Embracing Change
Let’s face it: most of us were taught in classrooms where
styles of teachings reflected the notion of a single norm of
thought and experience, which we were encouraged to
believe was universal. This has been just as true for
nonwhite teachers as for white teachers. Most of us
learned to teach emulating this model. As a consequence,
many teachers are disturbed by the political implications of
a multicultural education because they fear losing control
in a classroom where there is no one way to approach a
subject— only multiple ways and multiple references.
Bearing that in mind, among educators there has to be an
acknowledgment that any effort to transform institutions
so that they reflect a multi-cultural standpoint must take
into consideration the fears teachers have when asked to
shift their paradigms. There must be training sites where
teachers have the opportunity to express those concerns
while also learning to create ways to approach the
multicultural classroom and curriculum. Making the
classroom a democratic setting where everyone feels a
responsibility to contribute is a central goal of
transformative pedagogy and as the classroom becomes
more diverse, teachers are faced with the way the politics
of domination are often reproduced in the educational
setting.
Adapted from hooks, b. Teaching to Transgress: A
Education as a Practice of Freedom. London/New York:
Routledge, 1994.
The text above reinforces the importance of: