Dear ACR Students,
I hope that you are doing well, all things considered.
Thank you for all your amazing work on the African perspectives. Elecia advocates for more culturally diverse education: “Just by going to museums and seeing handmade materials and by having parents cook different cultures’ food of a certain culture is not enough.” Cherry agrees and adds that educators need to be educated in this subject matter. Marryam adds that “school’s can teach African history rather than telling students to dance.” Debanie contribites that “the professors should be willing to commit to learning and developing systems and knowledge that they need to thrive and participate to educate their students about multiculturalism.” Maya concludes that “no person should be discriminated from anything just because of who they are and what race they are.” Sabina says something similar: “We are culturally improficient when people whose cultural origins and traditions are not the same as our own are not appreciated or misunderstood.” Natalie G (we now have 2 Natalies!) adds that “Multicultural education is an idea, a reform, no one really knows how we will get to this equalibriam but many are trying.”
Many of you responded to the video “Africa in America.” Farangiz says that “Africans are always shown in a bad light making it seem like they are poor, uneducated, having many problems, and etc. , meanwhile that is simply not true.” Valon adds that “The media doesn’t show the other side of Africa, the pride, the culture, and the fast-paced growing economies. Cherry reports: “I learned that Africans are amongst the most educated immigration population within the United States. That was extremely surprising to learn as a lot of emphasis over the years has been towards Asians and Caucasians with regards to education.”
The sources you contributed to this topic were exclellent. Some examples: Sung shared an article from the Washington Post. “It talks about looking back throughout history and seeing how many black men and women lose their ties with their roots and the events that lead up to this tragic reality.” Ardit: a video about immigrant myths. “Immigrants these days have a “ bad image” because we come here and somehow destroy America or that immigrants are uneducated or that they left their own country from certain circumstances . Well, it is not true, immigrants are here to contribute more than they actually take.” Natalie L shares a video about “multiple views on how much of a culture shock it is for people who migrated to the US.” Joseph contributes an article that “talks about how the U.S. administration’s take on immigration harms both immigrants and the economy of the United States.” Aylin: “This is the source i chose to share, personally i feel that multicultural education should be introduced in U.S. schools because it teaches students to appreciate and value cultural diversity.” Nina invites us to watch a movie: “I suggest you watch one of my all-time favorite films. A film about a talented African boy and his talent, his struggle. This film gives wings.”
I also read your quizzes, though I wasn’t able to access all of them. Somehow we ended up with two quizzes for last week (my mistake), and so I ended up deleting one and transfering everyone’s grades to the right column. Let me know if something still doesn’t seem right.
Good luck with your oral history projects–I hope you enjoy the process too.
Prof. Barnes
