Chapter 6: Christensen

I think it is important to focus on the History that the American Educational system rather not talk about. I think that assignments like these help to get "the truth" out so that later on when those kids grow up they can try and make change in the educational system. These kinds of projects are what made black history month possible because it use to be just a week. I like the idea of the the project but my only critique is that it got a little out of hand. Students wanted more time then Christensen had after she pushed them into looking deeper into the projects and then she could hardly give everyone a fair amount of time to present their findings equally!

Another thing now that I think about is that people always say that African Americans complain about the past too much and we get too much recognition about our struggles, but we really don't. And the things that we do have we faught for and are still fighting for. I know sometimes hearing about M.L.K. and Malcolm X gets old but they were powerful figures who died for rights that all of us take for granted, but I digress. My point is that I would have probably included all of the different races and backgrounds and assigned them at random so that everyone learns something about someone else's background then the research really would have been more meaningful and less based on personal experience in which Christensen kept having conflict with.

Overall I think that discovering other immigrants struggles and prejudices is a great thing to focus on. I can remember in high school in my English course we read and study the novel "Night" about the Jewish concentration camp experience from a child's point of view. That book opened up a new world for most if not all of us there really was no other nationality at my high school besides African and African American, so we all were shock about the brutality that our history books left out of Germany's brutal doings to the Jewish population. These kinds of projects and readings are eye openers that help students realize how much a change in this world is needed.