Be Gone Political Correctness!

I continue to hope that our society begins to move away from the obsession it has with political correctness. My view is that political correctness has done more harm than good in the name of not wanting to label people or hurt feelings. Our society has become politically correct to the point of absurdity. It does not help anyone to overlook the fact that we all have cultural differences and a variety of issues that go along with those differences.

Creating schools that truly celebrate and recognize multicultural differences is a difficult task to say the least. At this point I think it can only exist within individual classrooms, and not entire schools. My reasoning is that I believe that until society comes to accept our multicultural differences, our schools cannot. On an individual classroom basis I feel that the number one thing that any educator can do to increase acceptance and awareness of the differences that exist between students and those students’ differences as compared to the teacher is to get to know the students as individuals. What is often overlooked by the teacher is the fact that the students need to get to know you. Many teachers never or rarely share anything about their own lives with the students, supposedly out of the fear that the student will know too much about them. My feeling is that the more students know about you, the more they will be able to relate to you and the greater the potential you will be able to change their lives.

Another essential key to getting students to become more accepting of one another’s differences and similarities is that teachers must be willing to reflect, and seriously analyze, their own teaching practices. It is vital that educators, from pre-school to graduate school, be willing to examine how they teach, analyze its effectiveness, know their students, and then be alright with making any needed adjustments even if it means taking yourself out of your comfort zone.
A couple of things I do within my classroom that really helps to bridge the gap of diversity is I constantly encourage students that make mistakes to learn to accept those mistakes and understand that making mistakes is part of life. So many of our students, particularly those marginalized, are so fearful of failure that they get to a point in which they do not even want to try anymore. I also set aside days that I reserve for simply sharing stories with each other about events and/or happenings in our lives. It is easier to accomplish as a teacher if you begin by sharing a story from your own life. I also like to have students draw their classmate’s names at random and have them write down at least one nice thing about that person. It goes a long way towards building acceptance among each other. The unfortunate thing is that in today’s ever increasing emphasis on high stakes testing it is literally sucking the options for creativity and exploration from the teacher. Namulundah Florence sums up the frustrations felt by many educators in the book Multiculturalism 101 on page 96, “Bureaucratic demands compel teachers to “teach to the test” rather than explore ways of making learning more meaningful.” (Florence, 2010)

AMEN!!!