Quote:
Originally Posted by Table 5
I went to my youngest daughter's Christmas Concert a few days ago. It was all pretty safe and generic stuff (bells, snowmen, reindeer), but I was surprised they managed to get a Silent Night in. I'm sure they won't make that offensive mistake again.
My eldest daughter's school doesn't have a concert. They have a "winter solstice assembly" and for the students only. My daughter keeps making fun of it...I think even kids get how clinical schools have gotten.
We're already a fairly shallow country when it comes to shared heritage and culture, but I guess we're looking to get even more antiseptic. Personally I think if we're trying to be a multicultural society, then instead of trying to reduce everything to the bare inoffensive minimum, we should use holidays as a learning opportunity...teach children about Christmas, about Hanukkah, about Chinese New Year, about Diwali, etc. And instead of boilerplate land acknowledgments at ceremonies, how about using it as an opportunity to illuminate or share about indigenous traditions. You're not offending, you're teaching and enriching...that's the whole point of school.
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Yeah, the line between cultural appropriation and learning about a culture is so annoying defined at times that you basically can't do anything. If there was a way to enrich each other by mutual learning, I agree, I'm all for it.