The Missing Link

March 30, 2006

Culture and Accomodation

Jonathan Zimmerman relates a thought-provoking anecdote about the challenges cultural differences can pose:

I don't remember her name. But I can still picture my sixth grade student's frightened expression when I asked her to give the first classroom presentation that morning.

"Where I come from," she said, in a quivering voice, "girls don't go first." She was an immigrant from a Muslim country in the Middle East whose family had moved to Baltimore a few years earlier. I was a young social studies teacher at her middle school, fired with passion and idealism. I believed in my heart that schools should respect national differences. But I also believed that we should treat boys and girls in an equal fashion.

So how should I have responded? For years, I've put this question to my graduate students. Most side with the girl, citing her distinct cultural background. By forcing the girl to go first, my students tell me, I would be telling her, and the class, that there's something inferior about her culture. And that's not a message our public schools should transmit.

A vocal minority of students bridles at this approach. Some invoke a brand of liberal universalism: Girls and boys are endowed with equal rights, no matter what different cultures might say about it. Others emphasize America's own national rights and imperatives.

Go here to see what he decided to do.

Posted by Conor at March 30, 2006 12:11 AM