Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Why not just teach acceptance?

One student asked, “Why do we have to discuss teaching minority children the language of power? Why not just teach everyone acceptance?”

The problem with simply teaching acceptance is that there are already institutions of power in place. If students wish to interact with that power, they will need to be able to communicate effectively. I think no matter who you talk, work, or interact with, there are adjustments in language made to suit that situation. If the goal of teaching acceptance is to change the way power operates in society and in language, there is a long road ahead, and only teaching acceptance is unlikely to substantially change the way power is already at work in the world.

posted by Miss Marjie @ 5:54 PM   3 comments

3 Comments:

At 6:01 PM, Blogger max said...

Plus, acceptance is easily confused with tolerance, and tolerance only teaches people to keep their distance. To me, tolerance implies that everyone is considered okay, but you'd never want to be like those other people.

So, acceptance in education could just turn into a policy of acknowledging everybody is different, and then teaching everybody the same way. We saw the problems of teaching everybody the same way in the article.

 
At 7:11 PM, Blogger jeremytd said...

I don't think acceptance would really change anything. Like Max said, all I have to do to accept something or someone else's differences is recognize and deal with it somewhat internally. I can accept the fact that my friend doesn't eat meat or whatever, but if I had to be taught that, there would be little motivation for me to go beyond it.

 
At 10:54 PM, Blogger Britta said...

It is possible that in the future, acceptance will be a key teaching style, however, until then, it is important to give everyone the skills necessary to communicate both in an acceptance based society and in a power based society. Acceptance only also brings to life the issue of biased teaching.

 

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