Lucas Penrod
Airika Mann
Alyssa Schmidt
ED446D – Gatimu
May 11, 2012
An Analysis of the Road to Cultural Bias by Bill Bigelow
Used by many teachers, the Oregon Trail Game is primarily geared towards
teaching students about the Oregon Trail. The CD-ROM game gives students an
opportunity to explore the Oregon Trail in a hands-on interactive way that is fun for the
student. However, Bill Bigelow, in the chapter “On the Road to Culture Bias,” disagrees
with some of the ways that the game makers portray the historical view of the Oregon
Trail and explains how they fail to depict the true history behind it.
The first problem that Bigelow seems to have with the game is the way students
may not be able to critically assess what they are learning as they play along with the
game. He thinks it is the responsibility of the teachers to make sure their students are
able to critically assess the information to get the most out of the game. Bigelow states,
“The CD-ROMs are programmed by people – people with particular culture biases –
and children who play the computer games encounter the biases of the programmers.”
(Bigelow 46) Bigelow seems to make the connection that culturally responsive teaching
is essential to create or develop critical computer literacy skills within our students and
classrooms. That being said Bigelow wrote this paper over ten years ago and since
then students have become far more computer literate as a whole, therefore they are
more able to critically asses the material. This paper is an analysis of Bigelow’s
analysis of the Oregon Trail games. It will contain a brief summary of his paper, and go
over the pedagogical inferences that can be derived from his work, as well as how the
author explains the significant impact that might come from omitting culturally
responsive content.
Bill Bigelow starts his article with explaining how widely accepted the Oregon
Trail game has become. It was even revered as the “best history simulation we’ve seen
to date,” by an editor of Children’s Software Review Newsletter. While many people
saw this game to do a great job depicting the history of the people who made this great
journey, Bigelow saw the numerous historical omissions to lead students to perceive
information that might not be historically accurate. The three main omissions he speaks
of were the histories of the women, African Americans, and Native Americans that were
affected by the wagon trains.
Bill Bigelow believes that the women of the Oregon Trail were not even remotely
accurately portrayed in the computer games. Not only were players forced to play as
the patriarch of the family (presumably white) but the women of the game were merely
along for the ride. Preserving the community, family and home were the real life duties
of the women who made this 2,000 mile trek. Doing so under the stressful conditions
that a nomadic life entails is not easy. Bigelow gives a great example of how even
women’s accomplishments were over looked. The real life story of a woman who
constructed an American flag out of scraps of cloth with the help of several other
women in order to celebrate the fourth of July is a far cry from the hollering and
gunshots the game portrays.
The author also feels that African Americans were grossly misrepresented in the
two games, or almost even simply omitted. In the game, Bigelow does say that there
are some black silhouettes to interact with, but their stories are not historically accurate
and seem benign compared to the real stories from blacks living in slave states. A
specific example from the article was Bigelow had a conversation in the game with a
African American woman. In this interchange, the woman said she was traveling with a
family and their people, and it was her job to keep after the cows and watch the children.
(Bigelow 48) This does not answer many questions about this person’s identity, was she
a slave? Is the family she travels with white? Not much more information could be found
out by diving further into conversation with her. Bigelow also states that the word
slavery never appears in the game. (Bigelow 48) At the end of the game, if the player is
to make it to the Oregon Country, they would be rewarded with a plot of land and in the
future possibly establish a small business for supporting the family. This indicates that
the player almost had to have been playing a white male, it would have been very
unlikely that a black person would have been given any land or been allowed to start a
business. (Bigelow 49)
Finally, the fact that Oregon ‘Trailers’ were moving through thousands of miles of
inhabited territory is another large historical omission of truth. The Native American
peoples that were encountered along the way in the game were clearly not happy with
the players moving across their land, but the group’s attitudes towards one another
were not accurately portrayed. The people making the trek over hunted native game,
destroyed the landscape with their wagons and oxen, and brought new illnesses and
new violence to the native peoples. In the game these historical facts were simply
omitted.
There is much to be learned from how Bill Bigelow’s analysis of the game. It is
apparent that when some people’s history is left out of instruction, a full view of history
is not easily accessible to the students playing the game. According to Gloria Billings,
culturally relevant teaching is teaching culturally relevant conceptions of self and others,
conceptions of classroom and social relations, and conceptions of knowledge. (Billings
317)
Culturally responsive teaching includes conception of self and others by
recognizing each group. This can be done by using a resource of knowledge, know
students and groups in program presented, how they interact, and be able to see from
different perspectives. Culturally perspective teaching also includes conceptions of
classroom social relation. Incorporating this can be done by fostering discussions about
different social groups and their experiences by, role playing, having guest speakers,
and reading personal stories as a class. Regarding the Oregon Trail game teachers
can make it more of a group activity rather than an individual activity, by encouraging
class and group discussions to analyze the material. Lastly, culturally responsive
teaching includes conceptions of knowledge. For example, knowledge about the
Oregon Trail is not limited to the Oregon Trail CD-ROM game, there are many things
students can learn from different people’s perspectives that will encourage critical
thinking and expand knowledge of a subject. Conceptions of knowledge will also
critically examine the instruction and viewpoints or perspectives within the text.
Although Bigelow did not distinctly use culturally relevant teaching to describe and
analyze the game, he does agree that omitting certain cultures can be harmful to a
student’s full understanding of the truths of a subject.
Bill Bigelow says “We need to figure out ways to equip students to recognize and
evaluate the deep moral and political messages imparted as they maneuver within
various computer software programs.” (Bigelow 54) Instead of simply thinking only
among computer games, ‘we’ need to figure out ways to accomplish this same thing
across all instruction. Teachers need to teach their students the abilities to be able to
critique any form of instruction and be aware of its political or cultural biases. Students
should be taught to ask questions such as, what knowledge is highlighted and what
knowledge is hidden? Also, who is giving the information and what biases might they
have? For example the biases the programmers of the Oregon Trail games might have.
Students should be provided with classroom activities that encourage culturally
responsive ideals. Some questions that might accomplish this are which social groups
are or are not identified within the material? Or, can we identify ideological orientation of
a particular text?
Using Gloria Billings culturally relevant teaching as a guide to analyze Bill
Bigelow’s critique, helps give a new perspective on how even highly regarded
instruction can be improved. The Oregon Trail games depict a single history, that of a
white male making the trip to the Oregon Country. The omittance of women’s, African
American’s, and Native American’s histories in the games, speaks volumes to the
programmer’s cultural and political biases. When students are not equipped to
thoroughly analyze instruction, they will not have a true and full understanding of a text.
There are many things teachers can do to make sure students get a full understanding
of the truths of history by being taught how to critically assess material. Thus, teachers
need to equip students with the ability to evaluate and recognize the possibly hidden or
omitted messages within instruction.
References
Bigelow, Bill (1997). On the Road to Cultural Bias. Rethinking Our Classrooms, 2, 45-56.
Billings, G. L. (1992) Reading Between the Lings and Beyond the Pages: A Culturally Relevent
Approach to Literacy Teaching. Theory Into Practice, 31 #4, 312-320.