To create a single story means that the complexity of the world is ignored, set aside and turned into simple boxes that we can fit everyone into. By creating a single story, we can assume that all poor people are lazy, all fat people are greedy, all blonde women are stupid. We can diminish a culture by saying that all Mexicans are criminals, all Muslims are terrorists, and Native Americans live in teepees. It is vital for our society to go beyond the tale of a single story, the best way to change society’s views is for teachers to change the way they teach and to become critical thinkers about the stories they are teaching their students. “If U.S. educators are truly committed to nurturing a “pluralist perspective based on diversity” in students, …show more content…
I can also introduce new cultures to my students and inspire them to learn more about countries that are vastly different from their own, but no less complex and diverse. The danger of a single story is that it “emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are similar” (Adichie, 2009). Embracing diversity, introducing new cultures, showing how we are the same and how we are different, this and more can be done within the classroom. Specifically, I feel like it can be done within reading about different places, exploring unique music, and watching videos that show us images of different lands. Educators can fight against stereotypes and a single story by becoming critical thinkers who introduce their students to multiple points of view in any given situation. Educators can also invite students to join them in in-depth discussions that urge them to think beyond the story they hear in their day to day lives. By doing this, community and society as a whole could have a positive change where there is a greater understanding of “others” and critical thinking is a natural routine that everyone can dive into. Together, we can end the danger of a single
Chimamanda Adichie, in one of her eye-opening speeches, The Danger of a Single Story, provides the audience with a new insight into the negative impacts that can occur as a result of viewing a story from a single perspective and not putting in an effort to know it from all available viewpoints. Adichie in her simple, yet well-grounded speech, filled with anecdotes of her personal experiences effectively puts across her argument against believing in stereotypes and limiting oneself to just a single story using a remarkable opening, the elements of logos, pathos and ethos, repetitions, as well as maintaining a good flow of thoughts throughout the speech.
In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single
A single story is many things: an assumption, a prejudice, and even a single-sided point of view. It is a way of sharing information that implants a preconceived notion about a place or a group of people in the minds of others. Single stories “…show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become” (Adichie “The Danger of a Single Story”) in the minds of those subjected to the stories. It highlights differences, and fails to truly convey what a place or a group of people really is. An American’s assumption that all of Africa is a tribal, poverty-stricken, uneducated area is an example of a single story, but many only believe that because it was all they were ever told. A
Increasing your knowledge in many cultural backgrounds can be beneficial to you and to understand how life is for other people with different cultural upbringing than you. Three stories I found that would be really interesting to not only the students but also to the other teachers that I could be working with are “From Shadows of a Childhood” by Elisabeth Gille, “From Catfish and Mandala: A Two-wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam; Last Gamble” by Andrew X. Pham and “Shadows on the Wall” by Charles Mungoshi. I have chosen some articles that will provide more information on the topics and to help understand and explain that learning about other cultures will help the children become more educated with other cultures that
In Henry Lewis Gates’ article, The Debate Has Been Miscast from the Start, he reveals the advantages to having multiculturalism in the curriculum of America’s schools. He would argue that in order to create true diversity and understanding of cultural differences, the nation must provide its students with a wide array of opportunities to understand other cultures besides their own. Peggy McIntosh takes on a similar situation when she takes into consideration how she was taught diversity in schools as a child. She claims that dominance of the white race is unconsciously supported. She also describes how she did not receive the right kind of education that would teach her how to be aware of racism and how to be aware of her privileges as a white person. McIntosh desires change in the way that students are taught racism and the best way to accomplish this is for schools to incorporate multiculturalism into curriculum. If this is accomplished, future generations have the ability to be aware of cultural differences and they would be less likely to be perpetrators of color blind racism.
A writer might view a film and discuss or write their impressions, write a list
Diversity in the classrooms will give students access to experience other cultures and learn about one another. The different races effect how varied their backgrounds might be, and it will help the teacher engage a variety of ways to manage course material (Packard, 2017). According to Packard, it is up to the teacher to help spread the learning of diversity and use it to their advantage in their classroom. Throughout the years, diversity have grown in the classrooms, but the struggle of segregation continues.
In the present world, there are students who lives by developing their own identities, certainly all students has different appearances, cultures, thoughts, and their own stories. They share the stories about themselves and others, get information, and share information to let others know. At this point, there may be a lot of errors and wrong points in the stories, but students normally do not have a chance to know if there are errors or not. During the ability to discern and judge has not yet grown, they usually believe what they heard of the story, and share the story before make their own experience, then stereotypes unconsciously instilled into their minds. Of course, there will be no problem if the story
A couple of weeks ago, the class was assigned a personal narrative essay and the prompt was to tell an interesting story of a specific experience that changed how you acted, thought, or felt. To be honest, I was awfully excited to write this essay because talking about myself is the easiest thing to write about sometimes. However, deciding what experience to talk about was challenging because I have already experienced so much in my seventeen years of being alive from dislocating my hip when I was three, to seeing my grandfather die in front of my eyes, from almost tripping off of the trail on the Grand Canyon, to meeting band members at an airport. Writing this essay brought me many challenges, I did not know what topic to choose, I had no
Throughout the world, people have always and will always judge each other based on their skin tone, their accent, their home country or other obvious features that we immediately see or hear about them. We often formulate our opinions of these people based on our first impressions of them. In 2009, Civil rights activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses her time on her Ted-Talk to deliver her resonating speech “The Danger of a Single Story.” During her world-renowned speech, Adichie discusses human relationships, how we, as humans, interact with one another and treat each other. Adichie establishes her argument with one powerful metaphor describing common stereotypes as ‘single stories’ to demonstrate how people are affected by being judged based
As an educator one must understand that the children you will be teaching will all come from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different homes with different values. No one student will be the same, and no one student will learn the same. The role of a modern educator is to harness this idea of diversity and channel it into a positive learning atmosphere for children of all backgrounds. “I define culturally responsive teaching as using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them” (Gay, 2013, p.50.). The hope for all teachers is to capture the minds of their children, as educators we must learn how our students learn, adapt to their skill set and channel our curriculum to their strength.
isn't to write a paper that will get a good grade. Now, my goal is to
Stereotypes and generalizations have become the easy way to justify the separation of races, classes, and genders. Creating these ideas about the cultures that are different than our own is a dangerous habit that must be broken by this generation so that our children can play in merriment without the fear of being misunderstood on a day to day basis. So as Adiche said in her TED talk, stories matter, and to only pay attention to specific stories of one’s life, is to overlook all of the other formative experiences of life. “The problem with Stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” I charge you, Millennials, to go listen to the stories that fill this world, so that we might better understand the amazing things happening around us each and every
Diversity in classrooms can open student’s minds to all the world has to offer. At times diversity and understanding of culture, deviant experiences and perspectives can be difficult to fulfill, but with appropriate strategies and resources, it can lead students gaining a high level of respect for those unlike them, preferably than a judgmental and prejudiced view.
I believe it is important to first analyze the word diversity when examining the need for diversity within a classroom. According to Webster's New Pocket Dictionary, diversity means variety, a number of different kinds. I often discuss and read about diversity in terms of cultural backgrounds; the unification of histories and stories from people from all over the world. Although, I believe that in a higher-educational setting, diversity can also be discussed as the acceptance of the various minds within a classroom. I believe that it is important to recognize the thoughts and experiences of others in a learning environment. Collectively, students learn from teachers, teachers learn from students, and students learn from their peers. By allowing diversity within the classroom, a sense of community can develop. Diversity encourages an active, not passive, learning style. I believe that the culture of Columbia College Chicago is dependent on diversity. The motto “Create Change,” suggests students actively seek the change they want to see in the world. In order to obtain change a community developed out of diversity must be discovered.