ruminations whilst trapped at work
Nov. 25th, 2006 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rktthis thanksgiving weekend seems to have brought into the light a bit of "we must save the childrens from the meanness of the truth".
maybe this is further proof i'm just not meant to have baybeez ever .... but in this case, i seriously doubt it.
exhibition A for the case of hiding the truth is the story of bill morgan, a teacher who dared tell his students native americans and pilgrims weren't actually BFF. oh. the horror. (note:discussion's on yahoo news stories tend to make me long for eljay comms).
exhibition B is "but what will we tell our children", most recently about this youtube video /Darfur PSA. apparently, it was aired during the macy's parade and now we've got a bunch of angry parents out there.
www.savedarfur.org,
the logic seems to be: um, see, because children don't need to know not everyone has an easy going life. and, anyway, it's just too hard explaining these things to kids, so let me not have to do it in the first place. it's my right to shield (sic) my child from reality!!1!
how the hell is the truth not "age appropriate"? someone, i need a picture drawn for me here.
i want to say that i don't know why parents would want their kids to live in a fantasyland, but i'm willing to bet it has more to do with the parents' desires to stay in that world of la-la-la than actually "protecting" their kids from jackshit.
here's the deal, allowing children to be spoonfed that whitey is great, doesn't do anything truly productive for anybody.
[pinko alert]furthermore, if, in order to unlawfully imprison folks in guantamo or go to war in some other country, the president had to make his case not to congress, not to college grads or just anyone over the age 18,but to every child, and had to give them the "bloody gory details", where would the US be at today? what if roosevelt had to do the same thing before dropping bombs on japan? [/alert] ok. let me stop. because there still isn't a 100% gurantee of the effectiveness. pictures from this country even in the 20th century tell me that much.
Teachers emphasize the Indians' side
By ANA BEATRIZ CHOLO, Associated Press Writer Tue Nov 21, 9:49 PM ET
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them. The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.
Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.
He has replaced it with a more realistic look at the complex relationship between Indians and white settlers.
Morgan said he still wants his pupils at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving. But "what I am trying to portray is a different point of view."
Others see Morgan and teachers like him as too extreme.
"I think that is very sad," said Janice Shaw Crouse, a former college dean and public high school teacher and now a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization. "He is teaching his students to hate their country. That is a very distorted view of history, a distorted view of Thanksgiving."
Even American Indians are divided on how to approach a holiday that some believe symbolizes the start of a hostile takeover of their lands.
Chuck Narcho, a member of the Maricopa and Tohono O'odham tribes who works as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, said younger children should not be burdened with all the gory details of American history.
"If you are going to teach, you need to keep it positive," he said. "They can learn about the truths when they grow up. Caring, sharing and giving — that is what was originally intended."
Adam McMullin, a member of the Seminole tribe of Oklahoma and a spokesman for the National Congress of American Indians, said schoolchildren should get an accurate historical account.
"You can't just throw an Indian costume on a child," he said. "That stuff is not taken lightly. That's where educators need to be very careful."
Becky Wyatt, a teacher at Kettering Elementary School in Long Beach, decided to alter the costumes for the annual Thanksgiving play a few years ago after local Indians spoke out against students wearing feathers, which are sacred in their culture. Now children wear simple headbands.
"We have many mixed cultures in Long Beach, so we try to be sensitive," Wyatt said. "What you teach little children is important."
Laverne Villalobos, a member of the Omaha tribe in Nebraska who now lives in the coastal town of Pacifica near San Francisco, considers Thanksgiving a day of mourning.
She went before the school board last week and asked for a ban on Thanksgiving re-enactments and students dressing up as Indians. She also complained about November's lunch menu that pictured a caricature of an Indian boy.
The mother of four said the traditional Thanksgiving celebrations in schools instill "a false sense of what really happened before and after the feast. It wasn't all warm and fuzzy."
After she complained, it was decided that pupils at her children's school will not wear Indian costumes this year.
James Loewen, a former history professor at the University of Vermont and author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong," said that during the first Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag Indians and the pilgrims had been living in relative peace, even though the tribe suspected the settlers of robbing Indian graves to steal food buried with the dead.
"Relations were strained, but yet the holiday worked. Folks got along. After that, bad things happened," Loewen said, referring to the bloody warfare that broke out later during the 17th century.
Morgan, a teacher for more than 35 years, said that after conducting his own research, he changed his approach to teaching about Thanksgiving. He tells teachers at his school this is a good way to nurture critical thinking, but he acknowledged not all are receptive: "It's kind of an uphill struggle."
maybe this is further proof i'm just not meant to have baybeez ever .... but in this case, i seriously doubt it.
exhibition A for the case of hiding the truth is the story of bill morgan, a teacher who dared tell his students native americans and pilgrims weren't actually BFF. oh. the horror. (note:discussion's on yahoo news stories tend to make me long for eljay comms).
exhibition B is "but what will we tell our children", most recently about this youtube video /Darfur PSA. apparently, it was aired during the macy's parade and now we've got a bunch of angry parents out there.
www.savedarfur.org,
the logic seems to be: um, see, because children don't need to know not everyone has an easy going life. and, anyway, it's just too hard explaining these things to kids, so let me not have to do it in the first place. it's my right to shield (sic) my child from reality!!1!
how the hell is the truth not "age appropriate"? someone, i need a picture drawn for me here.
i want to say that i don't know why parents would want their kids to live in a fantasyland, but i'm willing to bet it has more to do with the parents' desires to stay in that world of la-la-la than actually "protecting" their kids from jackshit.
here's the deal, allowing children to be spoonfed that whitey is great, doesn't do anything truly productive for anybody.
[pinko alert]furthermore, if, in order to unlawfully imprison folks in guantamo or go to war in some other country, the president had to make his case not to congress, not to college grads or just anyone over the age 18,but to every child, and had to give them the "bloody gory details", where would the US be at today? what if roosevelt had to do the same thing before dropping bombs on japan? [/alert] ok. let me stop. because there still isn't a 100% gurantee of the effectiveness. pictures from this country even in the 20th century tell me that much.
Teachers emphasize the Indians' side
By ANA BEATRIZ CHOLO, Associated Press Writer Tue Nov 21, 9:49 PM ET
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them. The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.
Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.
He has replaced it with a more realistic look at the complex relationship between Indians and white settlers.
Morgan said he still wants his pupils at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving. But "what I am trying to portray is a different point of view."
Others see Morgan and teachers like him as too extreme.
"I think that is very sad," said Janice Shaw Crouse, a former college dean and public high school teacher and now a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization. "He is teaching his students to hate their country. That is a very distorted view of history, a distorted view of Thanksgiving."
Even American Indians are divided on how to approach a holiday that some believe symbolizes the start of a hostile takeover of their lands.
Chuck Narcho, a member of the Maricopa and Tohono O'odham tribes who works as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, said younger children should not be burdened with all the gory details of American history.
"If you are going to teach, you need to keep it positive," he said. "They can learn about the truths when they grow up. Caring, sharing and giving — that is what was originally intended."
Adam McMullin, a member of the Seminole tribe of Oklahoma and a spokesman for the National Congress of American Indians, said schoolchildren should get an accurate historical account.
"You can't just throw an Indian costume on a child," he said. "That stuff is not taken lightly. That's where educators need to be very careful."
Becky Wyatt, a teacher at Kettering Elementary School in Long Beach, decided to alter the costumes for the annual Thanksgiving play a few years ago after local Indians spoke out against students wearing feathers, which are sacred in their culture. Now children wear simple headbands.
"We have many mixed cultures in Long Beach, so we try to be sensitive," Wyatt said. "What you teach little children is important."
Laverne Villalobos, a member of the Omaha tribe in Nebraska who now lives in the coastal town of Pacifica near San Francisco, considers Thanksgiving a day of mourning.
She went before the school board last week and asked for a ban on Thanksgiving re-enactments and students dressing up as Indians. She also complained about November's lunch menu that pictured a caricature of an Indian boy.
The mother of four said the traditional Thanksgiving celebrations in schools instill "a false sense of what really happened before and after the feast. It wasn't all warm and fuzzy."
After she complained, it was decided that pupils at her children's school will not wear Indian costumes this year.
James Loewen, a former history professor at the University of Vermont and author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong," said that during the first Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag Indians and the pilgrims had been living in relative peace, even though the tribe suspected the settlers of robbing Indian graves to steal food buried with the dead.
"Relations were strained, but yet the holiday worked. Folks got along. After that, bad things happened," Loewen said, referring to the bloody warfare that broke out later during the 17th century.
Morgan, a teacher for more than 35 years, said that after conducting his own research, he changed his approach to teaching about Thanksgiving. He tells teachers at his school this is a good way to nurture critical thinking, but he acknowledged not all are receptive: "It's kind of an uphill struggle."
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-26 03:17 am (UTC)And now, well, who else can they blame for when their kids rebel against them for lying to them for years?
Oh right, Video games, music, TV and books. The same as the previous generation, and the generation before that.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-27 08:09 pm (UTC)i dont know how many generations can blame video games. but books? burn em.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-26 07:51 pm (UTC)I lived on Guam when, just before my 12th birthday, the US started bombing Vietnam with B-52s based there. Unlike most American kids, I got to see 30 bomb-laden B-52s take off at 30 second intervals, got to see the trucks upon trucks driving bombs past my school, every day, and got to think about where all those bombs were going. The knowledge of even that small part of what was happening had a profound effect on my world view and politics - and no amount of propaganda to which I was later subjected had any of its intended effect.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-27 08:07 pm (UTC)damn those bomber planes foiling all the would-be brainwashing!
no subject
Date: 2006-11-28 07:46 pm (UTC)