The story of a teacher, this time in Virginia, who placed African-American students in the role of slaves in a slave auction lesson is just another chapter in the tome of latest mock slave auction lessons gone wrong...but this in my mind shows more keenly that teachers are not infallable like the Popes used to claim, (haha) and they screw up, in this case royally...
Now in the interest of viewing this with a critical lens, as teachers, we aren't immune to errors in judgment, especially one as serious and traumatizing as this one. While she may have tried to elicit empathy for the experience of the slaves, the fact that she did not randomize the slaves but chose to ironically otherize in a lesson that probably sought to teach students about marginalizing the other, and the fact that she reduced a slave auction to a experiential exercise, shows that we still have a long way to go in dealing with and teaching about the experience of African-Americans. While I commend her for trying to connect the Civil War to slavery, a cause that those who believe in the Lost Cause seek to obscure, a more effective way would have been to randomize the sample, instead of making the black students the slaves. She did not take into account how they might have felt about the experience, and should have received consent from the students first if she was to pull something like this off.
Slave auctions cannot be reduced down to a simulation, because it trivializes the experience in the minds of students who do not identify with the slaves as nothing more than a game, while it brings out the notion in those who can relate better that they are different, they are not of the dominant group, and that they are the other...A more highly effective way to elicit empathy would have been to read primary sources if available, or even to view images of slave auctions, asking students what they saw, or how they felt...but ironically, in seeking to educate students about how a marginalized group was otherized and oppressed, she made that more painfully clear to the students who identified with that group.
The danger of liberal multiculturalism is that we reduce the experiences of those who have not been a part of the dominant group into something trivial, either to be celebrated or to be treated as something exotic. Liberal multiculturalism speaks volumes about respecting differences and others, but what else? Is it doing anyone a service if we just agree to respect everyone without challenging those power-based relationships that mask oppression and inequality? Critical multiculturalism which challenges the status quo and the established power base in this country whether it's institutionalized or not is the way to go. Now to take into account this teacher's lesson...Did the teacher not create an instance of oppression in making the forced "otherness" of black students more clear and blatant?
I believe that there is room for experiential exercises in the classroom, but not when it comes to experiences of oppression and such...However, if you were to undertake one, you would have to be very clear when to stop. For example, one of my lesson plans at San Jose State was a card game where students drew random classes in ancient Athens, with the number of citizens based percentage-wise. So for example, in a class of 30, only four students would draw a citizen card. Then after students took a look at their cards, the simulation would end, and we would discuss the role of these classes and whether they got the right to vote or not. Then we would tie it into the present day, with brainstorming questions such as, "What if you were not able to vote in the student council elections because you belonged to a certain classroom?"
My professor warned me not to take this exercise too far, and I agreed wholeheartedly. That is why I would not have had the citizens vote on something that affected the whole class...but would have only limited it to discussion.
The fact is those who seek to institute critical pedagogy run into much resistance, from the institutionalized forces in education seeking to preserve the status quo and seeking to teach a history that does not rock the boat. Yes, we learn about slavery, we learn about segregation, but do we actually teach those topics to relate to the present-day? Do we teach about racism as a relic of the past, or do we teach it as something that can be and needs to be identified? Do we teach oppression as conquered or still alive, breathing underneath the depths of our consciousness? Do we allow for the use of diverse voices in what Carrie Shiverly Leverenz calls dissensus pedagogy where students challenge each other's and the teacher's ideas? What if those students in that classroom had a chance to voice their objections before the simulation went through? What if the teacher allowed the students to persuade her that this might not be a great idea as it might have seemed in the whole planning stage?
No comments:
Post a Comment