Symbolic Curricula School hallways/classrooms and their walls are educational advertising spaces. Culturally responsive teachers are critically aware of the power that the images displayed in a school or classroom have. Whatever is present is valued and whatever is absent is devalued. A diversity of age, gender, time, place, social class must be displayed. Teachers have to care so much that they will accept nothing short of the highest of success for all their ethnically diverse students.

Discourse Racism has the potential to be such a sensitive issue that people feel like they are walking on egg shells when it comes to issues of diversity. It is for this reason that many avoid discussing it. In reality, we should be doing the opposite, as some of you stated last week. We must exhaust the topic until everyone identifies the privileges and disadvantages they have had in their lives. I had to consider this when I created the course website!

Limitations Teachers have to care and want to make changes to their current practice.

White Privilege “Whiteness" has historically been treated more as a form of property than as a racial characteristic: In other words, as an object which has intrinsic value that must be protected by social and legal institutions (Harris and Lipsitz, 2006).

Quote: W.E.B. Du Bois in History/Sociology “It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule”.

Spared Injustice “Spared injustice" is when any non-white person suffers an unjust treatment while a white person does not. An example of this is when "a Black person is stopped by the police without due cause but a White person is not”. Lawrence Blum identifies "unjust enrichment" privileges as those for which whites are spared the injustice of a situation, and in turn, are benefiting from the injustice of others.

Continued For instance, "if police are too focused on looking for non-white lawbreakers, they might be less vigilant toward White ones, conferring an unjust enrichment benefit on Whites who do break the laws but escape detection for this reason” (Blum, 2008). This has been the foundation of racism since the beginning of time.

Food For Thought Any constitutional/equality legislation represent a major shift in societal thinking by explicitly recognizing diversity in Canadian society. Although legislation remains extremely important, it “does not ensure protection of equal opportunity and recognition of diverse identities in Canadian society” (Sheppard, 2006).

Continued An education which implies that multiculturalism is relevant only to minority groups is ineffective because the majority group needs to be equally aware of the changing nature of Canadian society and their privileged position in it. They need to know about unequal power relations, the meaning of difference and the experiences of those who are "different." The need is to transform existing institutional practices to create a society in which integration does not mean accommodation of certain “ethnic” groups; rather, it must construct a common space where dominant and minority groups are not recognized as having different privileges.

Continued In the context of the social changes in Canadian society and the world, the basis of education is to question and examine the roots of injustice and intolerance. Thus, the liberation achieved through education can be a powerful force in our society to produce enlightened citizens. Multicultural education is not a static concept. It is changing in interesting ways. It can liberate the mind from bigotry, intolerance, and injustice – and nourish open dialogue and friendly exchange among people.

Conclusions If you allow your student to understand and learn about their own preconceptions about culture/race, they will become self-aware of past failures, and find ways to overcome these failures and move toward success.

Interactive Learning Activity I would like you to reflect on the identity you have been given in small groups (4-5 per group). Ask yourself the following questions and we will discuss shortly!: What are some of the obstacles that someone with my identity can have in the classroom? How can my identity help me succeed in school/life? How does my identity affect my interpersonal relationships with my peers?

Identities Group 1: A 16 year old pregnant teenager. Group 2: A 44 year old single father of 3 children. Group 3: A high functioning autistic 20 year old. Group 4: A 17 year old Hispanic male. Group 5: A 15 year old black male. Group 6: A 60 year old single woman. Group 7: A 16 year old with ADD/ADHD. Group 8: An 18 year old white male.