The Maine Humanities Council Newsletter ~ Fall 2002 ~ p. 4 & 5
Talking About Difference
|
|
The Maine Humanities Council Newsletter ~ Fall 2002 ~ p. 4 & 5 Talking About Difference |
| 1 Talking About Difference (cover page) 2 A Letter from the Executive Director 3 Wesley McNair and Thoughtful Giving 4 and 5 The Art of Talking About Difference 6 A Faust for our times? 7 Let's Talk About It 'Inside" and The View from the East 8 Humanities Winter Weekend, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
|
The Art of Talking About Difference
Born To Read's newest initiative is designed to promote tolerance and diversity awareness among children up to age 5 in childcare and pre-school settings. Using high quality, vividly illustrated children's books, coupled with specially designed training workshops, the program will equip childcare providers, pre-school teachers, and Born To Read volunteers to help ensure that "difference" doesn't have negative connotations for the youngest Mainers. By the end of three years, the Maine Humanities Council hopes to have reached at least 2,000 children and their families in 150 childcare sites and Head Start classrooms in eight Maine counties (Aroostook, Cumberland, Franklin, Kennebec, Penobscot, Somerset, Washington, and York). The project has been made possible in part by a grant from the Verizon Foundation. Another key partner is Maine Roads To Quality, a professional development program for childcare providers. Choosing the right books has been a daunting task. Born To Read co-director Denise Pendleton and a 20-member statewide advisory board have worked closely with a specialist on bias-free learning for the very young, Audrey Maynard of Portland. A former teacher who is now a diversity consultant Maynard is writing the curriculum guide which will accompany a Born to Read Book Bag and which will suggest all sorts of related activities - signing, dancing, cooking, painting, "and just generally having fun." She talked about her work recently with Maine Humanities. Q: What do you say to people who complain that you are "politicizing" their children?A: There's a big difference between "politicizing" a subject and discussing it. Children have questions, and we're going to have to answer them. We know from child development research on cognitive growth that children start categorizing people very early on. The world is filled with these questions about peoples' differences. We hope to come up with good answers that will help kids understand this complexity. Q: You seem to prefer the word "difference" over "diversity." A: "Diversity" has become a buzzword that's frequently taken to refer primarily to race. So people say, "We don't have diversity in Maine, it's the 'whitest' state in the union." We would like to expand that definition of diversity so it includes all kinds of differences, including the economic. Q: Can you sum up the project in a very few words? A: We are trying to teach the art of having a conversation about difference. It's really the foundation of a civil society. We want to prevent the kinds of prejudice that can be learned very early in childhood. To put it more positively, we want to appeal to those ideas of fairness that also appear from very early on. And our final goal is to encourage children to develop conflict resolution skills. Q: How early can you start? A: The project focuses on 2 ½ to 5 year olds. But younger children listen to what's going on around them, so we hope to find some books that will catch the attention of toddlers, too. The fact that TV is so much a part of children's lives means that they are forming opinions about the world at a very early age. Q: How does the Book Bag work? A: Our selections fall into three groups. First, books that support our sense of individuality, that say we share similarities with each other yet are different - in skin color, body size, family makeup - picture books like We Can Do It! and We Are All Alike... We Are All Different. The second group of books includes family stories, a lot of them about children experiencing daily routines. For example, Tidy Up! deals with the universal subject of neatness, but it broadens the definition of what it means to take care of your environment, to suggest a kind of stewardship. Celebrating uses multi-national, multi-ethnic images to portray the universal need for holidays. Other books were chosen because they demonstrate there are a lot of ways to earn a living. We looked for books that mirror children's real-life situations - for example, the fact there are single moms and nightshift dads. Others deal with ethnic minorities, for example, the Chinese-American girl whose mother raises The Ugly Vegetables with "weird" names. That book speaks to a child's fundamental desire to be just like everyone else. It acknowledges that it's often hard to be different. The third group is based on developing a sense of place and learning how much variety even a small state can represent. We talk about Maine, through books like Blueberries for Sal and The ABCs of Maine. This is an early literacy project, helping children learn to express themselves, so they'll be asked to write their own stories about living here. What we really looked for were good stories. I mean how many times can you tell kids "we're all different, we're all alike"? You have to persuade them of this through words and images. Q: But you don't just pass these books out, do you? A: No, introducing them requires training. Most people are not comfortable talking about physical differences, for example. One of our goals is to give childcare providers the language that will make sense to children. You don't tell a young child that the person in a wheelchair suffers from multiple sclerosis. You say, "Her legs don't work well." Your own sense of "okayness" about these differences is conveyed in your language. From observable differences you work your way into less visible ones, such as religion. But you have to have the right touch, the right tone. If you aren't comfortable with a subject, don't fake it. Go on to the next thing. We'll offer providers the opportunity to discuss these issues and do some role-playing. Q: How do you deal with differences in sexual orientation? A: It's not appropriate for childcare providers to talk about sexuality with young children - you just don't go there. But if you are dealing with same-sex parents, you want to validate that. Some families have two mommies, some have two daddies. That's what we say to children. Q: Was there some ideal book that never showed up on your lists? A: It's very hard to find children's books that convey the Maine of today. The publishing industry tends to see Maine as vacationland, where everyone lives on the coast. My own vision would be of a book with kids swimming at the local water-hole or riding on the back of Dad's snowmobile. It probably ought to be about a boy because there aren't enough books about boys of that age. And it needs a rural setting. There are a lot of rural, low-income white kids who just aren't seeing their own world reflected in the books they are being given to read. Maine is an evolving community, so there really isn't the Maine book for young readers yet, but we keep looking for it.
|
4. and 5.
| © Maine Humanities Council,
2002, 2003 Please contact Donna Jones at West End Webs for questions or problems with the web site. |
