Reading Response 9

Prompt:
Which ‘single stories’ were present in your own schooling? Whose truth mattered? What biases and lenses do you bring into the classroom? How might we unlearn/work against these biases?

Response:
Looking back at my years in school, one ‘single story’ seems to have run all the way from elementary school to high school. This single story is that of the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis (FNIM) peoples of Canada. Although this isn’t the only ‘single story’ I was presented with, it is the one I would like to speak about here. What I have come to realize is that FNIM history, when it was taken up, began with the arrival of Cabot and Cartier, and ended with the closure of residential schools. This representation is offensive in that it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that FNIM peoples inhabited North America for millennia before European contact, nor does it acknowledge contemporary FNIM issues. This lack of representation leads students (myself included) to view FNIM people as simply a portion of Canadian history, as opposed to traditional stewards of the land. This reductionist take on FNIM history also framed them as something irrelevant to the contemporary understanding of life in Canada, and what it means to be a Canadian.
In the case of this ‘single story’ I feel that settler Canadian’s truths are the ones that are deemed to matter. Unfortunately, as is the case in many schools, my school had a primarily white population, which made this injustice almost impossible to see. This situation — much like the topic of last weeks post — serves as example of how important it is for people to be introduced to counter narratives in school. If we go all those years only hearing more of the same stories that we hear at home, see on TV, and read in books, we never have to grapple with the fact that we may not be seeing the while story.
Being a middle class white cisgendered heterosexual male, I have been dealt an extremely narrow lens. In the case of biases, there are definitely things I grew up with that I am actively working to remove from my beliefs. I’ve never truly dealt with an injustice. Given this fact, my biggest challenge going into the classroom is going to be that I likely never will truly understand what students dealing with misrepresentation or under-representation are going through. I’ve never had to deal with that and so empathizing will be tough. I also know that given my narrow lens, I still miss things that are problematic. One quick example is the use of ‘guys’ when referring to a group of people. This is something that I used to do and never really think about. However, in 2018 the company that I worked for misgendered me in a few emails, and it bugged me. This little mistake pushed me to move to use the gender neutral term ‘folks’. Until I was in that position of being misgendered, I was unable to see how it could bug someone, and part of me worries that I will continue to miss things going forward.
I think that the unlearning process has quite a bit to do with the people you surround yourself with. If you are making a concerted effort to change your views, or grapple with your biases then you need to be working with people that support you, and aren’t going to persuade you to lapse back to the ways you are trying to overcome. I think we also have to be willing to put ourselves in uncomfortable positions. You have to be willing to ask yourself tough questions, and have really honest conversations with people about who you truly are. I also think that we need to realize that this is likely not a process that has an end. As you start uncovering biases in your thinking and widening your lens, you’ll realize that you have more to work on than you thought.