Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

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Joe Guy
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Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Joe Guy »

Teacher on leave for 'pretend you are a slave' assignment

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A high school teacher in Iowa has been placed on leave for assigning students to "pretend you are a black slave.”

The Iowa City Press-Citizen reported that the assignment for an Iowa City school district online learning program for students assigned to different schools asked students to write four sentences about what they would do if they were a slave who was freed.

“Think very, very carefully about what your life would be like as a slave in 1865,” the assignment reads. “You can’t read or write and you have never been off the plantation you work on. What would you do when you hear the news you are free? What factors would play into the decision you make?”

The teacher, whose name was not released, was placed on administrative leave and the assignment was removed, Iowa City Community School District spokeswoman Kristin Pedersen said. A statement from the district called the assignment “inappropriate” and said it “does not support and will not tolerate this type of instruction.”

Dibny Gamez said her 14-year-old daughter, Ayesha, could not complete the assignment because it made her feel uncomfortable. Ayesha is among a small number of Black students in the class.

"She just starts tearing up,” Gamez said. “And I was, like, ‘No, listen, you don’t have to be ashamed of who you are.’ I said, ‘You are beautiful for who you are. Don’t let not one soul make you uncomfortable for who you are.’”

Assignments asking students to role-play enslaved people or slave owners trivialize or distort the actual events of slavery, said Justin Grinage, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Minnesota who focuses his research on race and education.

“The best-case scenario with lessons like this is that students come away with a fabricated lie about history. So, best-case scenario, they don’t really learn anything, or they learn the wrong thing,” Grinage said. “Worst-case scenario is that it’s a deeply traumatic experience for students of color, particularly Black students.”
source

I wrote the following in the comment section for the above article at sfgate.com......
I didn't understand the problem with the assignment until I thought of similar ideas and how they might be hurtful to some people. As in, Pretend you were a Jew who escaped from being exterminated. Pretend you were a Japanese civilian who was nearby but not killed by an Atom Bomb. Pretend you were a white person and your Tesla got keyed.......

Big RR
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Big RR »

Maybe it's not suitable for a freshman in high school, but I do think the question does help student to consider the issues surrounding historical events muchmore deeply than just memorizing facts. FWIW, I don't think the other questions at the end (other than the Tesla one), could provide similar insight). Sometimes putting oneself in the position of another is a way of getting some insight into what otherwise would be dry facts; personalizing slavery/emancipation, the holocaust or the a-bomb aftermath in this way can make it much more real. Although one can never actually place themselves in the place of a person in history (e.g. being illiterate in 1865 would be far less a problem than it would be today), many feelings and emotions of people would be fairly similar.

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Sue U
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Sue U »

Big RR wrote:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 1:10 pm
Sometimes putting oneself in the position of another is a way of getting some insight into what otherwise would be dry facts; personalizing slavery/emancipation, the holocaust or the a-bomb aftermath in this way can make it much more real.
The way to do this is not by pretending, but by reading or otherwise absorbing the personal accounts of those who actually experienced those conditions. Fantasizing yourself into a narrative is terrible for actual education because people will invariably make themselves the hero of their own exciting story, imagining themselves to have the options, agency and personal control that slaves or Holocaust victims or A-bomb survivors never could have had.This is why "survivalists" exist: they imagine themselves being the heroes of a post-apocalyptic adventure story. They never truly consider what mere survival might require, particularly the depths of their own personal degradation. As the U. Minn. prof said in the OP: “The best-case scenario with lessons like this is that students come away with a fabricated lie about history. So, best-case scenario, they don’t really learn anything, or they learn the wrong thing.”
GAH!

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Gob
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Gob »

Can you imagine if the assignment was "OK, imagine you are a slave owner..." :lol:
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

Big RR
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Big RR »

Sue--I don't agree; I think considering oneself in a particular situation can be valuable to getting a personal understanding of a articular situation. Yes, as I conceded, it will not be accurate, but it could cause a recognition of some of the choices faced. Sure, the Walter Mittys of the world will imagine themselves as the heroes who can solve everything, but many will also be forced to consider factors they never considered before, and this can be the basis of additional discussion. But the point is to view it from the fact not of what would you do if you were another person, but what would you do if you faced a particular set of circumstances that limited/affected your choices , i.e. the "options, agency and personal control that" those situations present to you. And I do think that, joined with open discussion and addressing the false assumptions some make in their writings, a better appreciation of those limitations could be met. Indeed, that is the main advantage that competitive debate presents, requiring the debater to consider both sides of an issue and to be able to defend both sides. The mere writing of a few sentences accomplishes little, but it then sets the basis for a reconsideration of that position.

As a real world example, when I did work for DYFS I had to represent children in DYFS termination proceedings, representing their interests and, if they were old enough, raising their positions to the court. I can recall a number of adolescents who were horrible bused by their parents who still wanted to remain with them; it was easy to dismiss this as some sort of Stockholm syndrome or some mental/emotional defect, but I found to properly represent them I had to get into their mindsets and understand the issues they were faced with--this (albeit imperfect as I could not do it fully) helped me both counsel and represent them. For example, I had a client (I think he was15) whose brother had raped his sister and was serving a prison sentence; the parents were in complete denial (or worse, blamed the girl), but the young man, while he was still in contact with and cared for his sister, wanted to visit his brother in jail. It would have been easy to discuss this as a product of his parents manipulating him, but on consideration of the pressures he faced and my discussions I was able to present a defensible request which dismissed that assumption and ultimately got his visitation approved by the court. I don't think this could have been done if I weren't able to try and consider myself facing those pressures and, while I woudn't have necessarily made that same choice, I was able to advocate for it. Sure, it's not perfect, but it works for me.

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TPFKA@W
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by TPFKA@W »

I remember reading, many years back, about a teacher who did a blue eyed/ brown eyed experiment in a classroom. She had the blue eyed students presented as special, with special privilege one one occasion, and brown eyed students on another. It ostensibly taught them some kind of moral lesson. That teacher was lauded at the time as I recall. Now she would be placed on a skewer for roasting. If I were a modern teacher, I would stand immobile in facing the chalkboard with a "kick me" sign on my back.

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Sue U
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Sue U »

Big RR wrote:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 4:06 pm
Sue--I don't agree; I think considering oneself in a particular situation can be valuable to getting a personal understanding of a articular situation. Yes, as I conceded, it will not be accurate, but it could cause a recognition of some of the choices faced. Sure, the Walter Mittys of the world will imagine themselves as the heroes who can solve everything, but many will also be forced to consider factors they never considered before, and this can be the basis of additional discussion. But the point is to view it from the fact not of what would you do if you were another person, but what would you do if you faced a particular set of circumstances that limited/affected your choices , i.e. the "options, agency and personal control that" those situations present to you. And I do think that, joined with open discussion and addressing the false assumptions some make in their writings, a better appreciation of those limitations could be met. Indeed, that is the main advantage that competitive debate presents, requiring the debater to consider both sides of an issue and to be able to defend both sides. The mere writing of a few sentences accomplishes little, but it then sets the basis for a reconsideration of that position.
I think the overwhelming majority of people will be unable to resist the impulse to "triumph over adversity" in this exercise, because that is after all the essence of the cultural narrative Americans are inculcated with from birth. Sure, with enough time and discussion and correction an instructor might be able to deconstruct false assumptions and impress on a student the circumstances that limit choices, but that in itself would be a lengthy project that still may be unlikely to illuminate the world view of someone actually in those circumstances -- and it's not a project that I can see a high school or even a university devoting the necessary time and resources to.

With respect to your own experience with DYFS, as a lawyer you are specially trained -- not only by law school, but by years of practice -- to discover and understand your clients' desires, to counsel them and to advocate for them, regardless of whether you would make the same choices. And even so, our clients' (and our) choices are limited by the tools and rules of our legal system, and grappling with those limitations is literally our entire life's work in this profession. There is simply too much to developing the skills and empathy necessary to doing this kind of work -- let alone understanding the personal ramifications of emancipation after 350 years of slavery -- to trivialize it with a what-would-you-do kind of exercise.
GAH!

Big RR
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Big RR »

You may be right Sue, but I do think a realistic empathy is a skill well worth developing for anyone, which is probably what underlies my initial response.

rubato
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by rubato »

What tripe. No one learns anything about the reality of slavery by "imagining" it by fantasizing about it. You see the same kind of idiotic assignments in the sciences as well. They will learn exactly nothing of value from this exercise and will be instead taught the lie that their imaginat0nos are as imp0rtant as facts.

yrs,
rubato

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Finally, pr00f p0sitive that Rubat0 - Wes. I've l0ng suspected it.

Big RR
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Big RR »

And imagination, although not as important as factual evidence, plays a major role in scientific discovery. August Kekule, who discovered the ring structure of benzene, attributed it to his imagination in a dream:

I was sitting writing at my textbook; but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair towards the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gambolling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation: long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twining and twisting in snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightening I awoke; and this time I also spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis.

Burning Petard
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by Burning Petard »

Iowa City? OK. Pretend you are a non-English speaking worker in a pork slaughter house owned by a Chinese corporation where basic PPE is not provided, even before the pandemic. . . . I'll bet that would get you fired quicker than the imaginary slave assignment.

snailgate.

wesw
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Re: Okay, Pretend You are a Slave....

Post by wesw »

fucking andy...,

your big 0 s made me smile.

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