Racism in peanut butter & jelly (Page 3)

jmk-brooklyn - 2012-09-12 2:26 PM

powerman - 2012-09-12 3:02 PM

jmk-brooklyn - 2012-09-12 1:43 PM  True, although I would make the argument that most of the people reading this thread are adults (chronologically, at least ) and the principal was referring to kids. I think she chose a bad example in that, to your point, a PB&J sandwich is pretty universal, but I think her general point is a good one. Not all symbols that we generally see as universal will be viewed as such by a child who wasn't brought up in our culture, and it's worth considering that as you try to teach them. If a teacher is trying to compare the struggle between two characters in a book, and he describes their conflict as being “like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader”, that reference isn’t going to mean anything to a kid from a different country who may not know what Star Wars is. Her point is that it’s insensitive for a teacher to assume that symbols are universal for all kids regardless of their background.

When I moved to Australia at 5-10... I had my first Vegimite sandwich. The most God aweful spead ever created... but it was their peanut butter and they ate it as such... in fact, peanut butter was hard to come by there. Nobody catered to my cultural sensitivities when they made fun of my American accent and beat me up for being a Yankee... some how I managed to live through that. Incredibly, I managed to come through with my self identity intact and not scared for life.

To this day, PBJs are favorite food group. Sometimes I get fancy and use Honey. I eat a loaf a week of them. God Bless America.

I went to a French school for kindergarten and the teacher and other kids spoke no English. Zero. I had no idea what anyone was saying for weeks before I eventually figured it out. The kids made fun of me and insulted me to my face because they knew I didn’t understand them. Eventually I learned to speak English and it got better, and I, too, came through with my identity intact. It was a learning experience, certainly, but I would never suggest that it is the ideal experience for a kid to be made to feel like a fish out of water in his adoptive country.

I completely understand trying to help a kid overcome cultural barriers to learning. If you are using something the kid does not get... really the same as using a language they do not speak... then yes that can get left behind.

Yet what this is all getting wrapped up in is all the other nonsense... white privillege??? What kind of nonsense is that? This is America...please do not freak out if there is something here you do not have at home. I mean look at the food we have... we really do not have very many "American" foods. Maybe hamburgers/hotdogs. We have a mash up of Italian, German, Mexican, French, English, and many others I'm leaving out. In fact for a long time I would trip out when I would go to as "nationality" restaurant and learn what I had been eating all a long was from that country. I just thought it was food.

So we are supposed to not talk about anything different to help them learn... then what happens to those kids that actually learn how to figure things out, the pride of being multi lingual, or learning how to deal with adversity, or realizing they are behind and learn how to catch up... or even overcome? I guess I don't get it.

This country was founded on people coming from every corner of the world to come to the Great Melting Pot.... yet somhow, after 400 years we were doing it all wrong and now being a white American is a bad thing.

But that was just one "part" of the story. The reasoning to lessen barriers is not lost to most here.

“Persistently we have not done a good enough job educating students of color and specifically African-American students,” he told Fox News. “That’s what the program is addressing. How can we find a way to support African American students, their families – so that we are producing better outcomes and narrowing the achievement gap.”

They start off with sandwiches which Hispanics might not get, but end up talking about African- Americans. But they do the above... finding ways to support African Americans.... by giving them a drum class...because we all know they are good at entertaining. I mean seriously, I would be pissed if that was my kid's school... like my black child is only interested in playing a beat... (Samuel Jackson voice) no MFer, my child is interesting in going to Mars, why are you not offering a astronomy group!!! So how does the drum class that is only offered to African Americans help them with math? How are they narrowing the "achievment" gap by "segregating" them and teaching them a beat pattern?

jmk-brooklyn - 2012-09-12 5:12 PM

bradleyd3 - 2012-09-12 3:47 PM Kind of an offshoot of Goggs' post. Should we ban sports in school because some students don't "get it" and they've never played football or baseball before....and we'd have to explain the rules to them? In PE, should kickball be done away with becuase it would take too long for a kid to "get it"? Should music class be done away with becuase most composers where white and they wrote music that's not heard all over the world? How about A/V or journalism class.....not all people have access to a TV and don't know what "nightly news" is so instead of learning how to produce a school news program we just trash the program. Where does this end? Not everyone is going to get references to everything. Hell, I have to look stuff up every now and again or....when my employement att'y is referencing case law, I have to ask questions. You know what? It makes me smarter when I have to do that.

Dude, this is just one looooong straw man argument. No, but you shouldn’t just assume that because you teach gym in America that every kid will automatically know the rules of baseball. No, you shouldn’t do away with music, but if you want the kids to perform “Jingle Bells” in the Xmas (oops, sorry “Holiday&rdquo pageant, you shouldn’t assume that every kid knows the words just because most American kids do. Not sure I get your news analogy or understand how learning things at your job relates to this. Kids are supposed to learn stuff at school. No one is suggesting that we only teach kids things they already know. But teachers naturally make assumptions about what most kids know already, based on their understanding of what most American kids know. And that’s fine, but teachers need to be aware that not every kid in their class is going to get the same cultural references, and if they want to be as effective as possible as educators they should take into account that some kids might need a bit more explanation of certain things that the majority of kids will know innately.

x2. I was never interested in team or spectator sports. I barely know the rules for football, and could not tell you a single thing about any of the positions (well, OK, I know the QB throws the ball. And that there are kickers whose job is to kick.). I know even less about basketball. I only know a little about baseball because I played little league when I was kid, mainly because everyone was expected to do so where we lived at the time. 

When I got to HS, I still did not know any rules of any of the sports, because no gym teacher, ever, bothered to teach them, as they all assumed that everyone knew them. It played a big role in why I strongly rejected most physical activity until I was in my late 20's, with the exception of running in order to manage weight.

My point is that if you assume kids know stuff, and they don't, they won't learn, and they may be turned off something for years.

But, to the original point of the thread, a PB&J is pretty easy to understand, especially if it is offered as a meal choice in a school. And if you are truly worried about some kids not understanding one, or having different cultural norms, then serve other things as well. Ironically, in today's local paper, there was an article for the "back to school" set about multicultural lunch options. Actually a kind of nice article, highlighting not only some ideas, but showing the commonalities -

"Hand pies

Nearly every culture has a savory hand pie that works as a quick and tasty lunch, said Rebecca Federman, culinary librarian at the New York Public Library and co-curator of its current exhibit, Lunch Hour NYC.

An influx to New York of Asians, Latin Americans and other immigrants during the 1960s raised the profile of their lunch staples, Federman said. Today, spiced Jamaican beef patties and flaky chicken-filled Latin American empanadas feed hungry New Yorkers. Indian samosas stuffed with peas and potatoes, meat-filled Cornish pasties from England and sweet-spicy, beef-filled Bolivian saltenas are among the many lunchbox-friendly choices. And of course there are Italian calzones and Jewish knishes.

Best yet, they all taste delicious hot or at room temperature.

To make hand pies at home, fold a stuffing of your choice into pre-made empanada wrappers (sold frozen at most grocers), wonton skins or even refrigerated American pie crust. Or make it even easier: Pick them up at your local ethnic bakery or grocer, or even in the frozen food section of many grocers."

And that, folks, is how you accommodate differences in cultures. Except that now I want some empanadas and samosas. Mmmmm - meat pies......

You all have completely lost me.  There will always be kids who don't get SOMETHING...and the more diverse we get the harder it becomes to keep everyone happy.  Somebody is always going to feel left out, or put down, or not on equal footing the further down this road we go.  Even more so than when we had less diversity.

I have to say, I just don't care.

Most of you know I have 5 kids since I've posted it enough......I'm fine with them learning that life isn't always fair.

This kind of stuff is just dumb in my mind.

What about, "I got to second base?"

Well, like they say, a monkey's tail is neither a stick nor a weapon.