Threat of Cultural Pluralism

A new policy in our school system that exerts social control is the implementation of Standard School Attire. Our students have to wear khaki, blue or black pants with no cargo pockets, a solid collared shirt and a belt. One of the reasons for this new policy is to eliminate inappropriate clothing and styles. The hope was by removing clothing “issues” that students would be able to concentrate on academics. In the elementary schools, we do see a big difference in behavior on non SSA days. Kids do get crazy. Now is that because of the clothes or the fact that it is a special day is hard to say but the result is the same. Another hope was that the economic disparities would not be noticeable. However, this can still often be seen in the same outfit being worn daily or being dirty, but on the whole there is less distinction between our economically disadvantaged students and more advantaged students.

Our curriculum doesn’t focus on cultures. With the emphases on standardized test, history seems to take a back seat. I collaborate with my teachers and realize that when taking about Tennessee history, we do include Native Americans and African Americans, but it is still from the “white” perspective. I hope to start incorporating a more multicultural perspective in my lessons.

While I try to have a collection that is multicultural, I see that I have many holes. However, given the small amount of money I get to purchase new books in my library, I do have to weight the needs of our students. I do bring in books written by authors of different cultures but the choices are still limited in children’s literature. I do strive to have a multicultural biography collection and hope to increase my teaching from a multicultural perspective.