EDUC 364: The Role of Cultural Diversity in Schooling
A dialectical journal is one in which you engage in conversation with the text. This involves pulling quotes from the text, and providing your reaction, thoughts, analysis and/or questions about what you’ve read. When reading a chapter from Spring（chapter4and 5）, choose 3-5 short passages/selections from each assigned chapter on which to reflect. See the example below. You can format your DJ in a chart format (see next page for template), or you can format it simply as a question/answer format like below. The goal is to use the DJ to think through your reactions and prepare for discussion. Submit your DJ to Cougar Courses prior to class, and if you don’t have your computer with you in class, print it out so you have it with you for a class discussion
Example
Quote: “Faced with the world’s migration of people’s, some countries, such as Singapore, have maintained cultural pluralism by providing public schools that use the child’s home language and reflect the cultural values of the child’s home. Through the use of educational methods that promote cultural pluralism, Singapore has been able to maintain Chinese, Malay, and Indian cultures and languages. Therefore, there have been different educational approaches to the intersection of cultures resulting from globalization…Minority cultures in the United State have primarily experienced cultural genocide, deculturalization, and denial of education. Immigrant groups have mostly experienced assimilation and hybridity.” (Chapter 1).
Response: This is always what I come back to when thinking about American education. We could have chosen a different path, a different approach educating the various groups of children that have come through the school system. But instead of seeing schooling primarily as a democratizing tool, the founders and those in government who came after them saw schooling as a tool for deculturalization, for imposing hegemony. What is most frustrating is how to tease out how our current system still contains the legacy of those oppressive institutional choices. Seeing those remnants for what they are–clearly–is the only way to change the system to truly benefit all kids.