Difference: an asset, not a liability.

Bizzell states that education needs an “overhaul…in response to multiculturalism.” Over time, the different voices, perspectives, cultures, etc that encompass our nation has changed the dynamics of our literature. We cannot ignore the struggles, the differences in culture, traditions, and genders, that occur within our society. With this in mind, we must create the “Contact Zone” where we confront the struggles and conflicts within our community. As Mary Louise Pratt states in “Art of the Contact Zone,” “groups need places for healing and mutual recognition, safe houses in which to construct shared understandings, knowledges, claims on the world that they can then bring into the contact zone” (6). Our classrooms provide the setting for these contact zones only if and when we create a curricula which addresses these crossroads. If we simply stick to the literature of the old canon, we are holding our students in a sort of standoff with themselves and society. Instead of progressing into the present nature of our society, we will be forcing an assimilation of language and culture on a society that has moved beyond this hegemony.

Unfortunately, the shift in education has not occurred, entirely; the curricula that dominates and dictates the nation needs to acknowledge the shift in styles and subject matters. The mutuality which exists within all of us needs to be brought out rather than ignored; what better way to do so than in English courses—through literature, discussion, and writing? What better way to teach respect and understanding than to confront the issues. As we know from our historical past, we cannot keep ignoring the issues, they won’t go away until we bring them into the contact zone and deal with them.