Understanding Ourselves: Art and Diversity in the Classroom
Since the beginning of time humans have struggled to understand themselves through experimental expression in song, dance, poetry, music and art. When the cavemen painted a bison hunt on the walls of their Grotto in Lascaux, France centuries ago they were laboring to express their connection to nature and others (Campbell 68). Painting on cavewalls appears to have offered them a sense of having mastered their world while simultaneously allaying their fears. Elementary school children enrolled in art classes today fulfill this same ancestral need to subdue their anxieties even as they develop their own sense of mastery. Jungian psychologists assert that allowing children to create yields them an enriched sense of control. Contemporary multicultural classrooms composed of children from divergent backgrounds benefit from an art curriculum which focuses on ethnic and cultural difference, exploring the diversity of values uncovered there rather than ignoring them.
In Raising the Rainbow Generation the Hopsons record the narrative of Gary and Seth in "The Media and the Message." While unsupervised these two children watch an action film plotted with a stereotypical storyline and characters. When a minor Hispanic character appears on screen, Gary dutifully tells Seth "he's a spic. That means in this movie he's either a pimp, a drug dealer or he's going to whack off somebody's head with a machete" (Hopson 92). The authors suggest that Gary's observation does not necessarily reveal his own personal prejudices. Repeatedly observing stereotypes routinely used in films Gary has learned to master their language. The Hopsons suggest that the negative racial stereotyping which continually assaults America's youth must be offset not only in the family but in the classroom (Hopson 105).
Embedded in art and the media is the power to create and sustain identity. T...