japanese citizens. The official stated this was potentially dangerous to allow Japanese forces to invade us so they were moved. This is eerily similar to today's statements from our administration as to why we can't allow Muslims into our country as legal immigrants.
I should also point out, that I would not have ever seen either of these videos if it weren't for YouTube. The historical content that we have available here is incredible! So, as an educator, I am grateful for YouTube, despite my previous position of being annoyed by it.
I should also point out, that I would not have ever seen either of these videos if it weren't for YouTube. The historical content that we have available here is incredible! So, as an educator, I am grateful for YouTube, despite my previous position of being annoyed by it.
It's important, no matter what subject we teach, to be aware of the political and social environment we are teaching in. Tensions may be hidden or very apparent, so it is important as a teacher that we listen, stay neutral, and do our best to remove the political and cultural barriers that may impede our students' learning in our classrooms.
Thanks for sharing your YouTube thoughts and your stories – the overt and covert bias expressed is omnipresent – in schools, in curriculum, in stories read and chosen for class.
ReplyDeleteIn both math science classes learning is not only the content but also the individual men and women from a range of cultures who have identified the scientific and mathematical theories are important to study.
In science, different classes of plants or species that are within the same or different categories may or may not get along or may be antagonist towards each other as is true with human beings, but they are all part of the eco system and they are sentient beings - and therefore equally important. Is an even number more important than an odd number- is adding more important than subtraction? Are there ways to look at numbers and/or plants or animals through the same lens that we look at others?
I agree with your perspective about YouTube has role in the classroom – maybe one of the roles in can be used in your classroom are ones that you and your students will make. I know you and your students will have great fun and excitement in doing so
I like the comparison you make between the different classes of plants and species and how sometimes they don't get along together and can be antagonistic. I think the natural world holds many behavioral lessons for us as humans.
ReplyDeleteI watched the other you tube videos provided on our syllabus featuring more Japanese internment camp videos. What really disturbed me was the smiling white children with anti-Japanese propaganda. I think it is awful for any adult to act negatively, violently, or aggressively towards another group of people based on their racial, ethnic, or cultural background. But it is even more disgusting for these adults to pass this onto their children and encourage them to act in the same way.
ReplyDeleteAll of the videos on Japanese internment makes me think of the Holocaust and Native Americans moving to reservations. How does the isolation and removal of a specific cultural group keep happening over and over again? The loss of life and violence committed against these groups is nauseating to say the least. I have anxiety thinking about it at night about all the suffering these people have gone through. I visited the Holocaust DC musuem as a child and distinctly remember the rows and rows of Holocaust victim children's clothing and shoes that were displayed in pictures. I bought a pin from the giftshop that said "never forget." I also recall the popular quote that we learn about history so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. How can we ensure this never happens again? With all the current events of Syria, Muslim phobia, and refugee crises, it makes me think about what if it will happen again soon. Will we be convinced as a nation that our Muslim countrymen and women need to be isolated from the rest of the population for our safety? I don't think all of the American citizens at the time of Japanese internment in 1942. The Holocaust was from 1941-1945 and I recall a quote from FDR stating what was happening to the Jewish people with the Nazis was abhorrent. Although FDR was integral in bringing the Holocaust to an end, the irony doesn't suprass me that while another country was isolating and imprisoning a specific cultural group, the United States was also isolating and imprisoning a specific cultural group. True, the U.S. did not exterminate the Japanese, but they did drive the Japanese from their businesses, land, and homes, and subjected them to unfair and at times cruel treatment. It is eerie.
I am reminded of a guy I used to fly with back about ten years ago. His name was Parrish Wilkins. His mother was white, and father black, he was almost the spitting image of a young president Obama. If I saw him around our crew room I’d ask him, “We flying together soon Mr. President?” He’d laugh cause he really liked Obama and got a kick out of the comparison, He even went as Obama to our Halloween party that year. He did his Obama impression there and campaigned to tell everyone I was his favorite captain, we got along well. Not important…
DeleteIn the years following 9/11 the topic of terrorism and hijacking was a common one in the flight deck (they are not called cockpits anymore btw), after all we were the ones who might be next in line to be hijacked. We were talking about the mood in America and the hostility towards Muslims and he made a comment I will never forget. He said, “Chris, you know what? They just the newest Niggers on the block.” He wasn’t being racist, just calling it like he saw it. But his comment affected me powerfully. I thought about it a lot, its implications and what it meant for me personally. I think he was right. America has a long (even older then our country actually is) history of rotating groups in and out for persecution. Like you mentioned, Native Americans, the Japanese but also Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, Muslims, Irish, Gays and others as well. I asked myself is it like this in the rest of the world? I realized that prejudice is not an exclusively American franchise, but it is magnified here in a way that is not in other places, we seem to struggle with it in ways other countries do not. As our understanding of racism and what it means to us as a people have evolved we have realized that there is no place in our country for it. We speak to that on a daily basis. But in many instances we do not put our money where our mouth is. We speak against it on one side and let it continue to taint our lives on the other one. If there was an easy answer we would have found it by now. It is clear now that there is no easy answer. I think that this is an issue that is not going to be solved in congregation, only as individuals will we come to solutions.
As formerly dominant and ubiquitous white culture continues to be forced to share more and more of what was historically a whites only province this issue is only going to get more acute. More pointed and more personal. We can continue to divide ourselves by arbitrary differences or we can, in the words of Depeche Mode see that “People are people” We mostly all want the same things, even though we have different ways to go about achieving our goals. If we cannot see ourselves as one people we will never be able to change. Each person must make the conscious decision in regards to what to do. (continued below)
(continued form above)
DeleteOur evolution works against us in this case. The human brain is the greatest difference determining engine ever to exist on our planet, and it leads us to see our differences before and above or similarities. Just like our higher mind can control our earlier evolved lizard emotional brain we have to use our higher functioning thought processes to control our views of race. Not an easy task. We need to guide our thoughts here. A long as we segregate ourselves based on our views of “the other” we tread the dangerous road of bigotry and intolerance. We do need to learn about the past to avoid making the same mistakes in the future, but it as single individuals we will make changes. And, it is easy to fall into old patterns.
In the book my group is reading for MGE 520 Leon Leyson tells of an encounter he had after immigrating to America, after he was in Nazi work camps, where he was told he could not sit in the back of a bus, the opposite of Rosa Parks experience. He thought it was strange that in a land so free, there was still rampant discrimination and injustice. I don’t have the answers here, I won’t preach to others what they should do, I just know I don’t want to live my life that way. I intend to lead by example, and spread my views in hope that they will be seen and adopted by others but I’m not going to try and force people to make my views their own. Without accepting personal responsibility any changes will just be on the surface. The most dangerous part of an iceberg is the part under oath water not the part that breaks the surface. Racism is very similar, underground racism is potentially more dangerous than exposed beliefs in the long run. Like I said, I know what I believe is right and will live according to those beliefs.
You both address some very impotent concepts and practices. I remember the year we moved form NYC the NYC schools had ut into place the Potato Curriculum - addressing the immigration of the Irish and the reason why. I thought this was a very good idea and supported it totally.
DeleteI found it interesting on NPR this week when the attack on London was being discussed that the mayor is a Muslin. I did not know this for i tend not to at to listen or to watch the news -for the last couple of years. But it makes me mad that I was surprised because it denoted that I wouldn't expect it - why shouldn't expect it? Does that mean I would assume otherwise? Should the media even mention the Mayor's ethnicity?