Tag Archives: Language Arts

Module 4, Post 5 – Do your readings support colonial ideals?

Leave a reply

Johnston, I. (2006). Engaged Differences: School Reading Practices, Postcolonial Literatures, and Their Discontents. . In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (116 – 130). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. 

For any of you language arts teachers out there, this one is worth a read. The author discusses the phenomenon that exists in Canadian language arts classrooms, in which certain texts have become ‘canonized’. How many of you think of “Romeo & Juliet” as the Grade 10 play, “Macbeth” as the Grade 11 play, and “Hamlet” as the Grade 12 play, when the curriculum actually doesn’t even call for Shakespeare, just an understanding of drama? We have an option to change the readings, making choices that reflect the place and cultures of our students. Nothing says that “All Quiet on the Western Front” has to be read – why not check out Thomas King’s new novel, “The Inconvenient Indian”? One reason that resistant teachers might have is that there aren’t established lesson plans or public support for new materials, another might be that teachers are unwilling to introduce material with controversial topics because of anxiety about how to facilitate the conversations that will ensue. The thing is, to teach all students effectively, teachers must be willing to step outside of their comfort zones and make readings choices that support the removal of colonial ideals. Johnston makes a strong argument towards this case.

 

Module 4, Post 3 – Postcolonial Poetry Project

Leave a reply

Willinksy, J. (2006). High School Postcolonial: As the Students Ran Ahead with the Theory . In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (95-115). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. 

This chapter reads as a narrative case study, by an academic who joined a Grade 12 English class in Vancouver as a guest teacher. The purpose was for the guest teacher to teach a postcolonial poetry unit that was an accurate reflection of the time and place that the students were learning in. One idea that stood out for me was that it is misleading for teachers to teach about colonialism as if it was over, if their curriculum still reinforces colonial or assimilative ideals.

The writer engaged the students in a collaborative poetry project wherein each student had to source a poem that reflected their cultural heritage, in its original language and in an English language translation. Each student created a section of their new postcolonial poetry anthology, including the bilingual poetry presentation, a poetry analysis, and discussion questions. The hope was that other teachers would choose to use this new anthology as well, rather than the previously used one which represented an older, Caucasian view of Canada. The students in the study “were engaged in nothing more than providing an additional sense of Canadian identity and landscape to the scope of their curriculum” (110).