Ignoring the Truth

Hi all! This week, I want to talk about Linda Christensen’s second chapter of “Reading, Writing, and Rising Up”. In this chapter, she talks a lot about how children’s media – books, cartoons, ect. –uses “secret education” to indoctrinate children to believe that one race, one gender, one body-type, etc., is better than all of the rest (Christensen 40). At one point, Christensen says, “Many students don’t want to believe that they have been manipulated by children’s media or advertising” (Christensen 41). This quote stood out to me because I have been noticing this same sort of reaction from not only children, but also adults, when someone points out to them that they are being insensitive in some way.

As an example, I will share with you an uncomfortable moment from a family Thanksgiving celebration this year. At my grandparents’ house, my uncle was asking me how my grad program was going. I told him about practicum and how my school was located in North Minneapolis. He reacted to that fact the same way much of my family and many white, middle class folks would react. He worried about me being in a “scary neighborhood” and asked if it seemed dangerous. He also made a few side comments about how bad “inner-city” schools are. Now, I usually try to avoid conflict, especially at big family gatherings, but these comments were boiling beneath the surface and I couldn’t just let this moment pass. I told him about how great the students at my school were. Then, I told him a little bit about how harmful that sort of rhetoric is. Instead of realizing he was in the wrong, he just moved on to his next point and said it’s probably their parents’ fault that the schools get a bad rep. No matter what I said, he just couldn’t come to terms with the idea that what he’s been spouting off his entire life is wrong and harmful.

This event – as well as countless like-events before it – has proven to me that as a teacher, I will have to try and open eyes both in and outside of the classroom. I will have to continue to try and show my relatives and friends truths that they’ve never heard of or refuse to hear. I will also have to show hidden truths to students like the ones mentioned in Christensen’s quote. I can see this as being a great challenge because you cannot force someone to believe in something, even if the evidence is right in front of their eyes. All you can do is continuously present to them the evidence and hope they see reason. As a soon-to-be-teacher, I plan on trying my best to learn as much as I can about social justice issues so that I will have plenty of evidence to bring to the table when the time comes.

Source: “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us.” Reading, Writing, and Rising Up Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word, by Linda Christensen, Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse, 2000, pp. 39–56.