Teaching Literature By and About Minorities
The document contains the topic of Teaching Literature By and about Minorities. This article is written by ‘Joanne Dale’ in which he has cited an important issue of teaching literature in the context of the minority groups and country that are in power. The compilation of anthologies of the Literature written by minorities is published by a group of people who belongs to the different minority groups. The collection of the different genres of the literature could be read and taught in the majority class rooms. This article has a heading of “Focus on Values”, which raises some questions on which my assignment is based. The first question is, why should literature by and about minorities be included in school programs? Second question is what literature should be taught? Third question is, how should it be taught? To whom? When? Now I will answer them one by one.
Q1: Why should literature by and about minorities be included in school program?
The first important thing is that an ethnic group always has its importance as a part of country because they play constructive role in the development of country’s education, agriculture, science and technology etc. as the ‘majority groups’ play. The discussion is related to the minority literature and its part in the school programs, is a debatable question. The literature which is written by the minorities and about minorities is definitely has its significance, in the literature of a language of a country but there are certain insecurities about the content of the by and about minorities for a majority groups education system. These writings mostly based on the human rights and the miserable plight of an ethnic group, and these writings are somehow at some level taken as the biased approach of the minority groups. This literature has sometimes the blasphemous words, strong and slang words for the gods and for the dominant group who are the biggest cause of their miserable situation. The education system of any country would not include this kind of literature in school programs.
According to my opinion this type of Literature should not be included in the school programs, because the students of schools are not mature enough to understand these sensitive issues about minorities. I think the literature which is somehow pleasant and has some didactic and moral philosophical approach in it then we should go for it to include it in at the school level so that the majority groups have the positive impression in their minds about minority groups. And by the time the maturity level of the students raise then the less sensitive issues could be discussed in the class to let them know the reality of their lives how they fight for their rights, how strongly and logically they portray the characters of their brothers and sisters with the true story of the atrocities of the majority powerful group on the minority groups. The positive aspects should be taught from the unpleasant literature of the minorities. Then at the higher level of education, the students and instructor should understand the emotions of the minority people in the classroom. They should refrain to hurt the feelings of the minorities at any issue.
Q2: What Literature should be taught?
The selection of the curriculum of the by and about minority literature is the most important step because it depends on the thinking of the selectors or the members of curriculum designers whether they are biased or not. The members of the curriculum designers have to be neutral and positive thinker and not be biased. These people should select the literature that represents the minority rights and problems positively in the classrooms so that outside the class these minorities should be respected. There are definitely some interesting and philosophical writings of the minority groups. The literature which is written about the minority by the majority group the teacher or instructor should be taught in a way that any minority group does not feel degraded and their self-respect should not be hurt. The culture, values, social construct and conventions should be taught so that the other majority groups should know the social and cultural backgrounds, their life styles and their struggle for the basic human rights that they deserve in a community of a country. The difference between the good and bad traits with exact history and facts and figures can be taught without hurting the feelings of minority and majority groups.
How should it be taught?
The minority literature by and about minorities can be taught in many ways. The first suggestion is that the novel or a story can be taught in group discussions. The grouping can be done by the teacher in a way that he/she should separate the minority and majority groups if there are people whose literature is discussing in the class, the teacher have to choose topics from the novel or story and divide them in to the groups so that there controlled and healthy discussion can be done. The questions of the students should be asked to get information about the cultural, social issues not on racial ones. The teacher’s roll is very important they have to be careful in setting discussions.
The second suggestion is that the session of by and about minority literature teaching should be set with the mixed minority groups. The strength of the groups can be selected beforehand by the teacher so that all the groups can share their thoughts in a general way not in the personal attacks. When there is equal strength in the class the groups will be careful in discussing sensitive issues.
Third suggestion is the movies that are made about minorities and by minorities. The movies depict the feelings and emotions of any minority group. This will help them to understand the literary piece in a better way. Every week will be fixed for the one minority group movie with the novel or the story book on which it is based if any movie is there. The students should have to gather information about the minority group’s background and culture and social issues that are related to them before watching the movie.
Q4: To whom? When?
Teaching literature by and about minorities should be taught according to the context of the country what minority groups are in strength in a country. The literature can be selected for any majority and minority group and those as well who have no minority groups in their country which is not possible but we can suppose. There are no restrictions to teach the minority literature but there are some countries who are enemies and do not want to talk even the minority group to whom they hate. In that context it is very difficult to teach the minority literature who has been hated the most in country. But we can teach those, minority literature for which the majority group has soft corner that’s why the minority literature will be read and study open heartedly accepted. When it should be taught? I think there is no restriction to teach any minority literature in any classroom of any institution of the world until and unless there are no critical and sensitive issues related to that minority group are in hot discussion all over the world.
Conclusion:
The conclusive remarks for the topic are that the literature of by and about minorities has its own importance at its place as the other literatures have in the world because of their popularity in the world or because their authors that they are from superior groups. The minority literature should be taught all over the world because they are human beings like us. We should take positive things positively and negative thing should be taken as to learn something positive from the minority and majority literature. The questions are being asked purely on my opinion, no web resources used and no books are considered.
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