The other day, I was telling students about a field trip we will be taking at the end of the month. The field trip is a chance to learn about different religions. We will be visiting a Buddhist temple, a Muslim mosque, and an Eastern Orthodox church. Other grades will get to see the Hindu temple as well. One of my white students raised his hand to ask, "Why are there Buddhist temples in Kansas? That's weird."
I explained to the kid that in America, we are welcoming to all people no matter what they believe or where they come from - and that actually, that's pretty cool.
My student thought about it for a second and then responded, "Yeah, I guess that is pretty cool actually."
The whole conversation just tells me why field trips like this are important. Kids need to have their horizons expanded. They need to see that the world is bigger than their own house, school, or religious institution. The more kids can be exposed to people of different walks of life, the more they will learn to treat people who are different from themselves with respect and kindness. Xenophobia happens when people think that only their way of living is correct, and this is doubly dangerous right now because of certain people in power and media outlets that profit from common people's hatred of others. This cycle of riling people up over fear of "the other" makes our world a worse place to live. I can't control what kids are exposed to at home (nor would I want to), but I can make sure that when they're in my class, they are learning kindness through exposure instead of intolerance through ignorance.
In college, we learned about Jason Reynolds's book: Miles Morales: Spider-Man and how it doesn't shy away from confronting problems like the school to prison pipeline. In the book, the main villain is an evil, racist teacher. This gives me memories of coming home from school everyday in sixth grade and putting on my vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall. The album featured an evil teacher as well. It was even banned in South Africa in 1980 after protestors used the music to represent their feelings about unequal schooling during apartheid. As a preteen, I mostly used it to vent my frustrations with my English teacher who I thought was too strict and who tried to censor my reading material.
While I may have had good reason t be upset with my old teacher, I do have to check my privilege because as Miles Morales points out, a lot of students have it way worse than I did. The teacher in The Wall is a broad caricature of austere instructors. But the teacher in Miles Morales is a malefactor who does specific misdeeds such as celebrating the Confederacy and spreading misinformation about it. He even praises our status quo because of the efficiency of the prison system replacing slavery as the new way to suppress people of color.
The Miles Morales book is an improvement over the traditional canon because of the precision of its judgment. Kids who go listen to Pink Floyd might feel rebellious against authority in general whether they be good or bad. But kids who study Jason Reynolds will be likely to rise up against the explicit wrong-doings perpetrated by people in power today. This would be a great book to use in class because it is preparing the leaders of tomorrow for the injustices of the real world. And if parents have a problem with me breaking their kids out of their sheltered nurseries, they're just going to have to homeschool instead. I will not look the other way when faced with bigotry, and I definitely won't contribute to it.
Works Cited:
Worlds, Mario, and Cody Miller. “Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Reimagining the Canon for Racial Justice.” https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/formswift-pdf-editorconve/bdfcnmeidppjeaggnmidamkiddifkdib.
