One of the readings for this module was Martin's (1996) discussion on cultural wealth, and how teachers are tasked with providing this to youth (by way of material curation). This is in response to what I feel is like some neo-Renaissance shift from directly-applied skills (e.g. learning to farm and raise livestock) and on the pursuit of more conceptual academics. Martin (1996) recognizes in this list high culture to include art, literature, and philosophy, but also to include areas of science, history, psychology, and more. The idea is that those subjects which society values are given cultural stock, which then contributes to the idea of wealth. Then, of course, that which is seen as worthwhile and something to be attained is, by necessity, "high culture."
In other words, no, having memorized all three scripts of Rush Hour is not going to contribute to cultural wealth. When we discuss the idea of "high culture," it is hard not to speak of "low-brow." To speak of how the genre of comedy is often relegated to "low brow" and therefore unintellectual. Rush Hour will only support this thesis and is a bad example, but we can also think about more nuanced comedies can be intellectual, can offer political/ social commentaries in a way that is masked or subtle in its delivery.
But I digress.
I spoke in one of our discussion forums how Battiste (2013) suggests that the canonical texts we value as "high culture" often present and support Western ideologies and colonialist ideals. While not in an Indigenous context, I found a recent publication by Geoff Bender (2022) that examined how Chinoa Achebe's Things Fall Apart was taught as a diverse/ inclusive piece of literature: he found that its inclusion was largely tokenistic, and in fact supported an attitude of "white innocence" in the language with which the text was explored.
On the conversation of cultural wealth, I also found in an article by Borsheim-Black et. al (2014) that cultural wealth is still a point of consideration when selecting texts for classroom usage. Specifically, their article looked at how a framework of Critical Literature Pedagogy can curate lists of sources, and this idea of cultural wealth was implicit when they discussed one criteria of "canonicity."
All in all, I am convinced that cultural wealth, while an important concept for consideration, could sometimes act as a barrier for more novel, innovative redesign of curriculum.
Battiste, M. (2013). Chapter 5: Animating Ethical Trans-Systemic Education Systems. In Decolonizing education : nourishing the learning spirit (pp. 101–124). Purich Publishing Limited.
Bender, G. (2022). Things (Don’t Quite) Fall Apart: Exploring the Diversity Insertion in the Secondary ELA Canon. Changing English, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2022.2081131
Borsheim-Black, Macaluso, M., & Petrone, R. (2014). Critical Literature Pedagogy: Teaching canonical literature for critical literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(2), 123–133. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.323
Martin, J.R. (1996). There’s too much to teach: Cultural wealth in an age of scarcity. Educational Researcher, 25(2), 4–16
Hi Kaitlin, thank for providing your thoughts on cultural wealth. I too ready the Martin (1996) article and found it really interesting. In particular, your distinction of high culture is great. I would personally argue that if high culture is defined by societies value of something then Rush Hour is high culture. What can be more valuable (in a society that has been indoors for years) than a Jackie Chan movie? Lastly, thank you for your connection of culture wealth becoming a barrier to innovation. This idea resonated with me.
ReplyDeleteKaitlin, your post was interesting and thought-provoking. I did not read the article by Martin on cultural wealth. Still, I feel I share some of your ideas and relate them to a different course reading I did on the teaching of History (Obsourne, 2016). In it, the author was talking about how traditionally, important historical people with big heroic personalities were added to curriculum, along with any sort of positive nation-building event or period. The author argued that this focus on greatness created a disconnect between students, and history, as in "regular" people don't make history, so why should we participate in our nation's democratic processes? I found that his ideas paralleled the ones in Martin, in a way, even though different subjects and their specifics were examined. Indeed, I am in agreement about the fact that traditional ideas, although they served their purpose in the past, need to be critically evaluated from a modern perspective, so that curriculum reflects better the needs of students in 2022. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteOsborne. (2016). Teaching of history and democratic citizenship. In Case & P. Clark (Eds.), The anthology of social studies [Volume 2] : issues and strategies for secondary teachers (Updated edition., pp. 3–14). The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2).