velvetpage | An observation (Reply)

I've just been reading the short stories written by my students. The assignment was for a realistic story, with characters similar to themselves experiencing everyday problems.

Now, my class is quite diverse. Out of 24 students, 14 speak a language other than English at home. Of those, three are white (Eastern European) and the rest are mostly from the Indian sub-continent. Five are Muslim, one is a Coptic Christian, the rest are Hindu or Orthodox Christian.

So it was with some surprise that I noted that all of their stories, without exception, used Anglophone names. There was a full complement of Melissas, Jessicas, Amandas, two different Sams, two Maxes, and a few slightly less-common ones. But not a single name in the bunch that seemed to come from their cultures. Not a single reference to cultural food or religion or clothing that wasn't North American. To read the stories, you'd think my class was white-bread middle class from the Prairies.

I find this rather disturbing. We've read more than one story from their cultures, we regularly discuss how each culture in the room has something special to bring to the table, I make opportunities to discuss the things that each culture has in common with the others and the things that set it apart, and yet when it comes to a story that was supposed to relate to their own lives, I get nothing so much as classic examples of acculturation.

I'm not sure what to do about it, though. A classroom is a place where children are enculturated, and if their culture is not the dominant one, some acculturation is almost unavoidable. That said, I want them to feel that their culture is valuable and valid in my classroom, and that a story that involves their experiences as minority cultures in Canada is not only acceptable, but perhaps preferable in this situation because it's closer to their experience. I wouldn't expect all of them to write that way, but I would have expected a few of them to do so.

I'm going to post this to