Even though I had a lot on my mind today (my mom had surgery
and I have my demo tomorrow) and I may have lost my mind a little bit in the
end with my webcam pictures (you can check them out in my "Documenting the Day"), I still thought that
today was a great day for finding our stories and all things digital. The day
started out with a particularly moving TED Video by Chimamanda Adichie in which
she explores the danger of believing the single story.
I think of this single
story as the persisting stereotype or some sort of fixed cultural lens and it
got me thinking about how we do think about Africa. Recently, President Obama has
been in Africa where he saw that over 70% of the population lives without
electricity (according to NPR) and that there is an incongruous combination of
rampant hunger and an increase in the population. He has suggested that
America move from an “aid” standpoint with Africa to more of a trade andpartnership relationship. This story and the TED video made me wonder if part
of that “aid dynamic” where the wealthier, predominantly white nation is
throwing money at a problem rather than working in different countries with
different populations to make progress for the future. Could this power dynamic
that has been set up for so many years actually be doing more harm (in the theoretical/cultural
capital sense) than good?
If my generation has grown up learning to pity people in Africa (I can’t tell you how many times I heard as I was growing up…You better finish your food, there are starving kids in Africa), then are we devaluing those people? And isn’t devaluing someone at the human level the greater evil? Yikes! I don’t want you to think that I don’t believe in helping someone else or charity or do-gooding in general (although I do question the existence of pure altruism), but what I do believe is that it’s important for all of us to think about how the way we think and talk about people or things go much deeper than we typically consider and that it’s so important for us to think about the why as much as the what.
I can’t wait to use this video (and subsequent teacher models) with my students. I think that it’s so important for them to consider not only what they think, but to complicate why they think so. And what better way to articulate that thinking and explore the dynamic than through writing?
Sorry if I kinda went on a tangent, but this was on my mind...
If my generation has grown up learning to pity people in Africa (I can’t tell you how many times I heard as I was growing up…You better finish your food, there are starving kids in Africa), then are we devaluing those people? And isn’t devaluing someone at the human level the greater evil? Yikes! I don’t want you to think that I don’t believe in helping someone else or charity or do-gooding in general (although I do question the existence of pure altruism), but what I do believe is that it’s important for all of us to think about how the way we think and talk about people or things go much deeper than we typically consider and that it’s so important for us to think about the why as much as the what.
I can’t wait to use this video (and subsequent teacher models) with my students. I think that it’s so important for them to consider not only what they think, but to complicate why they think so. And what better way to articulate that thinking and explore the dynamic than through writing?
Sorry if I kinda went on a tangent, but this was on my mind...
Kendra,
ReplyDeleteI love your post! It is so true and really made me think about my own thinking. I like how you are wanting your students to not only think about things, but to think about why they think that way (talk about some deepness here!). I think that even having students write this process out, before talking about it, could really get them to be true to themselves and not influenced by answers of their peers. This could get interesting ;)
I just read everyone else's blogs (mine included) and we all touched on the activity from this morning. You really went deep into your thinking, with the emphasis on global awareness and how to help. As I said on Kim's, it's awesome that we all listened to the same talk and took some big things away from it but in slightly different ways. Cool!
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