Read The World

Growing up as a child my upbringing was very positive. I grew up with a family who loved me, and who also taught me to love others. I was raised that I was never to judge people based on who they are, or where they come from. However I attended a very cathelic elementary school, where there were many positives from my school experiences, there were also negative outcomes too. Growing up in my cathlic elementary school the bias was put on me that being cathlic was the best branch of christiananity to be, and overall the best religion to worship. I had a mindset and saw through a lens that christiananity was superior. For a long period of time I was unaware that there were any other religions in the world, for the only religion that was ever introduced to me was christianity. It was not until later on in my life where I learnt about other religions, but this knowledge did not come from my elementary schooling. For it was from other resources that I had to seek out on my own. It was not until high school where I took a world religion class where I truly understood different religions and their beliefs. I found that a lot of them had similarities between them and christianiaty. This resulted in me starting to question if christianity was really the superior of all religions. My answer to that question today would be no. No religion is superior to another and they all have their own special thing about them. Each religion has its perks and negatives about it, but everyone has one that is right for them. This also broke the bias I had that no one is superior based on which religion they worship. I wish I had never had these biases and wished my school had taught me about different world religions. How I am going to make sure this does not happen to the students in my class is by introducing and having symbols around my classroom of different religions. I will also give students an opportunity to share their religion if they have, and just overall get students to talk about the subject. For the more they talk about it the more educated they will be. 

There were many single stories that I could name off the top of my head, but the one that is most present was the single story around Indigenous peoples. In my schooling the single story we got about Indigenous people was from the side of the white settler. It always felt like the teachers I had growing up just taught a small portion of Indigenous culture in textbooks, and then moved on. The teachers never seemed interested in the subject and never gave us extra information about Indigenous peoples. As a result we only heard what the textbook had to say which was “white washed” and dated. This never really shines a positive light on Indigenous people for we never learned what really happened or learnt the Indigenous point of view. I believe that school systems are doing a little bit better and adding more information in than from when I was in elementary school. However there is still a lot more work that needs to be done.