Blog 8: Single Story

How has your upbringing/schooling shaped how you “read the world?” What biases and lenses do you bring to the classroom? How might we unlearn / work against these biases?

Learning how I read the world from a non-Western country is very different from learning how I read the world from a Western country. During my elementary years in the Philippines, the curriculum that we follow is based on a traditional perspective. In one of the schools that I went to, I was told to speak English during an English class in the classroom and if we are to speak in our native language, we have to pay a penalty to the teacher. This made me think that the English language is more important than our own native language. This made me question why we have to speak in English if we live in a non-Western country. Looking at it now, the idea of putting importance to the English language makes me look down on my own native language and culture. This idea has shaped me to centralize Western idea rather than valuing my own traditional learning. To work against these biases, the teacher should have let the students speak whatever language they are comfortable at speaking and not put pressure to the students that can’t or have difficulty speaking in English. 

Which “single stories” were present in your own schooling? Whose truth mattered?

During my high school years in Canada, I was often told stories from an Indigenous perspective and how it is perceived that the Aboriginal community is seen as poor and pitiful. This idea makes the student believe that the Indigenous community are those type of people and believe in the stereotypical story of the community.