Week 10 Readings

I really liked this weeks readings, I think all the articles are relevant to our future teaching careers and it is an issue we need to say on top of.  Chapter two in Teaching to Transgress had some really interesting view points.  What really got me though was the quote on page 32, "Some folks think that everyone who supports cultural diversity wants to replace one dictatorship of knowing with another, changing one set way of thinking for another. This is perhaps the gravest misperception of cultural diversity."  I think this quote speaks for a lot of people.  The way I see it is people who fear cultural diversity have problems with the unknown.  They are familiar with "american  culture" and therefore can accept it but when you throw in a culture that is 100 percent new, their first response is fear.  

From my perspective cultural diversity is not replacing the "american culture" but enhancing it.  Who says that just because there are other ways of thinking that we automatically are saying this new way is better or this new way is far superior to what was here first.  It all goes back to fear of the unknown.  As future teachers we have to address the unknown in the classroom to hopefully change this misconception.  Thinking about my job as elementary teacher, I feel it is important to explain what exactly cultural diversity is and have an open and safe class room to address the misconceptions.  We have a hard road ahead of us.