FIAE Chapter 3

The beginning of this chapter where they talked about biases was very important and meaningful to me. In high school, before a debate, one of my American studies teachers held up a black book above his head. He then asked the class sitting in front of him what color the book was. Everyone in the class said black, and my teacher shook his head. He asked them again what color it was, and everyone said a little louder, Black!! He then said to the class that the book was not black it was actually red. Thinking he was crazy, we all told him again that no, the book was BLACK. After a few minutes of being told he was wrong because of his opinion of the red book, he turned the book to show us the back cover that had been facing our teacher, and it was indeed red. He told us not to be so quick to discount other people’s opinions before we get a look of what their perspective might be.

That has always stayed in my memory and has been an important story to me because some of my classmates were yelling, actually yelling at him telling him he was wrong. It wasn’t right of them to force the opinion of black onto my teacher, because for my teacher it really did look like the book was red and not black. I believe that this is important to remember in the classroom because everyone may have differing opinions, and may have different background information, and different angles on the situation. It is important to consider everyone, and have differentiated opinions being heard in the classroom, not just differentiated lessons.