BCPSS resurfaces...
Again in class this week I was reminded of my traumatic experience as a teacher in the Baltimore City Public School System. We were discussing bias, and how you find it EVERYWHERE. We were sharing our stories. Well, here's one of mine.
I was doing a unit on Colonial America leading up to the American Revolution. I played a tape of the reading that they were about to do and then the students had to look through the text (in groups of three, remember there weren't enough textbooks for each child) and answer questions in their workbooks. One of the questions was: (paraphrased) Imagine yourself as a child in 1776. What would your life have been like? I'll mention that my school had an African American population of 100%. So my students answered like any kid would have that read the text. They would have been students in a one room school house living in a farming community, etc. But, of course, that was incorrect. I remember the text glossing over the fact that African Americans were enslaved but there was no indepth coverage of that. That may have had a sentence devoted to it. The text was obviously written with bias. It was a blantant lie about life in that time. Do I think that fourth graders need to know the absolute uncensored truth about that time period? (do we even REALLY know it?) Not to the extreme but I think it is important to be honest about our history, or as we all know we are destined to repeat it. It was insane. I did not know how to broach that subject. I didn't know what the POLICY was, and I'm sure there was a policy, there was on everything. They spent more time on POLICIES in our summer training than URBAN PSYCHOLOGY which, let me tell you, is WAY more important when you teach in an poverty stricken urban neighborhood than your "learning stations."
I think I got off topic. My point is, how can we stop the bias to our text books? How could I have gone through 13 years of school and hardly been told a thing about women's liberation with the obvious exception of women fighting for the right to vote? And why was that TOO glossed over? Aaahh!!!
I was doing a unit on Colonial America leading up to the American Revolution. I played a tape of the reading that they were about to do and then the students had to look through the text (in groups of three, remember there weren't enough textbooks for each child) and answer questions in their workbooks. One of the questions was: (paraphrased) Imagine yourself as a child in 1776. What would your life have been like? I'll mention that my school had an African American population of 100%. So my students answered like any kid would have that read the text. They would have been students in a one room school house living in a farming community, etc. But, of course, that was incorrect. I remember the text glossing over the fact that African Americans were enslaved but there was no indepth coverage of that. That may have had a sentence devoted to it. The text was obviously written with bias. It was a blantant lie about life in that time. Do I think that fourth graders need to know the absolute uncensored truth about that time period? (do we even REALLY know it?) Not to the extreme but I think it is important to be honest about our history, or as we all know we are destined to repeat it. It was insane. I did not know how to broach that subject. I didn't know what the POLICY was, and I'm sure there was a policy, there was on everything. They spent more time on POLICIES in our summer training than URBAN PSYCHOLOGY which, let me tell you, is WAY more important when you teach in an poverty stricken urban neighborhood than your "learning stations."
I think I got off topic. My point is, how can we stop the bias to our text books? How could I have gone through 13 years of school and hardly been told a thing about women's liberation with the obvious exception of women fighting for the right to vote? And why was that TOO glossed over? Aaahh!!!
posted by katherine mary @ 9:40 PM
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