BeyondLabels

Another fascinating article looking at the white students teachers perspectives of being white and how it can affect them indirectly. The article is using narrative/ story telling, direct instruction and critical reflection on oneself.

It brilliantly identified the steps necessary for effective multicultural education that include awareness of oneself and how community and background affects individuals, confrontation with outside perspectives, involvement of emotions and feelings, and the taking of action to improve the situations. Fisherman and McCarthy (2005) pointed out and is being reiterated in the article is that, if we are not 'self-reflexive about our own white biases' then 'productive talk about race' is not likely to eventuate with out students.

The author goes on to discuss and elaborate the stories of resistance from her own students via the story telling journal. She was looking at the aboriginal and multicultural education (in the context of Australia) as this is a compulsory course within her university's teacher education program. Her findings suggests how varied the perceptions of being White and implication on the multicultural society. Some of her students found how guilty they were for being white and some feels that is the way it is, white is the ruling party in the society. In her final reflection, the author stated how she wants to help the white students to move beyond positions of guilt and resentment to a space where they can become effective while allies.

This article by Jana Noel (California State university, Sacramento) examines the idea that students construction of identity can be linked to their understandings of multicultural education. This article was written from the prespective of the teacher/educators in the sense that they need to have a good understanding of why our students have such a wide range of definitions of multicultural education. This article ties in really well with my PhD in the sense that, one of my dimension is looking at the identity implication form the learner perspective as well as teacher's perspective. There are not as many discussion around in terms of teacher's identity compared to learners's identity.

Jana discussed how she found out for the first time from her 'student teacher' ......" I don't need to take Multicultural Education, because I'am in Agricultural and we feed the world". Such perception about multicultural eduation is and if it is part of the 'student teacher' thinking has made Jana more determined to gain a better understanding of why her students have such a different understanding of multicultural eduation.

http://www.malaynet.org/central/radio.php

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals what is deep inside of us as valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can rick curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit." (e. e. cummings, 1923/1976)

The above quote is the main discussion in an article by Nancy.P. Gallavan & A.Maria. Whittemore that I found very fascinating and deeply involved. It uses the narrative dialogue in its approach and it gave us a deeper understanding of the situation.

The article "When Parallel Lives Intersect: Experiencing Multiple Perspectives in Our Own Journeys" is based on two lives (personal experiences of the two author in the article) of completely different people and how they have openly talked about their own experienced. It highlighted the above quote very deeply and it was quiet emotional for me when I read the article.

Maria is a black female growing in the 50's and she explained how difficult and challenging it was at time being black and female. How she was the youngest of six and lived near the railroad tracks on the far end of town. The house she was living with her family was burnt-out machine shop with no bathroom and her family was the only black family in the community. Her and her siblings had to go to a segregated school which was 8 miles away. Maria was top achieve in the school and when she finally accepted in the white school, she was going through difficult times with other white children who making fun of her but luckily her white teacher see beyond her colour and gave her all the help she needed......

Nancy was too growing in the 50's and was the only white girl who lived in the house with her family who hired the black domestic. Her father was the owner of the local feed mile who hired black laborers and her mother gave her hand-me-down clothing to the black domestics family. Her parents also donated money and many other furnishing to the black families. Her parents also helped the black children to attend college. Nancy always wondered why the black children were not allowed to the while school and...

This article concluded with discussion and gone back to the quote above that we have to accept the person as he/she is and must look deeper and NOT discriminates. For Maris, her life story empowers her to see DIVERSITY as a STRENGHT and not deficits and to model this belief to everyone around her. Same with Nancy, her heart and head were reopened to many bias and social injustice inequalities she experienced in her childhood and how these now clearly apparent to her many years later as a professor of cultural diversity.

An article I picked up from the Futurist magazine is fascinating. It discussed how the west can learn from developing countries with regards understanding different cultures or some people use the term intercultural understanding. It also shows that the issues of cultures were discussed greatly at the time. the world major problems such as poverty, war and hunger are inherent in the current system of world order based on nation-states and economic competition.
The authors believed that these can be solved if people know and understand one another on a global, grass-roots basis. I couldn't agree more with the author. We are still seeing these problems in this modern world and little has been done to improve the situations globally. We must strive to appreciate and understand other cultures so that we can understand and reform our own culture and use these understanding to help us with a platform from which we can see ourselves.
These concepts of culture understanding could open new vistas for all of us. The authors were astonished with the community cooperation in one of thee visit in the pacific. In Fiji, the villages’ still harvesting, drying and exporting sea cucumber to Japan and all the earnings went to the village elders for community project. This shows that collaboration rather than competition makes more available to everyone.
The authors also discussed the option for our future. "The idea that land is something that can be owned by an individual is almost unique to Western culture". For example, the Australian aborigines have no concept of land ownership. they are owned by the land. The land is also a holy place and the spirits of their ancestors.
We have the opportunity to design our own future and we must find a way to escape the norm and biases that inherent in our current culture and open our eyes to the options for a more positive future.

According to Hanh (1991), in order for reflection to lead to transformation, one needs to engage in the practice of mindful contemplation which requires one to look deeply at/into the issues that one confronts. By doing so, you are able to see how self and other "inter-are". Hanh points out that "Roses and garbage inter-are"...read the following pharasing........ "If we look more deeply we will see that in just five or six days, the roses will become part of the garbage. We do not need to wait five days to see it. If we look at the rose, and we look deeply, we can see it now. And if we look at the garbage can, we see that in a few month its contents can be transformed into a lovely vegetables, and even a rose. If you are a good organic gardener, looking at a rose you can see the garbage, and looking at the garbage you can see a rose." (1991, p.97) Thich Nhat Hanh is a Buddhist monk. The difference between Freire and Hanh, noted by Hook (1994) is that while Freire speaks mostly to the mind, Hanh's vision of pedagogy emphasizes "wholeness, a union of mind, body and spirit". Therefore an "engaged pedagody" is a process of healing the splits, of developing integrity of interbeing between theory and practice, intellect and spirit, teacher and student, and embarking on a process of transformation in which being-in-the classroom is recognized as part of being-in-the-world and vice versa.

Radical Journalist Gary Younge talks about his latest book “Stranger In A Strange Land: Encounters In The Disunited States”. This book is divided into four sections –war, race, politics and culture. The overarching theme is division. The book talks about how divided US really is. Gary explained how….” the era of former US president Bill Clinton ended with one of the closest elections that we can remember- one that George Bush had to steal in the end. So Bush, and the way that he came to power, was an expression of division. When Hurricane Katrina landed, another clear division that came out if it is Race. Black, opinionated, and from a working-class background, Gary Younge is not your typical foreign correspondent. Yet, in three years as The Guardian newspaper's New York correspondent, Younge has acquired a transatlantic reputation as one of the most thoughtful commentators on contemporary America. (Book description on Amazon)