Teaching Critical Thinking

In chapter 2 of Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education it states there are 7 basic characteristics of multicultural education and to me the most important is the statement, "multicultural education is critical pedagogy." There is always a question of how to teach critical thinking. Even at the college level, the critical thinking courses offered to honors students at Bowling Green State University vary largely based on the professors who choose to teach it. One fourth grade teacher has a very interesting idea to teach his students critical thinking skills.

John Hunter plays a game with his students called the world peace game. He divides his students into different countries and each student is assigned a role. Some are prime ministers and other country officials, but others have no country affiliation and are directors of the world bank or other international officials. Each country starts out with different economies and for the game to be won every country must end the game with more money than they started with. Also John created a set of 50 crises that must be fixed and they must be resolved before the time runs out for the game to be won. All these crises are inter-related so as one thing changes, everything else changes. There is also a child called the sabotagour, whose job is to stir up trouble. All the teacher is is the clock watcher and the clarifier. He tells anecdotes about some of the experiences he has seen over the years of playing the game, but what stuck out to me most was the critical thinking skills developed during the days this game is played. This video can be watched at http://youtu.be/0_UTgoPUTLQ

According to the book on page 54, "a multicultural approach values diversity and encourages critical thinking, reflection, and action." Instead of lecturing about global warming, John Hunter encourages his students to solve it. He has them take everything they have been told and flip it upside down and question it in order to create "world peace". My favorite part of this game is that for every life lost in battle, the country of students have to write a letter to the avatars fake parents apologizing for the lost of their child's life and explaining the sacrifice they made and why the life was lost. This really made the students think about going into battle and brought out a compassionate side of war. It's rules like these that make this game so wonderful. If this game were to be implemented in every classroom, could you imagine its affects. Not only would students be introduced to critical thinking skills,but they are using them to solve the major problems of the world. If they can use these skills to solve problems that our greatest minds can't solve, then would there be a need for the massive school reform the book calls for. I am not saying it would eliminate all the problems with multicultural education in America's schools, but it would at least teach students to question what they are being told and show them that they can think for themselves and they can make a difference.

Single Story

As I was scanning through articles and lectures on multicultural education, I found a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche entitled The Danger of a Single Story. She began her talk describing herself as a reader, even from an early age. Growing up on a college campus in Nigeria, she typically read British or American stories. Then as she began writing her own stories, her characters had the same culture as the ones she read about. As a child, she thought that stories were only about white characters who talk about the weather, which was nothing like the culture she was immersed in. She continued telling antidotes about her families house servant and her roommate and college and other experiences she had over her life, but they all had one message in common, the power of a single story. She then goes on to explain that these single stories are basically stereotypes. She exemplifies this by mentioning some negatives events in her life and states that by focusing on only the negative events flattens who she is. She has had many experiences in her life that has shaped who she is. She then stated the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that the are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. This relates strongly to the part in the book Affirming Diversity: The Sociopoiltical Context of Multicultural Education about hybridity and how it isn't just about the culture they look like they should be in, but also how they identify. Also the book states that "the danger of considering culture lies in overgeneralizing its effects"(158). This talk really focuses on expanding what it means in real life to over generalize its effects.  As educators we need to be certain to not give our students a single story. Whether they have the same culture as us or not, all students have a million stories and all are different from student to student and all shape the way our students will learn. It is also important for us to explain to our students to not fall into the trap of the single story.