Re: Diversity Issues & Resistant Students

Melanie Hahn (melhahn who-is-at earthlink.net)
Fri, 3 Oct 1997 10:10:08 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Mike,
Instead of answering your question about bilingual education and
the local public schools, I'd like to share an experience with others that
might be of interest to many. I had a difficult class last week-I am the
first diversity professor at this small liberal arts college and
encountered a most troubling perspective from my students who are pursuing
a CA teaching credential and who, even though they may not pursue the CLAD
credential, must attend my class. I am teaching a language acquisition
theory course, but have thrown in a few topics from cultural and ethnic
studies to balance language study with cultural considerations. In any
event, the theory portion of the course is rather dense, but I have been
feeling tension that I could not put my finger on for a few weeks. I
opened class discussion up about issues they might have thus far and boy,
was the response huge and unfocused, but clearly full of disgruntled
students who articulated this message which we arrived at after the dust
settled. "I really don't care about language minority kids, so the
theories you are teaching us are irrelevant." This kind of attitude,
coming from teachers to be in California where 1.3 children come from homes
where English is not the domininant language and where this population is
growing 2.5 times faster than the monolingual English speaking student
population is appauling! I didn't know exactly how to respond since I am a
person of color, teaching in a 99% white college community, trying to
sensitize my students to issues of diversity having come from UCB where I
might teach for 4-5 days and not talk with anyone outside of the people of
color community, is quite a contrast. In addition to this, it became
obvious that several of the students are supportive of the Unz Initiative,
voted for CCRI (even though they did not know what CCRI was on a pretest),
and were even upset and accused me of having a pro-bilingual education
"bias." Outside of my own transitional process, I must tend to the
immediate concern. I am interested in suggestions as to how one might
effectively respond to this kind of student complaint and concern.

Thanks for indulging me.

Best,
Melanie Hahn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Melanie S. Miran Hahn School of Education
E-mail Address: melhahn who-is-at earthlink.net Dominican College of San Rafael
San Rafael, California 94901-8008
Telephone
(415)257-1347

"Movement is what creates life. Stillness is what creates love. To be
still and still moving--this is everything."
Do Hyun Choe