All or Nothing

In class on Tuesday, a comment made by Dave sparked my interest. He had asked the question that if one does not teach multiculturalism authentically, should one even teach multiculturalism? This idea was brought up in the article we read as well. I would like to give my opinion on this matter. I think that to teach multiculturalism one does need to know what they are teaching. I might even go so far to say that a person needs to fully understand the culture of which they are teaching. It would be similar if a teacher was trying to teach students about music theory without fully understanding what figured bass does. The teacher has to be the one that has already experienced many instances with the given topic and has learned through that process.

In my practicum on Wednesday, it was brought to our attention that there were a couple of principles that my practicum team was not fully aware of, and that was evident in the lesson. I truly feel that this is the same for multiculturalism. In high school I found myself offended many times when my history teacher would speak falsely of my religious beliefs. It was not my history teacher's fault that he was misinforming the class, but there was no room to teach something that my teacher did not fully understand. I liken this to ones culture, and I would hate to do the same for someone else; let alone one of my students.