Sunday, January 24, 2016

Discovering our humanity

A few weeks ago I asked the students to tell me what humanities me. They told me it was the human "-itis". We settled on that meaning, "What it means to be human and live in the world with other humans." We talked about all the different ways humans conflict with each other, and we conflict with our world. I meant this to lead up to a discussion on how we treat people in our society that have disabilities and are physically different from us. However, the conversation took an interesting turn one day. We began to talk about things like, the Black Lives Matter movement, gender equity, economic inequality and religious persecution. I, delightfully, did not guide this conversation, but kept the language kind to all people and corrected gross misconceptions. I thought this was a good conversation that would springboard into my own agenda on people with disabilities. 

However, this week I polled the kids on what they got from humanities this semester, and most of them replied with some idea from our conversation on how we treat each other. It's not that they forgot our discussions on Deaf Culture, but they thought our discussions on what they called "the -isims" were more significant. They were particularly drawn to the issues of race inequality and the gender wage gap. I am blown away, but not surprised, by the level of understanding and compassion these students have for issues of injustice. My goal now is to give them tools so that they can effect change in their society and make it a better place. These kids inspire me everyday.
The gender wage gap as understood by one of the 4th graders.

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