My school and upbringing shaped how I “read the world” and to explain this I am going to tell an experience I had with this idea only to just realize the deeper influence it has on how I “read the world”. This summer I decided that to be an English teacher I need to start building my reading repertoire and read what is considered “modern-day classics”. The ones I did not read in school like, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Tuesdays with Morrie and then I went to the book store and purchased Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, Pride & Prejudice… the list goes on. My peers thought it was strange I did not read any of these yet in schooling, which is a lense in itself because why are those books expected? But also, to take a note from Kevin Kumashiro and ask the questions: Why do I feel the need to read these books specifically over others? And to unlearn/ work against these biases, How can I read these texts in a way to advance my understanding of lenses and predisposed bias? Asking “That is, whose lenses, experiences, perspectives, and questions get silenced, and whose interpretations become the norms or standards to which all other readers must conform?”(2009). The biases and lenses I bring into the classroom are rooted in eurocentric truth and in order to unlearn and work against them, I need to read and experience a broader representation in literature. I believe literature is truly powerful, but the power has stayed in one place, idea, gender and race for too long that only “a single story” has become the “commonsense”. 

In reflection, single stories cluttered my schooling experiences. Especially in grade 8 through 12 with the rise in social media like Snapchat and Instagram single stories of every person was projected through the lens of what they posted, you were your Instagram. This was damaging in building relationships with others on top of predisposed bias. In terms of education and schooling Chimamanda Adichie highlights in her TED talk (2009), “How impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children” and because of her experiences reading British and American literature, “books and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.” This especially stuck out to me when reflecting in the lecture on the literary works I was exposed to as a young adolescent in a Canadian school with a multicultural and diverse population. However, this diversity was not mirrored in learnings and the eurocentric truth was the studied truth and perspective. It was not until grade 12 I was academically exposed to broader works of Indigenous and female authors. It makes me question why I could not have been reading diverse works earlier than 17/18 years old. It also highlights that eurocentric truths matter more because they are foundational learnings and are introduced right away in school. This week really opened my eyes to this idea. 

Adichie, Chimamanda. July 2009. “The Danger of a Single Story”. TED Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Kumashiro, Kevin K. Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice, Taylor & Francis Group, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uregina/detail.action?docID=446587. Created from uregina on 2020-12-06 12:11:10.