"Their Culture"

At lunch today, I was discussing curriculum ideas with two other teachers; we’ll call them Suzie and Sally. Suzie discussed an upcoming unit that she’s going to do using the Athabascan Indian legend Two Old Women. She also asked me if I’d ever read When the Legends Die, another Native American story written by Hal Borland.

“Yes. In fact, I’ve taught it a number of times,” I replied, adding, “I’ve always taught more Native American literature in non-native cultures as a sort of exposure, I suppose. Like when I taught in rural south Louisiana to half-black classes, I taught a lot of Native American and world literature to expose them to the broader horizons of the rest of the world. We spent very little time on African American literature. Since it was a 9th grade literature class, it was supposed to be a smattering, a survey of literature.”

I asked why they thought it was different in this culture, that such heavy emphasis was placed on teaching Native Alaskan and Native American literature. They both said that it was to get the students to “buy in.” They explained to me that if the students couldn’t see any immediate, direct connection to them and their lives, then they wouldn’t be interested in learning the material and once there is that “buy-in,” then other literature can be taught.

My only question was this, “When does that buy-in occur if not before 9th grade?”

Understandably, Suzie got very defensive and Sally backed her up when I suggested that we introduce new cultures and new ideas to students in a public education setting. At what point do we, as teachers, get to do that here without being accused of trying to change the village?

I’m in a quandary over this. As I bring magazines from different parts of the country into my classroom, I’m hit with the response from students, “That’s not about my culture, so I don’t care.” Are we fostering an attitude of separatism among these young people by trying to gear our lessons so much toward “their culture”? – a culture to which few them regularly prescribe, at least in the traditional sense. They munch on candy bars and chips, not dried salmon. They listen to modern teen tunes on their ipods, not traditional drumming. They wear designer sneakers with their Carharts, not sealskin boots and soft, hide leggings. They speak English out in the village much more than Yupik.

I’m just thankful that the courses that I’m teaching this year have a strict curriculum to be followed (it's a pilot program) – a curriculum which mirrors the British literature and world literature that I was teaching in Homer. Unfortunately, teachers here have been so busy trying to teach within the parameters of this culture that often the students are not getting the basic information that they need.

There was a question on my British literature study guide today that asked, “What historical event on the timeline is related to Darwin’s ideas? (evolution)” The evolution hint was right there and still these juniors and seniors could not answer the question because they did not know who Darwin was. Needless to say, I did some quick background teaching.

And, so it goes…