I admire Gaughan’s willingness to tackle sensitive issues like sexism, racism, censorship, and sexuality in the classroom. He’s brave asking his students to make their tacit prejudices explicit. Honestly, I’d be uncomfortable facilitating discussion around such provocative issues. This isn’t to say that I’d ignore them, but I’d want to think about how they can be addressed in much less an “us vs. them” mentality. Annamary had such an excellent point in class. It seemed like some of these issues can be explored through literature throughout the year. Maybe they don’t necessitate compartmentalized units of study, but rather, we might develop a heuristic that helps students read all texts (e.g., movies, books, pop media, and the news) critically, especially in regard to how people are positioned and represented by others who have the power to determine what we consume. The questions Randy provided in class seem powerful for helping students read texts with a critical eye.
Gaugan’s book also got me thinking of how I’d respond to students’ off-color and offensive remarks regarding race, class, and sexuality. Certainly they need to be addressed. We often ask students to share their inner thoughts, and to write about their worlds, but what do we do when these are chock full of ignorance and hate? In this regard, I think Gaughan is a fine example of a teacher who questions the assumptions laden in students’ talk and writing. He saw both as essential for developing more sophisticated understandings of others. Here again, literature plays an important role in complicating prior understandings of those unlike ourselves. I like the idea of reading stories that challenge prejudice and that counters speech pregnant with innuendo.
I especially liked the idea of having multiple texts for students to pick from, and forming “book clubs” around those texts. Other activities like role-playing characters from books seem worthwhile for considering multiple points of view. I heartedly agree with Gaughan that we should reconsider how we teach English, and give students experiences that prepare them for the plurality of people and cultures they will likely encounter. I’m not sure, however, that bundling up sensitive issues in units of study is the best or only way to get this done, but I’m grateful for his account, and admire his stance in addressing these issues head-on. After all, they are always present in every classroom. They are always felt, if not necessarily spoken. It is a matter of making them a visible part of the curriculum.
2 responses so far ↓
a.r. // December 3, 2007 at 8:42 am
“Annamary had such an excellent point in class. It seemed like some of these issues can be explored through literature throughout the year. Maybe they don’t necessitate compartmentalized units of study, but rather, we might develop a heuristic that helps students read all texts (e.g., movies, books, pop media, and the news) critically.”
Good point. I find myself coming up against this decision in my syllabus, resisting the idea of putting race, gender, etc. into compartments, and instead using a range of multicultural texts that invite critical conversation around these ideas within our broader study. Does that make sense? The downside to my approach is that it doesn’t let me dig deeply in to any one issue (we certainly could and in some contexts should spend the whole class inquiring about race). But that has it’s own downside, too… I’m reminded of a comment someone repeated in class the other day. Someone overhead a teacher who said, “Oh, but we did negroes in the third grade” (meaning they could now move on to other subjects). Yikes.
Treavor // December 4, 2007 at 10:27 am
Yes, it does make sense. I am coming across that issue, too. It seems like the conversation should be integrated, and considered as one way to investigate or even critique educational materials. . . I am not sure what the best answer is. I feel putting these subjects into departments runs the risk of isolating them, and perhaps even marginalizing the issues? Not sure if that’s the case, but it seems that since race, gender, class, sexuality is so embedded our everyday lives (sometimes invisible, sometimes not) then they need to be integrated throughout the course. Maybe over time students will become comfortable talking about these issues and how they affect classroom dynamics. When they are presented in isolation, in one class session, it can perhaps be hard for people to find a place in the conversation. They need time to process. But does this make me an activist with an agenda trying to push my ideology? Probably. I guess all teaching is advocacy in one form or another.
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