Countering stereotypes

[Guest guest]

COUNTERING STEREOTYPES

by Julie Patel.

 

May 30, 2005: Imagine a religion where a goddess is chief of all the

elves that wander the Earth and where people play in cow dung and

urine during holy festivals.

 

These are some of the glaring errors and misconceptions about

Hinduism that Mona Vijaykar, a Saratoga mom, has spotted in state-

approved textbooks, literature and other teaching materials at her

son's school and elsewhere. Over the years, Vijaykar more often has

seen subtle mistakes because teachers are unfamiliar with prominent

Indian religions such as Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism.

 

Vijaykar has tried tackling the problem in a grass-roots way: by

contacting teachers and asking to speak to their classes about India

and Hinduism, explaining the significance of ancient Indian

languages or the origin of religious customs.

 

Take the bindi, the decorative mark some Hindus wear on their

foreheads.

 

" Does anybody know what this mark, a bindi, means? " Vijaykar,

pointing to a tiny leaf-shaped dot on her forehead, asked a class of

fifth- and sixth-graders during a recent visit to North Star Academy

in Redwood City.

 

Life? Hope? Happiness? Love? the students guessed.

 

" I think it's if a girl is married or not, " offered sixth-grader

Laura McVey.

 

" Yes, that's true in some places, " Vijaykar said, adding that bindis

also symbolize the figurative " third eye " or the " mind's eye " that

helps people understand something -- not just see it. She said

bindis in ancient India originated from the practice of people

putting sandalwood paste on their foreheads to cool off.

 

One thing bindis don't symbolize is the caste system. But a popular

social studies textbook approved for classrooms across the state

teaches students that misconception.

 

" Caste is often shown with a mark on the forehead, " reads a caption

in McGraw-Hill's " Ancient World: Adventures in Time and Place " under

a photograph of a girl with a bindi.

 

" That's completely wrong, " said Kishore Sharma, a priest at

Sunnyvale Hindu Temple, who received a doctorate in Sanskrit at

India's Banaras Hindu University.

 

" It's a cyclical problem, " Sharma said of the difficulty of teaching

about world religions. " A teacher learns the wrong thing and

reinforces the misconception without even realizing it. "

 

LACK OF RESOURCES

 

Vijaykar said many of the teachers she's spoken with complain about

the lack of resources on world religions and are hungry for

information. She recalls a teacher at her son's former school,

Redwood Middle School in Saratoga, who invited Vijaykar to class

several years ago to add to her lesson on India and world religions.

Vijaykar remembers being outraged by a handout on various forms of

the Hindu god.

 

The handout -- produced by Teacher Created Materials, an education

publishing company in Westminster -- listed Parvati as a goddess who

is " chief of all of the elves " that roam the Earth. Company

officials didn't return requests for interviews.

 

" They might as well be talking about fairies in a fairy tale, "

Vijaykar said. " It makes the religion sound silly and stupid. And

it's plain wrong. "

 

Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at

Harvard University, had a similar reaction: " Elves? That's just

false. That's ridiculous. "

 

Eck runs Harvard's Pluralism Project, which develops curricula about

world religions with the goal of promoting awareness about religious

diversity in the United States.

 

" Teachers who may not have a lot of training in religions of the

world -- including those like Hinduism that are extremely complex

and multidimensional -- should not be the only voice representing it

in the classroom, " Eck said. " After all, the traditions they're

teaching are not only practiced by people who live on the other side

of the world but by people who live on the other side of the street. "

 

One book that has launched Vijaykar into heated discussions --

mostly with teachers -- is " Homeless Bird, " by Gloria Whelan, which

won a National Book Award in 2000. It is one of five books related

to Indian culture out of 606 novels the state Department of

Education recommends for middle-schoolers. Not one of the five books

is written by an Indian or Indo-American.

 

URINE AND DUNG?

 

Vijaykar's biggest concern is a scene describing Indians at a

religious festival playing with colors made of urine and cow dung.

 

" It's disgusting, " ' she said, raising her voice. " How do you think

the Indian students in the room feel when they read this book? They

know it's wrong but how can they challenge a book with such

authority? "

 

Whelan defended her research in an e-mail to the Mercury News,

noting that she didn't try to represent the entire spectrum of

India's diverse culture. " All I have written is all too true in

small villages, " she wrote.

 

But Vijaykar said the book reinforces stereotypes: a girl forced

into an arranged marriage at 13 and required by her in-laws to work

like a slave.

 

Vijaykar said the book's references to the caste system and widow-

burning are important to discuss but they shouldn't be readers'

first and only exposure to the culture.

 

" It makes you think the caste system and arranged marriages are all

this rich ancient culture has accomplished throughout the

centuries, " she said.

 

Vijaykar said she hopes students and teachers of all faiths and

cultural backgrounds act as watchdogs in classrooms.

 

" We're all experts in our own cultures and religions, " she

said, " and if it's misrepresented, we have to say something. "

 

SOURCE: San Jose [California] Mercury News. COUNTERING STEREOTYPES

by Julie Patel.

 

URL:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/californ

ia/peninsula/11773251.htm