Office Monkey

So, teachers’ college organizes its class into cohorts. I am in the “Youth at Risk” cohort because I want to work with “youth at risk” once i become a teacher. That being said, I really don’t like my “youth at risk” prof because i don’t respect her approach to dealing with youth, or people for that matter.

For example, on our first day of school we went around in a circle introducing ourselves. There’s some diversity but the class is mostly filled with young 20 something’s of caucasian descent. When we get to P, a black student, my prof asks him where he’s from. When he answers “Nigeria” she says, “Oh, well then you must have been excited when i used that Achebe quote on education.”

i’m not quite sure it’s appropriate to ask a question about ethnicity only to the black student in the class. and then to make an assumption that he would appreciate all things Nigerian. and maybe even suggest that you know what he’s all about because you know Achebe or you know Nigeria or more precisely, you know of one writer from Nigeria. It seems to imply that race/ethnicity in his case, plays are larger role as an identifier compared to the rest of us. Which, while maybe not racist, does seem to point to a preoccupation with race.

It kinda reminds me of the time i was getting counselling from a doctor at uoft. i’d spent 30-40 minutes spilling out a rant about myself that covered my likes, dislikes, frustrations, strengths and weaknesses… and at the end of it the doctor asked if i’d considered joining any asian or korean student groups on campus. I kinda blinked at her and wondered whether she’d heard anything i said.

I mean, it’s just sloppy thinking. I just spent 40 minutes providing personal information- that is, stuff that pertains directly to me- and her fixation with the shape of my eyes and my hair colour, a trait shared with at least a billion people, leads her to a conclusion that is completely off base and in my case, totally unpalatable. I’ve actively avoided other koreans due to the negative experience i had attending korean church (they were mean).

Similarly, my prof advised that we should watch an hour of muchmusic on a daily basis as a means of making a connection with our young students.

Again, there seems to be this insulting assumption that all there is to know about youth merely requires watching an hour of the nation’s music station. On top of the huge (and inaccurate) generalization, it also seems a little underhanded to try and ingratiate yourself by pretending to be something you’re not…

Underlying both scenarios there’s a suggestion of:

1) a consistent desire of an outsider to somehow insinuate themselves with what they believe to be “the other” or “the unfamiliar”.

2) a belief that this can somehow be accomplished by merely appropriating superficial/trivial (though not deemed so by the learner) knowledge about the other.

So i dunno a couple of things:
1) there are probably alot more similarities between my coordinator, P, and high school students than differences. And it’s important to identify which differences/similarities are important and significant and which ones maybe don’t matter.

2) maybe tolerance and understanding might have more to do with having the humility of accepting your ignorance and your status as outsider and letting yourself be led in certain aspects rather than trying to maintain your dominance/control over a relationship.

I don’t know.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.