I'm doing a Education for Social Justice unit and this random thought just came to me. My blog is a place to blog such random thoughts.
Maybe I resented the Aboriginal education in Primary school because I felt that I had to learn all about this culture that I had no part in, without learning about my own culture and ethnicity. And although I'm white, there's more to me than that. My grandparents were Scottish, Ukrainian and German. There's rich heritage in me that I never learnt, instead, I had to learn all about how the white people were responsible for Aborginal oppression and then I had to celebrate this culture that I was guilty of oppressing. Furthermore, these poor oppressed Aboriginal people were guilty of being social menaces. They wanted to beat me up after school, they broke into my house and stole my things, they would hang around in the park all drunk and leave litter in the bush when I was told again and again to pick it up. They wanted their own land but wouldn't even have taken care of it if they got it. Why did I have to learn about them? (from the perspective of me as a primary school student)
I'm fine learning about it now and I get it a lot more, but as a primary school kid and through out Australian history lessons in high school, I always resented learning about it. I didn't want to know.
So that's my thought. I don't know if it's accurate, but that's my thought. My readings are all toting the importance of integrating the varying abilities and cultures of myriad minority ethnic groups. But I only just realised that all my education on my own ethnicity has been self-motivated and in my own time now that I'm an adult: unlike those of minority groups that are embraced and taken the place of the majority of cultural education.
How can we draw a balance in this? How can I, as an educator, be inclusive of all ethnicities in my curriculm?
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2 comments:
They have to learn about you everyday.
Not so much. They had to learn to read and write like I did every day.
Anyway, when I was a little kid of 8-9yrs old, I wasn't so sympathetic to what the Aboriginal people had been through.
The big second paragraph is from the perspective of me as a primary school student. Obviously, I see things differently now. In fact, now that I've recognised why it was such as issue for me back then, I'm so much happier learning about Aboriginal culture and Australian history. It's so very interesting!
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