Oh, here's another one, about Jamela's Dress...

[conuly]

The genre of this book is multi-cultural. This book is also fictional. The art in this book is illustrations. The content in this story is that a young girl messes up some valuable material by not being careful, but in the end the girl does not get in trouble. The reading level for this book would be third grade. There are also no curricular connections present in this story.

1. "Multi-cultural" is not a genre.

2. This book was written by a black South African, about a young black girl in, presumably, South Africa. How is that "multi-cultural"? I'd ask, but I'm terrified the answer, deep down, is that if it doesn't involve white kids in the US, it's "multi-cultural".

3. No curricular connections? Seriously? This person can't think of any way to extend the book into a lesson?

Whoever assigned this project for their students has some slackers or twits... not sure which.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think the definition of multi-cultural is much simpler than that, if it is a culture other than mine then it is multi-cultural. This has the benefit of having a book about White Amish kids in the US be multi-cultural. It can also be multi-cultural if the kids are just from a different state or from a minority religion that isn't mine. After all, my culture is a given. Any other culture means another culture.

It does, however, make it hard for other people who do not know the specifics of my culture to determine whether or not a book is multi-cultural. But I feel that this is a challenge others just must learn to deal with.

[conuly]

Sometimes it's hard to tell if things are sarcastic or not.

[leora.livejournal.com]

True. It was meant as a somewhat sarcastic write-up of what I think the actual underlying thought process of the person you mentioned is. I used my "This is not a pipe" userpic to help clue people in that my comment might not be exactly what it seems.

[conuly]

I figured, but it took me a few minutes to be sure!

[leora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was actually worried that came across as too deadpan and serious, even though the last paragraph is pretty clearly ridiculous and basically states that my viewpoint is the only real one and that everyone else in the world needs to learn my viewpoint so they can learn how to properly interpret the world, which for some reason I've been told isn't true.

Communication is hard! I mean that seriously, even if I say it in a Barbiesque way and toss my head from shoulder to shoulder as I do. And my tone and intent is often misunderstood. But *shrugs* what is one to do? I don't wish to stop all attempts to communicate, so I live with a certain failure rate built in. Mainly, I try to hang out with the people willing to discuss the failures so they can be understood and then not be too much of a problem. Or I just curl up with a book and then have a nap. A bit of each, really.

[pne.livejournal.com]

And everybody except for me has an accent!