Grande Finale: Enter Kristen, Stage Left, into a Bath of Rose-Coloured Spotlight...

It is perhaps appropriate that I finish* this blog with a response to an essay by Paul Carr. Indeed, he has been something of a thorn in my side for over a month now, as co-editor of a book that I have not enjoyed reading, and yet I have never had the chance to address him directly. I cannot tell the reader how many times I have had to suppress the urge to throw The Great White North out the window of Paragraphe bookstore, where I sit and read the chapters each week as an alternative to spending $50 to buy the book. And I am not the kind of person who under-spends on books. But philosophically, The Great White North is just… not my cup of tea.

Still, I have learned a great deal about myself by questioning what it is about the text that bothers me so much. Perhaps it is the heavily theoretical (and overly-emotional) nature of the writing that gnaws at me. As somebody with a background in science, I like to be able to examine the data for myself and draw my own conclusions, and judge whether or not the conclusions of the authors are appropriate. That is to say, I would have valued more emphasis on the history, policy, and current issues in Canada which have a cultural component and which deserve attention from educators and socially active citizens. More than that, I would have preferred to read a book that is more concerned with discussing solutions to problems, rather than one which, in essay after essay, tells me that one exists and that I can’t see it because I’m White. Perhaps I have missed the point, and maybe the fact that I have missed the point proves Carr’s point. Still, I feel compelled to admit here that often, while reading The Great White North, I felt as if I were being preached to, talked down to, or perhaps even indoctrinated.

But enough of that; let’s do something constructive. I was happy that Carr’s essay, The Whiteness of Educational Policymaking, was concerned with policy in Ontario, and I was disappointed that, in his discussion with our class last week, he did not devote more time to talking about policy issues in Ontario. I have sent him an email asking if he’ll answer the open-ended question I composed for him – that is, Is the debate regarding Afrocentric education in Toronto similar to the debate about faith-based education that the province engaged in only a month ago? I am very interested to hear if Carr sees these two issues as nearly identical, or if he judges race-based education and faith-based education as separate debates. His answer to this question, I think, would speak to what he believes multicultural education in Canada should look like.

The questions that Carr poses at the end of his essay are, in the context of my blog, rather redundant. He asks the reader, How should Whiteness be broached within an institutional context by those who may not be in positions of power? He also asks, How should Whites be made aware of, and become engaged in, the conceptualization and application of race and anti-racism? I have already addressed these questions – I think, in nearly every posting, but most specifically here and here. However, there is more than one way to address institutionalized Whiteness, and there is more than one way to make people aware of it. So, I will answer these questions again using a new example, and as a nod to Carr (as if to make up for the rudeness of not enjoying his book), I will take my example from his native Toronto.

George Dei (who is a contributing author to The Great White North), is shown here speaking to his class at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Dei says an experimental black-focused school is 'long overdue.' Photo credit: Charla Jones/ Toronto Star

The Whiteness of Toronto’s public schools has become the target of some scrutiny of late, as the school board, concerned parents and community organizers try to address the high dropout rate among Black students (according to the Toronto Star, the current dropout rate for Black students is “40-something” percent). A solution being deliberated right now is an alternative school specially designed for at-risk Black students, with teachers, mentors, and a curriculum that focus on Black heritage and values. This idea has received a great deal of criticism from the public, with many calling it “segregation” (a one-word sound-bite that is reminiscent of last month’s election). Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has said that the idea makes him “personally uncomfortable.”

Now, I’ve disagreed with McGuinty before, and I’m going to disagree with him again. If anything, the 40% dropout rate should make him uncomfortable. Right now, the Toronto District School Board has 33 alternative schools, including ones for gay and lesbian students, and ones for Aboriginal students. If anything, a school for African-Canadian youth at risk seems long overdue. McGuinty’s refusal to entertain ideas of “segregating” students by race or religion is, I think, reminiscent of Charania’s observation that the liberal idea of multiculturalism is having many different students in one environment, regardless of whether or not there is truly social cohesion and peace in that environment. Simply put, wishing that all students of all backgrounds can always learn and live together to the benefit of all does not make it so.

On November 8th and 12th, the TDSB held public meetings to discuss the issue with parents and community leaders. At the first meeting, the general opinion of attendees was in favor of the new school. At the second meeting, the sentiment was more split. Currently, the school board is awaiting a feasibility report, which the prospective staff is expected to file early next year. Below I have embedded reporting on the debate by CityNews:







These public meetings are an example of how I think institutionalized Whiteness can be addressed by people who are not in power. Several hundred people attended in Toronto, which is a promising number that reflects the importance of the issue. It is at these public events, and later in the media which reports on them, that the public can be made aware of the problems that can, and do, arise from the current format of public education. Being educated about racial issues in schools is one thing, but it is particularly meaningful to live those issues and effect their solutions.

While the direct benefits of such a school to the at-risk youth is perhaps obvious, I would also argue that an experiment in Afrocentric education can have positive repercussions throughout the public school community. That is, the curriculum and critical pedagogy developed by teachers and community leaders for the Afrocentric school will be useful to educators in all schools, helping to address directly the problem of White-centered curriculum and teaching in Canada. This is one of the reasons I am such a strong advocate of a diversified field in public education. Open and constructive dialogue among educators from many different schools can, I think, have a synergistic effect on the whole, providing that an open and constructive dialogue is maintained between professionals of all backgrounds. An example of this comes nicely in my response to Charania, which follows below.

The incident described by Gulzar Charania in his essay, A Group That Plays Together Stays Together, is an example of where the perspective of a Black educator would be very useful. Absolutely, addressing a problem such as the one Charania described as a purely class-generated conflict is tantamount to willfully ignoring what is probably the central issue of race. When answering Charania’s question of how the framework of interlocking oppressions reframe issues of girl violence, I am reminded of those two debaters – Napande and Shimby – who noted during their arguments about affirmative action that race and socio-economic status are historically, systemically and unfortunately, intertwined. What was clear to those two girls should have been clear to the administrators of the school Charania studied, and the realization should have indicated that focusing only on economic class to resolve the conflict is as politically cowardly as it is probably ineffective.

A more critical analysis of the conflict between the two groups of girls would have alerted the administrators that there was an element of racial conflict that needed to be addressed. A responsible educator then would have looked for outside expertise to give recommendations on how to proceed, both in addressing the specific students implicated in the incidents and, more broadly, the school as a whole. While the idea to place the students together in a close environment and engage them in activities together was probably born from the best of intentions, I agree with Charania that a better approach would have been to speak to the groups individually before initiating a dialogue. Anti-racist curricular and pedagogical interventions developed by leaders in the Black community, and (perhaps ideally) educators from an Afrocentric school working in conjunction with educators from the predominantly White district would be an effective tool for teachers hoping to educate their students about racism in Canada. Specific examples of the kinds of activities which would be effective in educating students about these issues can be found in my response to Helen Fox.

---

*To the Teaching Assistant: I have decided that this post will be my last formal response to a homework assignment – the amount of time that I invest in my responses precludes me from answering the questions for the Quintero text before the deadline, though I may post a comment on these readings on a later date.

Holocaust Education: An Underused Stepping Stone to Issues of Contemporary, Global Significance

At the conclusion of her piece, The Parents of Baywoods – Intersections Between Whiteness and Jewish Ethnicities Cynthia Levine-Rasky asks her Readers how the Holocaust is represented in the curriculum, and how teaching about the Holocaust compares to teaching about Israel, the Palestinians, the Middle East and other genocides. The following essay is a summary of, and critique of, my own experiences, and a discussion of the programs currently being pursued in Montreal which are geared towards Holocaust sensitization.

In secondary V, I read Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, which chronicles the author’s imprisonment in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Holocaust. As a psychologist, Dr. Frankl not only gives the reader an idea of the unimaginable conditions which he survived, but he also provides insight into the psychological reactions the inmates had to the camp. His conclusion is that meaning in life can be found in even the most oppressive and painful of circumstances. Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men – decent and indecent, and both these races, he tells us, were represented in the Nazi guards, and in the prisoners.



I read this book because it was required reading in my World Religions class. In this class I also learned about the three Abrahamic faiths and their historical roots, and about the doctrines of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. This is, to the best of my recollection, the only class in which the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine were directly addressed in my secondary school. I say ‘directly’ because there were certainly other, more incidental moments of exposure to the story of the Holocaust – visits and discussion with the boys from Bialik High School, and class trips to local theatre events, one of which was a play about survivors of the Holocaust. Later, in University, I would take a World War II history class, where the genocide would be studied in much greater detail.

The unfortunate reality of my schooling is that I have never been formally educated in world history or even the history of western civilization. The CEGEP which I attended did not make these electives easily available to Science students. There seemed to be the general opinion amongst my peers that we didn’t need to waste our time with ‘arts’ classes, and among the ‘arts’ teachers there seemed to be the general opinion that science students didn’t read or write well enough to handle the coursework. As somebody who didn’t subscribe to either position, and who quite frankly found the first one arrogant and the second one insulting, I was left to flip through my friends’ textbooks and drool over their notes. It is a shame that World History is not a required course for graduation from any CEGEP program, even the programs sympathetically designed for illiterate science students like me.

My exposure to the concept of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to the realities of other genocides (namely those which took place or are taking place in Turkey, Iraq, East Timor, Rwanda, Darfur and Tibet) occurred almost exclusively through participation in debating tournaments and model United Nations seminars. Every year, McGill hosts an excellent model United Nations seminar for beginners (SSUNS), where high school students are able to serve as delegates for member nations and debate current events of global interest with other students from around the world. For example, I remember my first experience was representing Syria on the General Assembly, and the topic of debate was weapons proliferation in the Middle East. My research for this event led me to questions about the conflict on the West Bank, the split in Muslim loyalties between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions, and the human rights violations occurring in nations throughout the region and beyond (at the time, the Kosovo War was very much a topic of discussion). Of course, to be thrust into so many new ideas at once was overwhelming, but better to drown in a sea of information than to die of thirst for want of it. I remember wishing that my Religion class, after reading Frankl, had gone beyond the Holocaust to discuss current instances of genocide. In this respect, I am very much in agreement with Taylor and would like to second her call for more education about contemporary issues.

A quick reading of recent newsletters from the English Montreal School Board tells me that a ‘Holocaust Sensitization Program’ has been established since 2004, and is a joint effort between the EMSB and the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center Museum. This project is being funded partially by the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal. This gives some reinforcement to my feeling that the reason that the Holocaust usually receives some or quite a bit of attention in the high school curriculum, and why other genocides often do not, is because of the political and social prominence of the Jewish minority in Montreal in particular, and in North America in general. It is largely through the efforts of this community to raise awareness and offer financial support to Holocaust education programs in secondary schools that we see results. Now let me be clear: I do not mean to fault the Jewish community for influencing secondary education; on the contrary, this is a success story. It is unfortunate that other minority groups have not been as able to, or have not been as willing to stand up and tell their stories – to build museums, to establish foundations, to work in partnerships with local school boards to organize events. In a 2004 poll, 40% of Canadians were able to answer correctly that the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust totaled approximately 6 million. I doubt even one-half that many could offer similar information about other world tragedies.

For an analysis of Holocaust education in Canada, conducted by B’nai Brith Canada, go here. For an article reporting on Montreal teachers’ experiences with teaching students about the Holocaust, go here.

Blue lake and rocky shore; I will return once more...

It was a pleasure to read Herbert Northcott’s essay, Going Native: A White Guy’s Experience Teaching in an Aboriginal Context. Thus far in the course readings I have felt disconnected and alienated by the lack of substantial examples of how Whiteness manifests itself in the classroom, and what a multicultural approach to instruction can and should accomplish. Northcott has given me something real and meaningful to consider and has engaged me on a much deeper level than any of the previous readings have, and for that I am thankful to him.

I have sometimes said that Canada’s treatment of the Aboriginal people is this nation’s greatest shame, without really knowing what I was talking about. The fact that I didn’t know what I was talking about was a testament to the reasons for which I, as a Canadian, should be ashamed. I live on the South Shore, next to the Kahnawake reservation, and every morning I take the 138 through that reservation on my way in to school. Still, when I was younger I knew almost nothing about my Mohawk neighbors, except for the fact that my grandmother used to go to Kahnawake to play Bingo, and my father went there buy cigarettes, and every once in awhile the Mohawks barricaded the Mercier bridge for reasons I didn’t understand and were never properly explained to me. For a child, this information is more than enough to form an opinion. The gambling implied moral degeneracy (nevermind that the good residents of Chateauguay flocked to the reserve to partake in said degeneracy, and that the same Bingo games were played in our Church’s basement every Saturday night), the smoking implied a lack of hygiene and a general contempt for clean air and healthy lungs (nevermind that my entire family smoked when I was young), and the barricading of the bridge implied lawlessness, even terrorism. There were rumors at my elementary school that the Indians had secretly strapped sticks of dynamite to the bridge and one day, they’d detonate the explosives during rush-hour to the peril of all the White commuters – that my parents crossed that bridge every day on their way to and from work chilled me to the bone. Every time they were late picking me up from my grandmother’s house I would pace by the front door, staring out into the blackness, nauseous with the melodramatic notion that finally, the Indians had blown up the bridge and my parents had plummeted to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River.

Mohawk protesters barricade the Mercier bridge in June of 2007.

Of course, as I matured I realized that my fears and prejudices were founded on ignorance, though for a long time I remained conscious of that ignorance without willing myself out of it. My formal education certainly did nothing to help, and neither did my informal education (that is to say, television and newspapers). After dating a wildly good-looking Mokawk boy in grade six, I had no exposure to Aboriginal culture until my involvement with the Girl Guides of Canada three years ago. I had been a Guide when I was younger and I am an experienced camper, and at the time I was toying with the idea of committing myself to education as a career so I applied for a job at the Guides’ summer camp in the Laurentians.

The Wa-thik-ane campgrounds are beautiful, minimalist and well-kept, scattered around a lake so clean you can run to the end of the dock, leap out into the air, and see the pebble-covered bottom of the lake clearly, just before you hit the surface of the water. The individual campsites are named after Aboriginal communities – Cree, Micmac, Algonquin, Iroquois, Huron, Montagnais, Mohawk, and Chippewa. The naming scheme charmed me, though I found that nobody on the staff had any substantial knowledge of these Aboriginal cultures. Nevertheless, my interest was piqued and so I brought up some books on First Nations history, finding myself most interested by their cosmologies, creation myths and metaphysical ideologies (as a Godless Liberal, it was all deliciously exotic to me). Later in the summer, our camp was treated to a visit from a group of Innu children from Eastern Quebec, most of whom didn’t speak English, though some spoke a little French. Watching the visitors get along (and not get along) with our girls was an educational (and humorous) experience for me, and though I often didn’t have a clue what the Innu children were saying, I was sure that I liked them. I found them to be warm and joyous, eager to learn English words and teach us songs in Innu, so much so that when our girls refused to go to bed on time I joked that I would happily trade them for a few of the Aboriginal children, and if they stayed up all night and then slept in past colours then they’d wake up on a bus halfway to the Mashteuiatsh reserve near Lac Saint-Jean.

There was some chafing, however, especially at the dinner table. The Innu children had little regard for the kinds of table manners our girls had been taught (and which were strictly enforced by members of the camp staff, including myself). Often, the non-Aboriginal children were disgusted by their new friends’ disregard for forks and knives, and they were angry with me for not punishing the newcomers the same way I punished them for “playing with their food.” The language barrier was another difficulty, sometimes resulting in hurt feelings or incoherent arguments with a great deal of ineffective yelling and arm-flailing. Mostly, though, it was the Innu children’s lack of respect for any non-Aboriginal authority that caused the most problems. Even the children who understood French would not respond to French directions by anyone who was not their leader. During activities, they would not remain on task and were often found wandering off on their own, quietly stubborn to any instruction I gave to rejoin the group. I remember privately questioning how some of these children would ever be able to participate fully in Canadian life if they would not respond to anyone outside their circle for any meaningful length of time.

Camp Wa-thik-ane is located on the edge of Lac Bouchette, seen here at dusk.

All this to explain why I especially enjoyed Northcott’s essay, which crystallizes the essence of the cultural differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures when it comes to learning, particularly in the case of a White instructor teaching Aboriginal students. Not only are there historical and political barriers between our two people, there is also a fundamental cultural difference in the way Aboriginal children learn. Northcott writes on page 59,

I asked, “How did teaching occur in Cree culture in the past.” It was observed that in the past teaching and learning often involved storytelling and example, and learning was experimentally based. Furthermore, communication often took place in a circle where all were considered more-or-less equal.

Taken together with Frideres’ observations of the behavior of minority students in his predominantly White classrooms, this gives me a more substantial understanding of why some of our group activities with the Innu girls were unsuccessful. I now feel better equipped to answer Northcott’s question about how a White instructor can become “culturally sensitive” and how cultural sensitivity can be practiced in the classroom.

The first step towards cultural sensitivity is, I think, education about the culture to which one wishes to be sensitive. I continue to feel disadvantaged when commenting on issues of Aboriginal education because of my general ignorance of Aboriginal history, culture and the political issues which largely define Aboriginal communities in the Canadian media. A superficial reading of recent policy papers and proposals by the federal government and the Aboriginal community about education renders me surprised that these issues are not spoken about more often by the press, because it is a constantly evolving debate of critical importance to our future as a nation. What’s more, I think this debate is also an integral part of our past as a nation, and yet I was never taught about Aboriginal history in school.

The second step towards cultural sensitivity is an open dialogue with Aboriginal leaders, parents and educators. Just as Northcott spoke to his mature students about what kind of pedagogy they would be most comfortable with, I think non-Aboriginal instructors who teach Aboriginal students should have access to conversation with, or at least resources produced by, members of that child’s community. Recent efforts to reform educational policy to give more control to Aboriginal people over the curriculum taught in their schools seem promising, and the curricular changes produced by Aboriginal educators to respond to this new responsibility will be invaluable to teachers who wish to make their classrooms more inclusive.

In fact, I don’t believe the contributions of Aboriginal educators to the curriculum would be beneficial only to Aboriginal students. Indeed, all Canadian students would benefit from a balanced and accurate account of the history, economy, values and culture of their own country. On this note, I made a particular connection with Northcott when he opined that the student-centered learning strategy he employed with his Aboriginal students would be equally beneficial to a classroom of White students:

I have always disliked the pedagogical tradition of a lecturer lecturing to a large and relatively passive audience of students… I have accumulated evidence over the years I have taught in First Nations colleges that Aboriginal students do not do as “well” as non-Aboriginal students in lecture-based courses with multiple-choice examinations; nevertheless, I have long been convinced that such courses are in the best interests of neither Aboriginal nor non-Aboriginal students. (65)

I agree entirely and found myself envying the Aboriginal students their learning environment with Northcott, wondering if I could modify the strategy to make it viable in my own (future) classrooms.

Northcott’s question about how Aboriginals and Whites should negotiate pedagogy in a changing world is a natural next step in our discussion. On the institutional level, as I have already mentioned, changes are underway to give Aboriginals more autonomy over the content of their curriculum (the history of White control over Aboriginal education is as fascinating as it is painful, but I will not elaborate on it here – please see my response to Lindberg, and the references I provide on my link list). High on the list of amendments to be made is the course textbooks, particularly for history. As Northcott notes on page 58, "As I received possible textbooks, it struck me that the texts were written for the most part by Euro-Canadians about our society dominated by Euro-Canadian social structure and cluture."

The limitations placed on curriculum necessarily translate to limitations placed on pedagogy – standardized exams are only a very obvious example of why this is so. While it is, I think, very important that Aboriginal children become comfortable and proficient with the methods of evaluation prevalent in Canadian universities, familiarization with these methods should not come at the expense of their ethnic identities, and certainly not at the expense of the quality of their education. Striking the correct balance is essential to producing good graduates who are not only prepared to face the realities of contemporary Canadian life but who also have a solid connection to their native communities, language and culture. This will be done by ongoing and productive dialogue between First Nations leaders and the federal government. As I have already indicated, the developments made between these two parties will be invaluable to all educators as a new and potentially fruitful approach to educating all children.

Forgotten, but not gone

While Northcott’s essay on teaching Aboriginal students spoke to my pedagogical interests, Tracy Lindberg’s essay, On Indigenous Academia: The Hermeneutics of Indigenous Western Institutional Participation – Eleven Theorems poses questions that speak to my interests in public policy and Canadian history (both of which are severely underfed by study, but I find these topics fascinating nevertheless). Specifically, I wish to answer Lindberg’s question about how the histories, employees and policies of Canadian institutions reflect Whiteness and White culture by examining the institution of Aboriginal schools and the governing body which oversees them – that is, the federal government. I will present a brief historical overview here, and then address Lindberg’s other question about how individuals can address institutionalized Whiteness by commenting on how the policy has changed, and is still being changed, and what obstacles continue to persist.

Even before the British North America Act was written, the government’s policy with respect to Aboriginal education has been one of assimilation. Education would, as the minister of Indian affairs, Frank Oliver, predicted in 1908, "elevate the Indian from his condition of savagery" and "make him a self-supporting member of the state, and eventually a citizen in good standing."* This meant that the Aboriginal children were to learn English, and learn Catholicism. Not only that, but the policy unapologetically called for the complete eradication of the Aboriginal identity of the child, including, most importantly, language. Residential schools for aboriginal children were established across the nation which where jointly administered by the government and the Church, with the Church playing the dominant role. These schools were often far away from Indian reservations and so the children where severed from their parents to be cared for by strangers bent on transforming them into obedient, Christian subjects.

The tragic history of physical, emotional and sexual abuse that followed in these schools, up until as late as the 1980s, is well documented. It was commonplace to beat children for speaking their native languages and other indiscretions; the treatment was so terrible that many children ran away and died of exposure as they tried to find their way back to their homes. Death from diseases such as cholera and smallpox was also common. The Legacy of Hope Foundation has a website up documenting the conditions in the residential schools and cataloging testimony from veterans. Below I have embedded a few of the interviews found on the Where are the Children? webpage.

Belinda Vandenbrock	Bernadene Harper
Brenda Cardinal	Clive Linklater

The fact that the residential schools were ineffective at producing good graduates is probably the least devastating legacy of the failed experiment. In 1992, a First Nations task force group forwarded to the minister of justice of the day, Kim Campbell, "a statement prepared and approved by B.C. First Nations Chiefs and leaders". In it, they pointed out that, “The federal government established the system of Indian residential schools which was operated by various church denominations. Therefore, both the federal government and churches must be held accountable for the pain inflicted upon our people. We are hurt, devastated and outraged. The effect of the Indian residential school system is like a disease ripping through our communities.”** Indeed, it is not very difficult to imagine why new generations of Aboriginals are weary of education in general, and federally-administered education in particular. Nor is it very difficult to imagine why many northern communities are devastated by widespread emotional and physical disorders such as depression, alcoholism and drug addiction. The legacy of the residential schools is inherited like a genetic affliction from parent to child, to grandchild.

A group of nuns with Aboriginal students, ca. 1890. Photographer: Library and Archives Canada, PA-123707

A watershed in the history of Aboriginal education occurred in 1972, when the National Indian Brotherhood (now called the Assembly of First Nations) published a document demanding Aboriginal self-governance over education and outlining a plan for accomplishing this. The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs readily accepted the proposal, and since then there has been a gradual transference of administrative powers form the federal government to the Aboriginal education authorities. Today, the vast majority of Aboriginal communities manage their own schools and, although there is still a significant gap in educational attainment between First Nation students and the general population, the proportion of First Nation students living on reserve who have completed high school has increased significantly.

In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples strongly recommended the federal government give more control over education to the Aboriginal people, and recent policy papers suggest a move in this direction. In 1998, the Government of Canada responded to the Royal Commission’s recommendations with Gathering Strength - Canada's Aboriginal Action Plan, which called for a renewed partnership with Aboriginal people based on recognizing past mistakes and injustices and acknowledging its role in the development and administration of residential schools (in 2005, the federal government agreed to pay victims of residential schools upwards of $10,000 each, amounting to $2Billion in total). Also in 2005, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs released a detailed Education Action Plan outlining a timetable for establishing specific policy with regards to administration, curriculum, funding, and monitoring of Aboriginal education. The key components of the new policy will be:

1. maximized participation and success in early learning, education, training and skills development;
2. education characterized by quality and excellence of instruction and relevant curricula;
3. education grounded in First Nation values, traditions, culture and languages;
4. safe learning environments;
5. appropriate fiscal resources; and
6. an ultimate outcome of First Nation jurisdiction over First Nation education.

Although these plans are far from realized, and many grievances and stumbling-blocks still remain (namely, the discriminatory framework of the Indian Act on which all new policy is built, and the ongoing requests for a public inquiry into the abuse suffered by victims of residential schools), we must also awknowledge that we have come a long way. In this specific example of evolving public policy, we see how Canadian history, policy, institutions and employees have been, and continue to be, tainted by a systemic White bias.

Efforts are being made to reform the offending institutions, but these efforts are still being managed predominantly by White politicians, who are often pandering to the political whims of a largely White constituency. It is a terrible obstacle that most of said White constituency is unaware of the full extent of the injustice done to the Aboriginal people – it is my instinct that if Canadians were made aware of the true story of their victimization, there would be a public outcry for faster and more equitable action by the government. Even after all I have read over the past few days, I still believe that we are a compassionate and fair-minded people. What needs to change, I have come to think, is the invisibility of the problem; it is quarantined on the reservations and ignored by the media. What's more, when one is at last stricken with the full volume of it, the problem seems too old, too great, and too terrible to fix. As Lindberg reminds us in her essay, even after the overt racism has been removed from our education legislation, systemic racism and White bias still persists, even in our institutions of higher learning.

… there is a sense that we are personally indebted to those who hire us, to the degree that we are perceived as “uppity” or “angry” if we do not happily accept mentorship, gleefully appreciate inappropriate inquisitiveness, or dumbly accept ethnocentric standards and dialogue. That onus, that particular brand of race hate and the degeneration of Indigenous peoples’ merit, more than our own will to remain strong diminishes us in the eyes of our peers. At every level of achievement that I have had – entry to law school, entry to graduate school, and my current position as professor – one person (in each situation, a non-Indigenous woman) has told me that I got the position, seat or job as a result of their recommendation, influence, or good will. (69)

So how should we, as individuals, respond to such institutionalized racism? This is a question to which Lindberg explicitly replies in her essay, asserting in her essay on page 74 that, “institutional change starts with individuals who work in institutions.” This truth may be read as mildly dooming when taken with some of Lindberg’s other theorems. Namely, that “Most people you meet in academia will never have met an Indigenous person before” (68) and that “we may be the only Indigenous people that an institution has “room” for." (70) Still, it is clear that Lindberg’s essay was written for an Aboriginal reader and was meant to galvanize the social action of her professional compatriots. I will take her message to heart and say that it is our collective responsibility, as Canadians, to make ourselves aware of the bias, the unfairness, the marginalization - and rectify it. This begins with people who work in institutions, but I think it can also begin with an awakened citizenry demanding more of its government and its press. In this sense, all of us, academics and laypeople alike, share the burden of moving our country forward to the place it needs to be.

I have already written about how teachers can be important agents of change. I don’t want to be redundant or tedious; instead, I will say here that this month, Canada voted against a UN resolution on Indigenous people’s rights (read the government's position here). Shortly after, Quebec Aboriginals invited United Nations inspectors to come and see their reservations, expecting that Ottawa will receive a failing grade for performance on education, housing and youth-protection issues. I think that these two stories are a good place to start to raise our awareness and heighten our sensitivity to the issues afflicting our Aboriginal neighbors. This, I think, is a realistic place for us to start, if we are to be active components of a bigger solution.

A young student at the Old Anglican Mission School
on the Blackfoot Reserve, Alberta, ca. 1900.

Photographer: Glenbow Archives, NC-5-53

---

* National Archives of Canada (NAC), Record Group 10 (RG10), volume 6039, file 160-1, MR C 8152, F. Oliver to Joint Church Delegation, 21 March 1908.

** INAC file E6575-18-2, volume 01 (Protected), To the Honourable Kim Campbell from Grand Chief Edward John, 18 December 1992, and attachment.

Both of these sources are listed as cited in the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Chapter 10, pages 1 and 3, respectively.

Defining Whiteness: An Exercise in Introspection and Political Awareness

So far, I have been frustrated by the process of defining Whiteness in this course. That is, I do not think that an adequate definition of the term has been discussed in class or offered in the readings. By "adequate definition" I mean to say, a definition which I find personally meaningful, and one which I think is helpful in identifying instances of White bias in my life, in education, and in Canadian culture.

James Frideres writes in his essay, Being White and Being Right: Critiquing Individual and Collective Privilege:

Once a particular perspective is built into the laws, norms and mores of a society, it becomes part of “the way things are.” As such, Whiteness is defined as part of the human condition and it defines normality. (44)

Running the risk of being labeled as one of the White “challengers” from Frideres’ classrooms, I cannot help but wonder how we are supposed to separate what is considered “normal” in Canada from what is uniquely “White” in Canada. Are the two ideas equivalent? What are the points of commonality in all races, and what are the particularities of White people? Being able to answer these questions is absolutely essential to identifying the latent systemic racism which exists in our society, and yet these are exactly the question that have not been addressed in Frideres’ essay. Saying that Whiteness is the “norm” is, I think, not really helpful when trying to identify specific social constructs which exhibit a bias towards White people.

To me, a helpful definition of Whiteness is one which is reached through careful self-examination, rather than one which is presented as given knowledge from an author to a reader. Only through an acute awareness of one’s own professional, political, social and religious prejudices can one ever hope to recognize and respect someone else’s professional, political, social and religious prejudices. Often for a White person, these prejudices will be in agreement with those most prevalent in Canadian culture, but then again, perhaps not. It is important to be able to identify what parts of one’s worldview coincide with the majority opinion and which parts do not, because realization of the points of convergence will help one to appreciate privilege, and realization of the points of divergence will help one develop a sense of empathy for others who are different. The result of this introspective approach is an understanding of Whiteness that is intimately tied to one’s own cultural identity, and is therefore much more meaningful and likely to galvanize the kind of social activism that is required to further the success of multiculturalism in Canada.

I would therefore ask two questions to James Frideres, following from his discussion of Whiteness on page 51. These questions are practical in nature, written from the perspective of someone who is struggling with the task of extracting meaningful information and insight from the course readings:

Colour-blindness is neither blindness, nor an inability to see colour. Rather, it is a refusal, or what is called “White resistance to seeing.” This resistance is learned and nurtured to protect the status quo that privileges White people and occurs on both the individual and systemic levels. At the individual level, it allows for teachers to absolve oneself of racism. The systemic level of colour-blindness denies the institutionally mandated privileges and discriminatory practices associated with ethnicity. It denies the system of rules, procedures, and beliefs that result in Whites collectively maintaining control.

Firstly, I would ask: When discussing the topic of White privilege with students and colleagues, is introducing Whiteness as an invisible construct propagated to preserve White privilege a wise way to start? Secondly, I would ask, How do we overcome the defensiveness and denial that one inevitably encounters in White people when discussing these issues?

My intuition is that delivering a critique of individual and collective White privilege, such as the one presented here by Frideres, is not the best way to expose students to the concept of White privilege. The tone is too accusatory and there are no concrete examples of White bias to which students can relate. After reading it, one feels deflated, defeated, and somehow guilty. I think it would be more productive to invite students to examine their own cultural identities, relate those identities to the societal norms in both positive and negative ways, and then present the students with examples of racism on both the individual and societal levels. This might help students to appreciate the existence of White bias while at the same time avoiding the implication that students are guilty of the crime by automatic virtue of their ethnicity. This not only serves to minimize defensiveness but also to make White students realize that they are empowered and important agents of change.

In case you're wondering, they're chewy and slimy, like little black eyeballs.

Reader, I’ll tell you a secret. I’m not sure I like Kathleen Berry. Well, okay, it’s a love-hate relationship. At times while reading her essay, from Chapter 1 of The Great White North, I found myself whole-heartedly cheering her on. At other times, I was confused to the point of annoyance. I think I will be better able to articulate the essence of my disagreement with, or misunderstanding of, Berry after the class discussion and some extra reading on my part. Maybe a few more cups of coffee will do it. For now, though, I will respond to her concluding questions about Whiteness, privilege, and how we might recognize and fight against the institutionalized and systemic bias in favor of Whiteness that exists in Canadian society. (I want to say that on this point, I agree with Berry entirely that racism still exists, and that it is a problem that should be recognized and addressed.)

And so let us recognize it. Berry asks the readers at the end of her essay to identify ways in which Whiteness has entered their lives in Canada as either privilege and/or oppression. This is at once a very easy, and a very difficult task to address. As a White Canadian, I am aware that my ethnicity does indeed afford me privileges, but this awareness is mostly abstract. It is not specific; it is not personal. There are only a few incidents in my life in which I can recall being privileged because I am White, or being discriminated against because I am White. I will give an example of both types of experience here, and then discuss the issue of Whiteness in a more abstract way.

As I suspect is the case with most people, I recognize my own privilege almost exclusively when I realize the disadvantages of someone who is not White. I remember dating a Mohawk boy in grade six, and my mother was disgusted that I’d associate myself with someone "from the reservation" (in fact, Steven lived two streets over in a bigger house than ours). I remember being stricken by the unfairness of my mother’s distaste for someone because of his race. Was this how the teachers at school thought about him? After that, I was hawkish when watching how Steven was treated by the faculty and staff, ready to pounce on anyone who gave him so much as a dirty look (it was my way of compensating, of course, for the fact that I was too cowardly to pounce on my mother).

But incidents like the one above have been few and far between in my life. Similarly, I have few personal experiences with being the target of racial prejudice. One rather pathetic example happened when I was sixteen and I was at a friend’s birthday party in Mississauga. Every other girl there was either Asian or Black. This, compounded with the fact that I didn’t know any of them, made me feel more than a little conspicuous. When they asked me if I wanted to go with them to get ‘Bubble-Tea,’ and I admitted that I had no idea what they were talking about, one girl laughed and said, "You’re really White, aren’t you?" I shrugged and asked her how she'd managed to figure that one out. Was it the white skin, or the utter lameness of me that gave it away?

That night, I forced down the vile mixture of milk, tea and tapioca balls as if it were a magic elixir that could exculpate me of my Whiteness. When I returned to Montreal, I found a place that sold Bubble-Tea and made a habit of drinking it often, drinking it in public, and telling everyone how great it was. Eventually I developed a taste for it, but it didn’t matter because around that time that I decided to stop drinking it on principle.

Now, I warned you that the example was pathetic! You see now, Reader, the paucity of real experience with prejudice from which I have to draw when trying to imagine what being the victim of racism must be like. I can only say that recently, by virtue of my writing on current events for the purposes of this blog, I have become more aware of the racism and xenophobia that is rampant in Quebec and Canadian culture. It has left me surprised, disillusioned, and eager to effect change. About a month ago, I mused that perhaps my envy of my peers’ cultural distinctiveness had "blinded me to the possibility that this distinctiveness might be a target of bigotry." I can now say that most certainly this is the case. Ironically, the invisibility of my race, which is what perpetuated my feelings of what I called ‘cultural impoverishment,’ is also the mechanism through which the bias in favour of Whiteness propagates.

This suggests to me that not only does the invisibility of Whiteness affect minorities negatively, but it is also detrimental to White identity. Often, there is no racial self-examination for the White Canadian. There is no identity moratorium of a cultural dimension, which, I think, cheapens White identity as something to be taken for granted. Therefore, while it is a privilege not to be labeled as "other" and not to be the object of bigotry, the absence of any critically-achieved cultural identity can also be oppressive to the soul. At least, I think it has been for mine.

In a related question, Barry asks her readers to consider ways in which they, their students and their families and can work to articulate and transform the authority of Whiteness at the individual, societal, community and institutional levels of Canada. I feel very strongly that the articulation must precede the transformation. This blog, our class discussions, our discussions around the dinner table with friends and family, our voices in more public places will be essential to shaping the future of this nation. We must talk amongst ourselves, and then we must talk to those who disagree with us – letters to newspapers, letters to MPs, and public debate are essential.

Although I take issue with many of the opinions being expressed at the Bouchard-Taylor hearings, I think that this kind of public forum is a valuable part of the dialogue. Their website includes a survey you can take to express how you feel about reasonable accomodation in this province. The commission is still hearing statements from the public - you can see their schedule here.

As a citizen, I feel compelled to stay informed and to participate in the conversation - passionately, vocally, and with conviction. As a teacher, however, my philosophy is somewhat different. That is, I do not think it is appropriate to place emphasis on racial issues in a science classroom. This is not to say that a discussion about racial issues isn't important, but only that these issues are not to be debated at the expense of a child's scientific literacy.

When I teach science, I will pay homage to the contributions of White scientists when White scientists deserve the credit, Black scientists when Black scientists deserve the credit, and Chinese scientists when Chinese scientists deserve the credit, and so on. I will point out relevant examples of where racism and sexism have manifested themselves in the history of science. In short, I will teach my subject fairly. I will treat all my students fairly and with sensitivity to their cultural backgrounds. I will not tolerate racism in my classroom. I will not tolerate anything that compromises the academic quality of the class I teach. The way I see it, the best thing I can do for my Minority students is exactly the same as the best thing I can do for my White students: teach them good science.

Be it resolved that... this blog entry is clearly cataloged as a response to Fox's advice, Chapter 8

As a science teacher, I do not intend to engage my classes in discussions about race, racism, and identity. Indeed, as I read the assigned chapter of Helen Fox’s book, When Race Breaks Out, I found myself envious of my peers who will one day be teaching English and Social Sciences to high school students. I am envious not only because the exercises in Fox’s book seem especially relevant for students who are reading To Kill a Mocking Bird, or who are studying the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, but also because the subject of race and racism in Canada is a fascinating topic to discuss with young people and unfortunately, my subject does not lend itself to this kind of conversation.*

I console myself with the knowledge that there is always the debate team (that is, if I can wrench the coaching responsibilities away from whomever is lucky enough to have them). I was a high school debater and I loved it. I loved it even though, when I found myself at the national debating seminar, the resolution before us was Be it Resolved That Forestry Will Determine This Country’s Future, and I had to argue about the economics of softwood lumber for two weeks. (In the small Ontarian town of Thunder Bay, where the seminar was held, the ups and downs of the forestry industry were front page news.)

All this to say that Fox’s exercises in media analysis and developing anti-racist arguments really spoke to me. This quotation from a Latina undergraduate made me want to stand up and cheer, yes!

I like that you stress knowing facts. No one can fight you when you know better than they do. I’ve noticed a difference in my ability to communicate more concisely and convincingly. I feel like I’ve got a few missiles in my arsenal. (129)

Yes, yes! I love the idea of empowering students with militant ideas. Let them be intellectual terrorists! Let them take no prisoners! Let them learn to debate with each other respectfully and passionately! This is exactly the sort of activity I had in mind when I wrote about teachers having a positive impact on our national dialogue (see October 12th).

And now that I’ve used my entire exclamation mark quota for the day, I'll describe the one of Fox’s activities that I would most like to discuss, and that is the exercise in media analysis. This choice might seem at odds with my excitement about using debating techniques to help students explore racial issues, but I think that being able to analyze media critically and thoughtfully is a prerequisite to good debate. So much of what we know, or think we know about ethnic minorities comes from the media, and if we are not responsible consumers of that information, then we are truly lost.

Fox recommends presenting students with newspaper articles and challenging them to find biases in the reporting. That is, are certain perspectives left out? Are certain religious or cultural groups stereotyped? I would add the questions, How are you able to make that judgment – how do you “know better”? Do you think the bias is intentional or malicious? Who is the reporter and what are his motivations?

This exercise would not only help students to recognize racism, but it would also encourage them to adopt an attitude of skepticism when they read newspapers and watch television. I think this activity would be particularly powerful when done in conjunction with the magazine analysis, where students discuss the differences in how ethnic minorities are represented in the mainstream media and how they are represented in media written for and by their own ethnic communities. This would not only reinforce the exercise in identifying prejudices, but also encourage students to seek variety in their news sources. The group discussions that result from the media analysis can then be used as a launching pad for any of Fox’s activities for developing anti-racist arguments.

There are few disadvantages to these kind of exercises - I would argue that the ability to think critically about what one reads is among the most important skills a student can learn. It’s a passport for understanding the world. That being said, there are some shortcomings of the above activities, if they are done in isolation, and if one’s purpose is to bring students to a heightened sensibility about racial issues.

That is, the media analysis exercises are largely impersonal. Unlike the discussion topics which require students to examine their own racial identity, their own prejudices and the prejudices that others have against them, the object of critique in the media analysis exercises is an outside party. The student may come to a better understanding of the systemic racism that in prevalent in society and in certain groups, but this is easily divorced from the student’s personal experience. If good media analysis is a passport for understanding the world, the student must also have a passport for understanding himself. The latter is better accomplished by an exercise that examines the student directly.

---

* In fact, the history of science is filled with examples of racism and sexism. When the science teacher talks about famous experiments and the people who designed them - Einstein, Curie, Bohr, Franklin and the rest - putting these characters into the proper historical context can help make them more real to the students. Particularly for students who feel they are at a disadvantage because of their ethnicity, discussing examples of famous minority scientists might make them more optimistic about their own prospects in science. I think these kinds of discussions would be a small but worthwhile addition to any science curriculum.

Through the Looking Glass, Part 2/3: Tatum and Teaching

But I am being silly when there is a serious question looming here. Is it possible we’re all just as deluded as the D-limonene who looks into the mirror and thinks he’s someone else? And, as in his case, does this delusion go beyond merely what we look like (a big enough concern for most of us), extending to the crux of who we really, truly are?

Most of us can relate to the young lady in Norman Rockwell’s painting, Girl at the Mirror, shown below. She stares longingly into the glass, dissatisfied and insecure in a moment of introspection. At her feet, a paraphernalia of beauty products. Farther off sits a doll, carelessly tossed on its side, discarded, an artifact of the girlhood that the subject hasn’t quite grown out of, though we get the impression she’d like to. The magazine in her lap advertises an ideal of mature, feminine beauty.


There are two reflections here. One is in the mirror. The other is in the girl’s mind as she looks at the magazine. What is she seeing? Tatum would probably argue that she is seeing the differences between herself and this ideal: she is flat-chested, round-faced, childish, homely. It is as wildly distorted an image as her vanity mirror would produce of a molecule like limonene.

When discussing the aesthetics of race (and of racism), Tatum recalls,

I grew up with the expression “good hair.” Though no one in my household used that phrase often, I knew what it meant when I heard it. “Good hair” was straight hair, and the straighter the better. I still remember the oohs and ahs of my White elementary classmates when I arrived at school for “picture day” with my long mane of dark hair resting on my shoulders. With the miracle of a hot comb, my mother had transformed my ordinary braids into what I thought was a glamorous cascade of curls. I received many compliments that day. “How pretty you look,” the White teacher said. The truth was I looked pretty every day, but a clear message was being sent both at home and at school about what real beauty was. (45)

Rockwell’s girl at the mirror could easily be a young African American woman with a straightening iron in her hand. It could easily be one of my future students, scrutinizing herself with one of those terrible, or Terrible, or TERRIBLE beauty magazines in her lap (with a pile of untouched chemistry homework tossed to the side, no doubt!). So the question that I ask is, What could I, as a teacher do to steer my students away from embracing the worst examples of media-endorsed idols at the expense of their self-esteem? How can I convince an insecure teenager that different does not translate to ugly?

Well, after writing the essay on enantiomerism, I am seriously considering including it in the general chemistry course I might one day teach. But to turn it into a lesson about self-image and the evils of Vanity Fair magazine might come off as preaching, and students hate that (rightfully so!). This is why I prefer to stick to my subject matter. Teaching students to think scientifically will by definition teach them to think critically, rationally, independently. A teacher can only hope that her students’ brains do not turn off when they leave the classroom.

The other strategy is to lead by example. All the teachers I have ever loved had three things in common: they knew their subject matter, they taught it with rigour and passion, and they were fearlessly, totally, completely themselves. Although students might make fun of the nonconformist teacher (who can blame them? It’s just so easy!), the jokes are usually delivered with affection, and maybe with some genuine appreciation for the daily dose of honesty. More than that, a student who sees himself as different will probably enjoy not being the oddest person in the room!

Since Deciding to Teach Science, I Have Been Working on My Hungarian Accent…

Because nobody will take me seriously otherwise! Or so I sometimes say to my friends, who, being educated in the sciences in Montreal, fully appreciate the joke. Somehow, the lectures just seem so much more scientific when you can barely understand them through the professor’s thick, unapologetic accent. (Eastern- and Central-European accents seem to be the most well-regarded. Indian is also excellent, especially for math and engineering.)

The root of this prejudice is probably a mixture of personal experience (the majority of my science professors have been immigrants from the aforementioned regions), and a media-projected stereotype of the frizzy-haired, foreign-tongued, wildly eccentric scientist, who may or may not be insane, but probably is so you’d better stay away...

"Gaa! Children! Give me the answer in torr!"

Now, those who know me will claim that I’ve got the ‘insane’ requirement down to a fine art. But the problem remains with my hair: not nearly as suggestive of recent electrocution as the preferred aesthetic. And my voice is all wrong: the intonation is too ordinary, too dull, too intelligible. I will have no credibility, and the students will be bored before I’ve even begun, and there goes my career. Ruined!

I write all of this half-seriously, not quite sure if it is an example of a brilliant sense of humour or a deep-seeded self-loathing. Certainly, it betrays the sense of cultural impoverishment I’ve developed since leaving my mostly-White, mostly-Catholic, mostly-Francophone off-island suburb to attend secondary school in the gloriously diverse hoi polloi of Montreal. Everyone seemed to have a story, an identity, a unique heritage which distinguished them, but also gifted them with membership to one of the closely-knit communities that are, collectively, a great source of pride for this city, and for Canada.

In brief, I felt I had nothing to contribute. I also felt I had nowhere to belong. I was apathetically Catholic at the time, and my mother’s side of the family had, at some point, been Welsh. My father’s family, at some point, had been German. But this heritage was never mentioned at home. In fact, it was a Transylvanian calculus professor who first taught me the original Germanic pronunciation of my surname, claiming that the Anglicised version I was using was ‘wrong.’ I thanked him for the lesson but then asked, a little brusquely, how anyone could be accused of pronouncing his or her own name incorrectly. (Such a claim seemed like an error in logic unbecoming of a mathematics teacher!)

Clearly, I had no personal connection with the historical roots of my family. My brother, who has just begun his first year of college, has had much more success in cultivating such a connection, taking a German language class his first semester, and touting his pride in German engineering (he is an aviation buff), and filling his iPod with German industrial-metal. I sometimes tease him that he is retroactively selecting a particular part of our genetic inheritance and exploiting it for the purpose of being ‘cool,’ but the truth is, I am a little envious.

And so when reading Beverly Tatum’s book, ‘Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?,' I was immediately struck by the nearly opposite experiences the author and I have had with race. She, feeling apartness because of her association with a cultural minority, and I, feeling apartness because of my lack of association with one. Tatum quotes Audre Lorde on page 22:

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows “that is not me.” In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing.

After reading this, I knew that my perception of the mythical norm was very different from the one described here. Except for my being a woman, I fit the mold perfectly, and yet I have never felt that I was ‘the norm.’ From my point of view, the norm is, ironically, diversity itself. And so I presented this question to our class: What is the mythical norm in Canada? Is there one at all?

My classmates’ answers made me realize that I was being too self-centric in my analysis. That is, the level of diversity in Montreal is not representative of other parts of Canada, where the mythical norm illustrated by Lorde might be very appropriate. Samantha raised the excellent point that in Quebec, the norm might not be as defined by ethnicity as much as it is by language. That is, the political power lies largely with the Francophone community, and this is often very present in the minds of Anglophones and Allophones. Being Anglophone myself, I was surprised that I hadn’t thought of this right away.

Perhaps my history of being educated in English-speaking private schools, and my tendency to immerse myself in the school community completely, has made me less aware of what is going on off campus. Perhaps, too, my envy of my peers’ cultural distinctiveness has blinded me to the possibility that this distinctiveness might be the target of bigotry. I have always considered myself a culturally aware person simply by virtue of having lived in Montreal, but perhaps this is naïve on my part. The cultural dynamics as they exist in a school (especially a private school) are probably not representative of the larger society in which that school is located.

Cultural Identity Assignment

This commentary on cultural identity did not appear on the message boards, and because I am late registering for the class, I now have the unfair advantage of being able to read the class’ responses before composing my own. Mea culpa; I will not cheat like this again. But while I am being guilty, I might as well discuss my perspective in earnest by responding to what I have read and then, hopefully, contributing something unique.

As is to be expected from a class of over sixty student teachers being asked the same question, there was a general homogeneity to the answers to the first part of the assignment – that is, define ‘cultural identity.’ And why shouldn’t there be? There are only so many ways to define a term that everyone already understands. I think that one of the best definitions on our message board came from an anonymous anthropology student. As a mere science buff I could not aspire to phrase it more expertly myself, so I will quote him or her here, for the purpose of establishing a solid launching pad for my own ideas.

Culture (at least from an anthropological perspective) is a combination of abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions that manifest and reflect themselves in people’s behaviours. There are four specific characteristics of culture;

1) Culture is shared. Culture is something unique that binds people together and is intelligible to other members of that culture. Specifically, culture is a means by which groups of people become able to predict one another’s behaviour and know how to react accordingly. It is important to note that the concept of culture differs from that of society. Society refers to geographic groups of people, and often a society can have within it a wide array of cultural groups (like Quebec). In addition, while it is shared, culture is not uniform! No two members of a culture will have identical interpretations of their culture. Smaller subculture groups exist within larger cultural groups.

2) Culture is learned. Culture is NOT BIOLOGICALLY INHERITED! Culture is learned and transmitted from one generation to the next through the process of enculturation. The color of your skin DOES NOT determine your culture, the environment you grew up in, the groups you belong to, and the resulting values, customs, beliefs, and norms that you learn determine your culture.

3) Culture is based on symbols. Art and religion are both parts of culture that involve symbols. Take, for example, a Christian cross, an Islamic crescent, a Jewish Star of David, these symbols mean something to the cultures that use them; they are symbolic of a specific cultures philosophy or creed. At the heart of the symbolic aspect of culture is language, the shared use of words (symbols) to describe the world around oneself.

4) Culture is integrated. I don’t want to get into this point too much since I could go on for pages, and this isn’t an anthropology class, but generally speaking, it refers to the fact that all parts of a culture function together in an interrelated whole.

Source:
Crawford, G., Fedorak, S., Haviland, W., & Lee, R. (2002). Cultural Anthropology. Toronto: Nelson.

What I like about this description of culture - and by extension cultural identity - is that it takes the focus away from the physical and geographical and onto the psychological and social. This distinction is especially important when considering Canada, a nation of immigrants. Imagine, for example, a first-generation Canadian born to parents who lived most of their lives in India, or China, or Hungary. Immediately apparent to us is that this child will likely have a very different cultural experience and therefore a very different notion of cultural identity than his parents. Where and how he is educated will have a tremendous influence. In an urban setting like Montreal or Toronto, he is likely to find a circle of friends who share his family’s background. Then again, he might not. Or he might find such a circle and decide he prefers the company of a different group. Especially in high school, when the need for identity and belonging is most urgent, our first-generation Canadian might form close bonds with friends who have nothing in common with his parents’ history and values, but everything in common with his interests and passions.

I am speaking of the high school clique or ‘peer group.’ It seems to me that in the secondary school setting (and to a lesser degree in elementary school), there is a synthesis of a new layer of culture atop the one that the child has already assimilated at home and in the community. The old culture is not erased, but it will often take a back seat to the new and exciting culture of the peer group. And very rarely are these groups defined by traditional boundaries of cultural identity. In the school cafeteria, the students do not segregate themselves racially, or at least this is a very secondary concern for them. Rather, you are likely to find (if you will excuse my stereotypical language) ‘debaters,’ ‘jocks & cheerleaders,’ ‘stoners,’ ‘geeks,’ ‘skaters,’ ‘emos’… of course, we could have a valid discussion about how segregated peer groups really are in high school, and how much of the ‘clique problem’ is an exaggeration of the media. But let us make the safe assumption that these groups are often present in some capacity at a school, and that they can be vaguely defined by labels like the ones I have used.

Each of these groups develops its own subculture. In high school, the subculture of the peer group might influence a student’s idea of self-identity much more than his racial roots do. Therefore, it is unwise for us as aspiring educators to ignore the subculture, which could possibly be a greater source of social tension in the classroom than ethnicity. A boy who shaves his head, puts a studded collar around his neck and does his face up with white powder and black lipstick might not be cause for concern. On the other hand, his three-time-math-camp-champion lab partner might disagree with you. What prejudices are at work here? How might the issue be managed with sensitivity to both students?

It is a difficult question, though in many ways it is parallel to the question of how to manage students with prejudices against, or misconceptions regarding, race.

Below I have embedded the YouTube video I selected showing my preferred subculture, of which I still consider myself a proud card-carrying member, the geeks. If there were ever a peer group in secondary school in need of a pep-song... well, let's just say they're not always the most celebrated subculture. In this video, the label and the stereotypes are celebrated - and by extension the identity is celebrated - which I find refreshing. Rock on...





EDIT SEPT15: The anonymous anthropologist unmasked!