While Giraffe Town is a fable (shared last month), it manifests in reality in a plethora of ways. Here’s an example of how the concepts from the fable can show up in a classroom:
There once was a hard-working teacher at a Neighborhood Public School. This teacher was kind, caring, and loved her students very much. Without conscious awareness, this teacher set-up her classroom around her own cultural values, those of dominant culture. (Note: Dominant culture values can be particularly hard to detect and name because they mostly feel “normal.”) Her most common instructional routine, regardless of the subject, was to teach a lesson, sharing her expertise with students with some practice built into the lesson (values: authority and official title outweighs experience). During these lessons, students were expected to participate by raising their hands; blurting out was seen as an interruption, not participation (value: transactional relationships). After each lesson, students would have the opportunity to complete independent work, showing what they know (value: individualism and separateness). Almost always, this independent work involved some kind of writing (or drawing if they’re too young to write) to track learning. Examples include solving math problems, answering questions, or writing down vocabulary words and definitions (value: superiority of the written word). During independent work time, students were not supposed to talk to each other; if they did, they weren’t following the expectations and could even be suspected of cheating (value: individualism and separateness). As the end of each unit approached, the teacher would design review games to prepare for the test, dividing the class into different teams for the games (value: competition). Each unit ended with a scored test, where students received their grade a few days later (value: product over process).
Now, you may be thinking this represents a fairly typical classroom, and it does. Many classrooms are built on the values of dominant culture. These values in and of themselves are not necessarily harmful, but they can become so when they come at the expense of others or our own humanity and dignity. (For example, productivity is good in and of itself; when productivity takes over rest, it becomes harmful.) Problems also arise in a diverse and multicultural environment when the values of one culture dominate and lead to the exclusion and/or condemnation of the values of different cultures (value: one right way). This results in students having to assimilate, which ultimately is harmful because students are expected to leave their cultural values at home; these values are not welcome or included in the classroom (or school) environment. In forcing assimilation, it’s plausible (unless the family or community is actively counteracting), that the students who “don’t fit” can internalize oppression, believing that something is inherently wrong with their community and/or way of functioning. However, just like the elephant in the Giraffe Town fable recognized, the system and structures are really what need to be fixed, not the students.
So what do we do? Classrooms can (and need to) move towards cultural pluralism, where multiple cultures coexist and are valued for what they bring to the community. Practically in the classroom, this looks like students having both independent work time and time to collaborate (without collaboration being viewed as cheating). Students are able to demonstrate their learning through a variety of forms of communication, not just writing. There can be times of competition that don't involve tearing down the other team, and there are also times of cooperation and community building. Students can reflect on their own process of learning, which can actually lead to deeper learning than when focusing on the finished product alone. Finally, the teacher can share power with students in the classroom and recognize that students' experiences are valuable assets to the classroom learning community. These are just a few examples of a multitude of options. Being able to recognize and name our own cultural values and see how they are similar and different to that of cultures different from ours is a key step in being able to move towards cultural pluralism.
What stands out to you about this classroom example?
In case you missed it - related essays from Cultivating Justice: