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Should forcing a black student to have their legs and feet bound and crawl under classroom desks be part of a lesson plan? Apparently that's what Rockland County middle school teacher Eileen Bernstein did last month to simulate what it was like on a slave ship. However, one student (whose family descended from slaves) who didn't volunteer but had to demonstrate anyway was extremely distraught. According to the Daily News, Bernstein apologized to the girl and her mother, but said she had done the demonstration before. A superintendent added, "We don't want to discourage creativity. But this obviously went wrong because the student was upset." But the girl's mother, Christine Shand, isn't convinced; she told WCBS 2, "There are other ways to demonstrate slavery. There's movies, you don't actually have to grab two kids and like put shackles on them."
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Didn't everyone play "slave ship" when they were kids?
Why didn't she ask for volunteers?
"We don't want to discourage creativity. For example, all of the Jewish kids have numbers tattooed on their forearms. And every now and then, to mix it up, we burn a Christian on a stake."
Yes, let's just put on a movie. Hell, why bother with teachers at all? Televison will teach our kids all they need to know.
@Mr Mel-- one (black) student volunteered, but Shand's daughter didn't. I guess the teacher wanted two students to demonstrate.
@r1b2 -- In the Daily News article, the head of a local NAACP wondered, "Are you telling me when you do a section on the Holocaust, it's okay to simulate an oven and have a grandchild of someone who was a survivor just get in the oven?"
@AHT -- I get your point, but movies can be good tools too. I think I remember seeing Glory, Platoon, Patton, and The Killing Fields at my public high school. So why *not* show a clip from Roots or Amistad?
See, Jen, I kew we'd agree. I understand the teacher wanting to bring history to life, but this was a bad call.
See, Jen, I knew we'd agree. I understand the teacher wanting to bring history to life, but this was a bad call.
Another clueless moron getting paid to teach kids.
A lot of Hollywood movies about history are wildly innacurate. Most diectors have a political axe to grind so all you're getting is well crafted propaganda.
I wonder if everything has to be acted out. It could be a long-term cultural effect of television and other forms of mass-distributed stupidity.
Does the lesson on slavery include the Muslim Barbary pirates kidnapping and enslaving Europeans and Americans? Does it include the slavery that is still being practiced right now in Africa by Muslims against Christians? Methinks the lesson is a bit onesided.
Do the kids get their 10 acres and mules now?
There are ways to involve young people in historic reenactments and dramatizations that illustrate the lesson better than a film or video could. There are many youth programs that help kids to portray historic events in ways that are powerful and personal, including "Undesirable Elements" which my group Global Kids coordinates.
These kinds of methods involve a high degree of buy-in from the youngsters, letting them decide what stories they want to tell and who they want to portray.
Forcing a student to portray a role he or she doesn't want to play is IMO the worst use of this educational tool. And can traumatize a child if taken to the extreme, as might be the case here.
I'm glad the kid had a shit fit. The way I figure, slavery has been bled to death and if this had succeeded, we'd probably be wading through self-shackled attention whores for years.
What kind of work involved having slaves crawling under classroom desks with their legs and feet bound?
@ Felix: it's FORTY acres and a mule
I believe it's called interactive participation in museum language. The teacher made a wrong choice in who was involved in the demonstration.
Ides,
Thank goodness you have absolutely no "political axe to grind."
Fail!
More than likely what happened: Kids both volunteered, lesson went well, kids learned a lot and had good discussions about slavery, etc. Kid goes home. Welfare mom says why are your clothes dirty and girl tells mom what happened. Mom see's a chance for dollar bills. End of story. I'm sure the kids would have much rather just had to read pages 62-140 in their history text, took a written exam, then done a written report after reading the Life of Frederick Douglas.
More than likely rcltrh thinks every black child in public school must have a mother on welfare.
More than likely rcltrh thinks only white kids have working parents or dignity.
the students should bring in a walk in oven for show and tell or a mock showerhead that expels toxic gas. and, this wasn't in a welfare school, how could it be? there's only 2 black students.
Having been a principal in schools for 10 years it wouldn't matter if it were black or white Angrygod. Teachers and kids have been doing these kinds of activities for years whether its slvaery, civil war reenactments, and yes even holocaust reneactments just to show the kids how horrible it was. When I was in school we were doing the holocaust and we all crammed into a supply room that was probably 5 x 7 with 28 kids just to see how hard it would have been to be packed in like that for hours and hours on those train rides. Was a good point of reference for something we as kids didn't really realize. As a principal, the first parents that come running to me were the welfare parents (mostly white BTW) who claimed their little Mary, Johnny, whoever were injured, traumatized, etc by these kinds of events - many of them already had their lawyers. None of the GT kids parents cried these kinds of things. They all thought it was really great that kids were being taught the truth of how things were. So take your purposed racists ideas and shove them. This has nothing to do with race and if you were to dig deeper I'm sure it has more to do with mentality of the parents. And where does it say there were only 2 black students?
there are other news sources besides print.
and the principal of the school is black.
this was not a welfare mom though she did pronounce "ask" as "axe".
To make all those who suffered through the horrors of slavery, let me make a suggestion. Forget about it. Don't mention it and if you do have pictures of Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln. That's it. Don't try to bring home the pathos that was involved, just keep bringing up the same old shit. Damned if you do, damned if you don't with these people.
http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/ny/other/1100#students
Looks like more than 2 to me. 15% of their 615 students are black, which although math was never my strong subject I think that's more than 2. However if you will notice, 45% are on Free & Reduced lunch, which in suburban schools is always on the low side of reality - so even at 50% this is definitely considered a "welfare school"
I can't wait till what they're going to do for St. Patrick's day.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc0c1hB9MlLCLoAjdsaRHOWOraWQD94SR4I81
"Monahan said the girls were not the only blacks in the class."
"Wilbur Aldridge, director of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the history demonstration, first reported in The Journal News, "went wrong when she started to do that binding."
"I don't care what color, no one should be put in the position of having their hands and feet bound," he said.
Aldridge said he feared that the teacher still "didn't get it" after their meeting. He said the teacher apologized "because Gabrielle was upset, not because she admitted she did something wrong."
Shand said she had not decided whether to take any further action, including filing a lawsuit."
...including filing a lawsuit... what did I say. Black, white, hispanic, doesn't matter. This is about money. Case closed.
You fail geography. Rockland County is not "upstate."
Rockland County is sure upstate from where the Gothamist is published.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, now that's an organization I haven't heard from for a while. How are they moving on?
Oops my bad. I just read somewhere that the NAACP are spending all their money trying to get Asian children into Stuyvesant high school. Sorry.
when I was in school 8 years ago, my teachers WERE CREATIVE ENOUGH to NOT BIND us. They communicated the past through story and and drawings. you don't have to act out the past for children to understand what happened. That teacher should be made to understand why its wrong to bind a slave decendent.
"Aldridge said he feared that the teacher still "didn't get it" after their meeting. He said the teacher apologized "because Gabrielle was upset, not because she admitted she did something wrong."
THIS is why the teacher should be FIRED. I didn't see this before. Serious empathy issues. She is either covering her ass, or is too IGNORANT to understand why this would upset someone. This type of mentality is why there are still racial issues.
Its not like the teacher was actually putting the children into slavery. Do you people not see that??? Geez. It was a freaking modeling simulation and I would be my teaching license that the student who's mom is probably going to file a multimillion dollar windfall lawsuit against the state actually did volunteer and this only became an issue once she got home. The only thing I would have done differently is I would have had ALL the kids participate instead of just picking a couple volunteers.
I agree rcltrh if you are going to make the situation immersive involve all the students not just the spawn of slaves.
Also for those who don't know the holocaust, people were not put into the ovens alive. They were crematoriums. To recreate the cattle car situation a teacher would need to load up a class coat room, if they still exist, with the entire population of the school and keep them there for four or five days.
^ That was in the lesson plan until an administrator reminded the teacher that the coat room is reserved only for kids that sell their gold and jewlery for a piece of bread.
Damn those administrators.