Written by good people like Meadows, who would never consider themselves racist, and would be highly offended if someone called them that…
Unlike the example with Northam’s wife and cotton, here students are being asked to personally identify with the bad guys. I think that is a problem, and the broader sense of the project even more so. (Imagine that you are an Inquisitioner. What is the best way to crush the thumbs of your victims? Is it better to rape them before they get tortured, and get all yucky, or afterwards, when they are more compliant? Discuss among yourselves and document your reasoning. Extra points if your approach takes advantage of tools and materials already on hand, and avoids a lot of new expenditures.)
There might be a corner of academia where studying the thought processes and learned behaviors of slaveowners is appropriate and worthwhile, where something might legitimately be gained from such study. It’s way, way outside of freakin’ middle school.
Perhaps middle school is too young for the assignment. But the assignment coupled with one to imagine being a slave can really get on to wrestle with what these are about rather than just settle for a facile reaction
Maybe this is Tennessee’s version of getting your students to think outside the box. Maybe you could jump a couple centuries forward to look more at the present.
Would it be OK to have an assignment in which students imagined what it would be like to be slaves? If so–and I suspect that most out here would say that such an assignment would be fine–then would it be acceptable to flip and tell students that, having imagined what it would be like to be a slave, they should then put themselves in the place of slave owners and imagine how they would view the world? If that would be acceptable, does it make a difference whether the imagining as a slave owner comes before or after the imagining as a slave?
Or do we have to play it safe and keep students from putting themselves in the place of either slaves or slave owners?
Why? Because the kids aren’t smart enough? Because they don’t know enough? I gather that this was a thought exercise, not meant to get the students to recap large amounts of data. If that is so, only the most basic knowledge should be necessary for the exercise to be valuable.
Wow. It’s like the Denny’s Placemat of Cultural Resentment Indoctrination.
Hazardous living in “urban areas”? Cartoons depicting immigrant labor? WTF?
For your next assignment, children, I’d like you to imagine you own a summer camp for little boys you like to molest in the woods down by the pond…
I don’t think “Your family owns slaves. Create a list of expectations for your family’s slaves.” quite establishes the context that might be useful. (I am assuming that the page shown in the image is the actual assignment.) A context that might be somewhat useful is, after presenting the perspective of slaves, one asks students to think of someone like Jefferson, who was, at least in his words, personally opposed to slavery and yet selfishly compromised his principles and kept slaves because he knew that it was the only way to maintain his lifestyle. (That bad thinking might also be extended as to why the South was so determined to keep the institution, but I fear that it also requires the students to internalize 18th and 19th century attitudes towards blacks. All of this, I think, can be better achieved simply by a lecture, and requires no personal exercise. )
I think the key thing here is that the assignment isn’t to look at the motivations of people who do evil things, but rather to put yourself in their shoes and dream up what evil things you could do.
Have to admit, the first thing that crossed my mind when I read this was that it was akin to asking people to imagine themselves as a Concentration Camp guard and think of how they would murder people.
There’s a role, certainly, for looking at the motivations and mindset of people who engage in atrocities, and learning how otherwise “normal” people get caught up in and engage in evil.
But “putting yourself in their shoes” and imagining what evil you could get up to is just wrong.
This is wrong in two ways, one of which is rarely discussed in the US.
Homework.
Finland, which has the highest PISA scores among 15-year-olds in Europe, and typically makes it into the top 10 among OECD countries, has almost no homework ever. Or as they say, children (and parents) have better things to do with their time. The first step to improving US PISA scores is eliminating all homework.
OTOH, such an assignment might trigger subliminal domination fantasies in pre-teen white males whose father and older brothers might in fact harbor racist views that get expressed at the dinner table and the weekly klan hoe-down. Who knows where such fantasies, once stimulated and nurtured, may lead?
And the cosplay continues. Couldn’t they watch a movie? There are a couple good recent ones. Or read a novel. Now, that’s an effective way to establish sympathetic connections. The literal application of “put yourself in their shoes” as a lesson plan is way overrated and too easy to screw up, imo.
You may have a point about the thought exercise, but we need to know what the lessons were preceding this assignment.
@spacesaver
I agree a good book or movie would establish sympathetic connections, but those movies and books need to be age appropriate. In my book selling experience over the years books that were once assigned in HS are now being assigned in middle school.
Being smart and be emotionally ready to handle this assignment is not always in sync.
Every single year, seems over the past 20 at least, during Black History Month we read/hear about schools doing this kind of nasty shit. They always, always say the are sorry but it seems to repeat again the following year. Apparently schools don’t read and/or listen to lessons learned by other districts. At this point if I had school age children I’d be thinking about home schooling. I am 1000% sure I can do a much better job of teaching respect, the 3 R’s, etc than just about any of the current crop of schools. Does not matter if they are Top 10, Bottom 10, private, religious, or whatever they are 100% poor poor poor…
I agree, at one time I taught high school. On the first day of the new year I would along with getting the paperwork shuffle completed I set my expectations for the year. One expectation was zero homework and zero testing other than that mandated by the state/district. The excuse “teachers” would use for both was they needed them to know the kids were learning. I always countered that you would know by the type/frequency of questions asked. Even very introverted/quiet students would ask questions giving me feedback. In all the years I taught I tested only once, that was because I was not getting questions and it became obvious that the students were not reading, etc. I did a pop quiz and was immediately challenged that I had stated no testing. My answer was remember I stated on day one testing only if you forced me to do so. As kids walked out I stood at the door taking the papers and immediately dropped into a waste can. Did that pizz off some and they waited around to confront me. My answer was “did I make my point”, guess I had as there was an immediate improvement and I am sure other classes heard. Both homework and testing are a cop out for actually teaching and for getting students to actually want to be in class and learning/absorbing all I, as the instructor, could offer.
I admit that it might be wrong for middle-schoolers, but at some point (maybe seniors in high school), I think putting oneself in the position of evildoers could be a great way to demonstrate how easy it is to do evil, how we rationalize what we do, and numerous other valuable lessons. (I hope I don’t need to say that the lesson needs to be guided so that the student does not get the message that it’s OK to be a concentration-camp guard, or something similar.)
Context makes all the difference -
If this was a balanced 'thought exercise" - conducted in a genuine academic exploration of the time period and conditions it might be illuminating in many ways .
Too much of history is often simplistically boiled down to binary Yes/No … Good/ Evil … on / off history is more complex - just as today’s world is more complex
A lack of development of skills in the area of critical analysis results in an inability to deal with nuances - and that in turn leads to knee-jerk raging against using reason and consideration of subtle nuances that may make all the difference in the world.
So many people - young and old have such a simplistic perspective that it is impossible for them to comprehend how a reasonably sane nation could come to be under the control of a dictator - they just can’t grasp that a multitude of little steps into the gray zone can take an issue from light to dark. Sometimes sitting down and simulating the progression of events can make one aware of the slippery slopes / perilous paths that exist - and - have existed throughout history.
However, this may be a level of analytical thinking that middle schoolers might not fully grasp in the manner intended. There may be better ways to explore the details of how unacceptable things were done by real human beings who allowed themselves to be blinded to & rationalize the inherent wrongs of what they were doing.
When I was a kid, our 5th grade history class was focused on the time from Jamestown to American Revolution, and we had a game on one of the computers where you ran a plantation, bought slaves and hired indentured servants, farmed tobacco and cotton etc. Nobody ever saw that game and thought we were making light of slavery, and it really cemented for me the different aspects of the early colonial era. Looking it up now, it was called Colonyquest, https://www.worldcat.org/title/colonyquest-jamestown-time-window/oclc/33805962
It annoys me to no-end that valid educational exercises designed to teach the shameful, negative history of slavery are turned into an assault on teachers and lesson plans. I guess it would be better to pretend it never existed!