Normalized Exclusion

I was talking with a friend of mine who is an elementary teacher from southern Saskatchewan. One of her favourite things to do is put together and organize fun, celebratory days focused around holidays and birthdays.  When I think about my own time in school, I have to admit that I also consider those class parties some of the best memories I have as a child. But as she went on I started to feel a little bit sad.  She shared how she had a couple of students in her class that had to remove themselves from each celebration because their religions forbade them taking part.

To be clear, I wasn't sad because I thought it was unfair that the students had to sit out in the hall or miss an entire day of school because of an unfair set of religious guidelines and expectations.  Quite the opposite-I was sad because of how normal my friend thought the whole situation was.  What ensued was a lengthy conversation about why she decided to go through with it all in the end even though some students could not be included.  

I was surprised to find she didn't really bat an eye at the fact that these students were being excluded.  Actually she didn't even really consider looking at the situation in that way at all. One of the first statements she made was that she figured the rest of her students shouldn't miss out because only a couple of them weren't allowed to take part. 

I have to admit I don't understand that argument. I always thought that a big part of teaching was focusing on those pieces of the world that were not represented in the dominant culture. But when we selectively exclude students based in any number of things, including religion, we are not only reinforcing the dominant culture, but we are telling our students that some voices are more important than others; that some ways of life are "normal" and "acceptable" and some are not. 

How can we teach empathy when we deliberately exclude? How can we teach compassion or equity, or kindness when we establish hierarchies in the classroom? 

These are hard questions and require a lot of self-reflection, and can even cause feelings of anger, frustration and resentment. I feel like some days I do a pretty bang up job when it comes to inclusion. Most days I have that nagging feeling that I am just not doing enough.  Plus I always find it harder to reflect on what I'm not including and WHY I'm not including it, than reflecting on what I've included and ways I can improve. 

At the end of our conversation, we politely agreed to disagree, and moved on to talking about when we would catch up the next time she was home for a visit.  Even though we've been friends for years, I can't help feel like the conversation has changed our relationship in a very profound way.  I never meant to make her feel bad or like she had to defend herself to me, but I definitely wanted to shed a different light on the situaion. I hoped she could understand a different point of view, if not agree with it.