Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
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and
Teaching
About
Learning
Cultural
Diversity
HowardM. Miller
All
of us
together
favorites.
an
award
winner,
an
was
a young,
enthusiastic
666
edu
by her
a story
have
Preparations forchallenge
When educators embark on a multi
cultural journey with their students,
they need to recognize the potential for
stirring up controversy. Sherman's gen
uine desire to offer her students a posi
tive, upbeat story backfired when, for
all her goodwill, a negative context was
put around her intentions.
In seeking to prevent such an inci
dent, a good dose of professional com
mon sense is called for, both in terms
of materials selection and in preparation
for a challenge. The first rule must be
this: Avoid being isolated. Teachers
who choose to select their own materi
als based on personal likes and dislikes
may find themselves out on a limb and
all alone when challenged. Here are
some questions we need to consider
long before we find ourselves in a sim
ilar situation:
Is there a schoolwide or districtwide
procedure for selecting books to use
If there isn't,
in the classroom?
should there be one?
To what extent have teachers, other
professionals,
parents,
and
commu
Vol.53,No.8 May2000
to tell
we
have
a rationale,
a reason,
?2000 International
ReadingAssociation (pp.666-667)
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and
ceivable
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These preparations offer no guaran
tee that our choice of books will go un
challenged, of course, but they certainly
and we stand a
lessen the possibility,
much better chance of emerging rela
tively unscathed ifwe are prepared.
Cultural"theft"
There
education,
challenges to multicultural
in the experience of Judi
exemplified
author of a children's book
Moreillon,
called Sing Down
the Rain (1997,
In composing
her book,
Kiva).
Moreillon
strove
to re-create
in verse
a
1990, University Press of Virginia),
of
letters
and
collection
written
by
diary
one of the white school teachers who
were among the first legal teachers of
the freed former slaves and their chil
dren following the U.S. Civil War.
If we are to provide children with a
more complete picture, then they must
learn that slavery was not an "invention"
of Colonial America, but had a long dis
reputable history well before the first
European set foot in the New World.
Milton Meltzer' sAll Times, All Peoples:
A World History
(1980,
of Slavery
Harper & Row), for example, places
slavery in a historic context. It goes back
some 10,000 years and shows slavery to
be an issue of power and powerlessness
affecting all races and cultures.
and
racism,
we must
and
recognize
Reference
J. (1999). The candle and the mirror:
Moreillon,
One author's journey as an outsider. The New
Advocate,
12,127-140.
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667