A day of lessons in stereotypes
Today has been an interesting lesson in stereotypes.
Lesson one:
I had a guest speaker from Deaf Services in BR come to my Interpersonal Communication class. He was dynamic and interesting and the students loved him. Before his visit, I decided to learn a little more about Deaf culture the capital D is important to people in the Deaf community). I’ve been fascinated about it ever since a friend of mine demonstrated the way that sign language is not a literal interpretation but a more poetic one. She did this by signing a song. I’ve learned a long time ago that it’s your responsibility to educate yourself about others who are culturally different rather than to expect them to translate for you. I think the most memorable statement came from Audre Lorde who said that white women expect women of color to “stretch across the gap of ignorance.” So in my searching I learned about the political disagreements over “oralism” and “manualism” or the privileging of lip reading over sign language (I even found a blogger who called oralism a form of torture). After reading about this divide, I then reviewed how our textbook author, Joe Devito, addressed communicating with Deaf people. After the little reading that I’ve done, I was surprised at Devito’s oralist orientation. I now find it somewhat curious that Devito has the discussion of deafness in the listening chapter under problems with hearing, even though he distinctly separates listening from hearing. The frame of his discussion on communicating with the Deaf is clearly that the lack of hearing is a noise problem rather than a challenge of cultural difference. I intend to tell him so.
Lesson Two:
I’ve been teaching the Dewey Reflective Thinking model for group problem solving for years even though I’ve hated it. Ultimately using that model as the basis for a group project doesn’t cultivate in the students any state of interdependence. Instead, they work alone on their various tasks and then present together in a panel format. To change that problem this semester I assigned a video scavenger hunt, part of which requires all the students to appear in certain scenes. This forces interdependence because they have to coordinate and work together. One of my scavenger hunt “items” was to give a cop a donut. Basically I just copied a list of items from somewhere on the web without much reflection.
So today I learned from an offended campus police officer that donuts are called “cop killers.” Well, I was so embarrassed. Obviously next semester I will have to change that portion of the assignment. It didn’t even occur to me that the donuts might be problematic.
Lesson Three:
I have a non-native English speaking friend who I met through the “Conversation Partners” program at school. We have been meeting regularly since early last semester and I’m enjoying her company and learning a great deal about her culture. I find myself being endeared and amused by some of her language mistakes. After a moment of chuckling over an email, I then wondered if I was being paternalistic in finding this humorous. I don’t really know the answer. White guilt for the win!
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