Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Teaching Children Truth through Dance

One question I ask is how do we as teachers show and teach the absurdity of race to our youngest? The topic of race as an illusion was discussed in one of my classes. I posed this question, and this is a question I pose for us all. Racism in today's western society is hidden within culture/attitudes/classes and hierarchies. What we need to help children understand is that most of us are a mix of cultures, "races," classes [muts]. Within each of our ancestries our ancestors have at different points in time come from a mix of heirarchies, classes. At one generation someone was at the bottom, and another time in hitory someone in your lineage was at the top.

With this in mind- that the idea of race makes no sense and is a complete illusion, how do we give students this truth? How do we give light through dance. This is a truth that has been manipulated and turned into a rumor. We need to speak about this in order to help our world grow as one human race.

How do we start incorporating this into our classes?

1 comment:

  1. I think that, for me, I try to expose the hidden ways we define race -- like in music, what makes a piece "other" or "exotic"? What is the composer really trying to say about the culture being depicted? Giving students the tools to identify stereotypes and false assumptions in our culture might be the only thing we can do.

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