Wednesday, February 11, 2009

So Now I Have No Idea What To Do...

A few weeks ago in class we were talking about "quality" literature and multicultural/diverse literature. We had a mini discussion on whether or not to include literature that wasn't considered good quality but still represented some of the children in your classrooms. From my understanding of the things we discussed, most of us thought it was OK to do so, so that the students feel represented. However, after today's class I feel conflicted because this text about Arab Americans was in fact written by an insider and therefore according to last week's discussion, should be more accurate. However accurate it was to her own culture, it was discriminatory to Jewish people. So, my question then is who are we trying to please? Are we ever going to be able to please everyone? What are we supposed to do in our classrooms---if we put literature in our classrooms that is not necessarily good quality, we could end up having the reverse effects of what our intentions are by in fact offending those students. It's such a fine line. When do we know if we've crossed it?

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