What is worth learning?
I have created a black out poem that focuses on curriculum violence. You can view it by clicking on the attached link. I first selected the original article, Ending Curriculum Violence, by Stephanie P. Jones. This article details many examples of curriculum violence in schools across our nation. A big issue we have in America is the way we teach about Black history in our country. Jones discusses the fact that slavery is often the only part of Black history that is taught, and many schools insight curriculum violence by forcing students to reenact slavery or complete assignments that have racist undertones. I blacked out many words in this article in order to give a shortened poetic version that explains what curriculum violence is and how it impacts our students. The full article is a great read, though, and I highly recommend it to those that are wanting to become a teacher or are already a teacher.
To summarize, curriculum violence is the manipulation of academic material in a way that harms a student's psychological well-being. An example of this would be showing traumatic and racist images or videos to students. While slavery is something that should be discussed, showing students graphic videos or images of slavery is harmful. Students can understand the concept and horrors of slavery without seeing items that may cause psychological trauma to a young child. One example from Jones' article was an elementary teacher requiring students to create wanted posters for slaves. There is no way to really depict a slave and students will simply end up drawing a Black person. As a Black student, seeing wanted posters of black people hung up in your school could be incredibly traumatic and scary. As teachers, we must think of how these assignments seem from the perspective of our students in order to instruct our curriculum as best as possible.
Hi Cayenne! After taking a look at your black our poem I realized that we have highlighted or selected very similar words that stood out to us, and it truly has to do with the importance that those words hold. I must agree with you on how the article, The article Ending Curriculum Violence is honestly an incredibly informative read and eye opening too as it covers some of the African American teaching that is done in schools and unfortunately, it is not much other than slavery being the star of the show. It really does show how limited Black history Is in our schools and scary on how they use curriculum violence as a way to manipulate academic materials, as you mentioned. Not to mention the negative impacts this has on a child is really sad and traumatic so I really do agree with you Cayenne that we as teachers must really look at different perspectives and points of views when teaching the curriculum!
ReplyDeleteHey Cayenne, I really enjoyed reading your definition of curriculum violence. I think you did a great job at summarizing it. I don’t know about you but up until now, I had never heard of curriculum violence and I was confused about it when skimming the module. Reading your post has really helped me to understand it more. I agree with you that as teachers we need to be more aware of these things because it can be harming to a student to complete some of those activities. I remember whenever I was in 6th grade and learning about the holocaust for the first time. I had a teacher show us graphic images from the camps and I remember going home and not being able to sleep that night because I was traumatized from what I saw at school. This is the same instance you were discussing in your post using the example of slavery and posters.
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