Expanding the Circle

This article reminds me a lot of our group's big issue with Native American literature. Essentially, it seems that a vast majority of canonized and taught texts are from a very narrow ethic background. Just as there seems to be very few Native American texts that are taught in school, Romero also points out that there is a distinct lack of Hispanic lit being used in today's classrooms.

This is something that should not be tolerated. I have no problem in teaching classic literature, but I feel that it is essential that the texts that we have students read should be far more ethnically diverse. Without such diversity, there is a lot of room for close-mindedness and not as many viewpoints to lend themselves to all that our students will face in life. We, as teachers, are tasked with making our students "citizens of the world" as Randy pointed out in class. To do so, we really need to consider what that entails. I personally don't see how a person consider themselves as learned if they aren't even getting exposed to a vast number of perspectives.

As English teachers, we all believe that literature is a gateway to teaching our students about the broad world of experiences and possibilities that exist on each new page. Wouldn't we be shorting them if we only chose to give them a glimpse instead of a deep and critical look?