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The text “Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice” (Bigelow
1994) offers a well planned and structured framework for introducing social justice and
social action into elementary school classrooms. One of the overlying themes of this text
is toincrease teacher awareness of the need to address and evaluate the biases and
From the primary years of preschool and kindergarten, children become avid fans
of fairy tales from The Three Pigs to Cinderella. These are seemingly well-intentioned
stories to entertain children and increase their interest in learning to read, but, upon
further inspection, there are clear underlying biases even in these classic simple writings.
For instance, in all of the early Disney stories, there is always a helpless female being
whisked away and rescued by her “knight in shining armor,” giving the underlying
message that women are the weaker and more dependent gender who need men to rescue
them and support them. The story of The Three Pigs, on the other hand, introduces a
perhaps less evident but equally profound bias: that of societal class systems. The
‘brick’ home was the only one that withstood the huffing and puffing of the wolf, and the
story alludes to the fact that the only reason the third little pig survived was because he
was more educated and successful, and lived in the brick house. In contrast, his perhaps
lazier and less affluent counterparts took the easy and cheap way out, building their
houses of stick and straw, and therefore not “succeeding” in escaping the wolf!
The opportunities for engaging students in learning about and addressing such
biases in their curriculum are endless, and must be approached, according to Bigelow, by
“untracking” our classrooms; that is, exchanging the classic “read, complete a worksheet,
memorize, test and move on” method for simulation and response.
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Throughout the history of education in America, there has been a notable lack of
Teachers have, for ages, depended upon text books and teacher manuals as the sole
source of learning for their students. This somewhat “auto pilot” method of delivering
too many elementary classrooms, where worksheets and mindless tasks fill up
children’s time. A teacher cannot build a community of learners unless the voices
and lives of the students are an integral part of the curriculum” (p.30).
content they are learning is essential for the material to have meaning, and for the
concepts to become part of who they are as citizens. It is not our job as educators to
create robots, storing factual data and information that can be spewed forth at will, to
work in the progressive and rapidly increasing multicultural industries of our nation and
our world. Instead, we have to embrace and encourage their input and analysis of the
historical events they are learning about in their formative years. The word “formative”
itself should be our clue as to how we are to educate our children. To define formative is
to say “to mold, shape, fashion or develop.” Educational philosophers such as Piaget
have confirmed that children’s cognitive development is largely dependent upon their
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dependent upon their experiences and the misconceptions formed as they grow and learn.
If we continue to educate using only the stories in our history books, largely composed
with deliberate omissions and biased representations, then we are molding, shaping and
forming the same biased and incomplete understandings in the minds of our students.
Bigelow presents us instead with workshop models for presenting curricula that
encourage students to express their interpretations and reactions to stories and events,
such as slavery and oppression. It does not undermine the importance of teaching factual
data, but rather emphasizes the need for personal application and reflection on the part of
the students, guided by the teacher, through group discussion, discovery, and simulations
of stories in the texts. For example, poetry analyzed by students from more than one
point of view allows them to consider the feelings and viewpoints of more than one
person or culture. The use of “Honeybees” by Paul Fleischman (Bigelow 1994, p. 42) is
written from both the viewpoint of the worker bee and the queen bee. One set of students
examines and analyzes the poem from the viewpoint of the worker bee, while the other
group analyzes the poem from the queen’s viewpoint. Following the analysis the teacher
would implement a discussion and introduce the analogy between the worker bee and the
working class citizen, and the queen bee and the corporate CEO or business owner.
Prior to or following this discussion, students may role play the different positions
and act out the viewpoints as expressed in the poetry, and then give their reflections as to
how they would feel in these different situations, and perhaps which position is more
comfortable or familiar to them, and which is less. They might also make connections
with people they know that fall into one or the other category. This formative type of
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learning creates not only more meaning but better retention, and most importantly, the
Using current media issues and students’ personal problems and situations is
presented as another highly effective means of teaching social studies and social justice.
Taking current events to a higher level by not only having the students collect and
summarize, but also enact and write and speak about their reactions to these events is a
very powerful method of instruction. Most importantly, students must be allowed to react
in truth and express their viewpoints without criticism or the premise of being considered
wrong if their views conflict with popular media views or the majority of those around
them.
differences in one another and our cultures. To affirm this diversity and truly explore and
develop our students’ understanding of it, an approach such as this must be used in our
celebrations, but most of those carry with them their own set of stereotypes which we
need to teach our students to avoid. Nieto addresses that we must do more than have an
additive approach to our curriculum, and Bigelow takes this teaching to the next level in
pointing out the many flaws in additive methods. As early as kindergarten, for centuries,
elementary schools all over our country, year after year. The children wear headbands
with a single feather protruding from them, tap their mouths, chanting and say “How!”
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This certainly does a grave injustice in affirming the diversity of the native American. In
fact, it is a stereotypical insult to their heritage! In this practice, we are leading our
students to believe that this is the accepted dress and behavior of native Americans. We
neglect to teach them about the oppression and torture that the native Americans suffered
at the hands of the white settlers. We do not delve into their deep culture to learn the
meaning behind their music, their dress, their ‘rights of passage’ or any of their cultural
beliefs and practices. This is because we emphasize instead the gracious and generous
efforts of the white ‘pilgrims’ under the pretense that they were responsible for bringing a
Bigelow has, instead, created with the help of several editors, ideas for using
workshop models, simulations, discussion, media and face to face visits within the
community to teach not only the traditional biased and one sided facets of social studies,
but to engage students in the workings of social justice, to formulate advocates for
change as we allow the exploration of all sides, and the individual and group reactions
According to Bigelow (1994), “I remain unconvinced that the explanation for the
to master…not because students cannot learn from teachers whose styles do not
For too many years, we have written off minority student achievement to poor
innate ability, lack of background knowledge, or the students’ inability to learn from
teachers of a different ethnic background than their own. In fact, as Bigelow points out,
we must adopt instead the truism that it is the delivery and not the ability that is the
problem! When presented by Eurocentric and Anglo-centric stories and events, there is
little for the student of a diverse population to relate to or find meaning in. When we
attempt to tell students what they must believe and accept, rather than engage them in the
process of evaluating and reacting to events, we not only stifle their ability to formulate
their learning, we also stifle their self-efficacy and their perceived value as human beings
within their own culture. We also minimize the value of their culture on a global scale
and thereby suppress and minimize their own view of the culture which they are a part of.
We are conveying to them that they should envy and conform to the values and systems
of the culture being promoted in their curriculum, regardless of the sacrifice of their own
identity.
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References:
Bigelow, B., Christensen, L., Karp, S., Miner, B. & Peterson, B. (1994). Rethinking our
classrooms: teaching for equity and justice. Rethinking Schools Publications.