Neutralizing the Uncanny through Culturally Relevant Teaching

Abstract

At the height of the Roman Empire's power, Marcus Aurelius, emperor and stoic philosopher, identified his positionality as neither Athenian nor Roman but rather as " a citizen of the universe. " For a man of his time, power and privilege to have been able to think beyond himself, in terms of the global rather than the local, suggests that he had benefited immensely from the guidance and wisdom of teachers, who through culturally relevant instruction imparted an awareness and holistic appreciation of the value of all of humankind. As one observes the multitude of current global conflicts, one questions why humanity has not been able to move beyond petty grievances to achieve the equitable global harmony and citizenship that Aurelius aspired to so long ago. Motivated by the purpose of improving academic, economic, and social equity, this exploratory essay examines historic and current North American pedagogical theories of culturally responsive teaching practices with the juxtapositional purpose of examining and evaluating the best method for minimizing Drs. Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud's theories on the uncanny and the uncanny valley-effect phenomena-the objective being the discovery of improved teaching praxis to minimize educational and social cognitive dissonance in refugee, immigrant, minority, and socioeconomically subordinate students both domestically and internationally. 319 " As seen from the outside, the massive upheaval in Western society is approaching the limit beyond which it will become 'meta-stable' and must collapse. " -Solzhenitsyn, The Camp of the Saints, 1973 Introduction The days of individual nation states choosing to exist in self-sufficient, privileged isolation are long since past. Over the past 24 months, the world has observed with respective mouths agape the mass migrations of desperate populations of peoples from Syria, Iraq, as well as North and Sub-Saharan Africa in numbers never before seen. Not since the end of World War II circa 1945, have populations of such diverse cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic origins been displaced in such numbers. As a direct result, modern technological societies are now tasked with trying to assimilate massive numbers of culturally, religiously, socio-linguistically, and economically diverse populations into their own highly entrenched hierarchical sociocultural and arguably hegemonic systems. To make matters more complicated, the ready availability of mass transportation and advanced technology facilitates these waves of migration and possibly even fosters and fuels the fires of continued diaspora of other Third World peoples, resulting in a steady flood of refugees and immigrants placing an unsustainable onus of receivership and good stewardship upon those countries and peoples whose borders are now being breached by the " tired, poor and huddled masses that are yearning to breathe free " (Lazarus, 1883).