Biased or Not?

I think there are always biases in accounts of any type: newspapers, news shows, personal accounts, books, oral histories. This is a part of being human and attaching our own levels of meaning to things. If we did not have biases, then we would be machines. However, this doesn’t mean that all biases are bad. We all have biases, based on our personal experiences, just as anyone who has ever lived has had biases. What this means for us as teachers is that we have to expose our students, and ourselves, to different sources (both primary and secondary) from all sides. I like the saying “there are three sides to every argument” (modifying the older “two sides”). I believe this is true, and sometimes that third side is the passage of time. It is important to be able to see and respect all sides of a situation and to teach our students that.

I think it will be great to have a student who comes from a different country because they can share their biases with us. It will be a first hand experience for the students to see bias in action. If this student arrived from another country recently, they could share the opinion of Americans prevalent in their country. We would compare that to our own opinions of our country: good and bad. I think it also helps students truly understand something when they have to explain it to someone else. Our native English speaking students can work to explain some of our cultural “biases” to our ELL students. This will help clarify their own understanding of these biases and form their own opinions of the legitimacy of different points of view.