Teaching Slavery at South Mountain, Jefferson also involved in poor implementation of teaching the subject.

spontaneous said:

When a child does something despicable and people say "they learned that at home" no one is thinking of the kid's second cousin once removed.

No, but they are thinking that the kid's been somewhere and spent considerable time with someone and picked up some nasty thoughts, ideas or behavior. Since most pre teens don't do much solo traveling it would be safe to assume that they're normally in the company of their parents. Like I said though, we can certainly agree to disagree- I know the idea is unsettling and I can certainly understand that. I don't really have any interest in distracting from the main idea of this thread any more than we have already so I'll call 'uncle' here- cool?

mtierney said:

President Obama used that same analogy more than once and there was no uproar. Why? Both men are black -- wait, one was a Democrat!

That's one answer.

Carson was trashed for saying similar thoughts. Why do you think?

Because, at the risk of being dismissed as hypocrites or rationalizers, people make distinctions, which can be defended or otherwise discussed through invitations like yours. Thank you for eliciting sprout's response and, even with the earlier rhetorical question, flimbro's.

good point.

I guess the children should organize themselves into concentration camps as an exercise?

You know, there's ugly, and then there's trauma-inducing.

MrSuburbs said:

Slavery is a major part of black history in America. I'm curious, how can you teach or inform others about black history in America and avoid slavery and its ugliness in the process?

Are the teachers wrong for teaching these lessons? How do you teach lessons about slavery without it getting ugly?

How do you teach about the Holocaust without it getting ugly?

How do you teach about any of the horrific history that has been done to mankind without getting ugly?

please, please show us where Obama used the "same analogy".

I'm sure you heard Rush tell you this. Or maybe Hannity, right?

ETA: yeah, I found it. Again, yet another failure to analogize.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/03/07/obama-also-referred-slaves-immigrants/98875122/

mtierney said:

Kibblegirll..."No matter how poetic Ben Carson may sound, slaves were NOT immigrants to this country."

President Obama used that same analogy more than once and there was no uproar. Why? Both men are black -- wait, one was a Democrat!

There can be no "safe places" for our children however much we parents want to protect them.

Would the horrors of the Holocaust be better communicated to the world without the vividness of Ann Frank and the concentration camps, death trains, and survivors stories depicted for every generation in the decades since?

Back in the day, as PTA president at Tuscan an d president of the school district's president's council, this would have addressed. What has been said?

Perhaps, the sub had a vision of the students giving a depiction of slavery and the auctioning off of human beings as seen in their own minds? It could have provided a great learning experience for children and parents alike.

I believe on the prior thread page, she already posted it from The Federalist. Not sure what your point is?

mtierney said:

thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/11-times-barack-obama-compared-slaves-to-immigrants/"> http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/11-times-barack-obama-compared-slaves-to-immigrants/

For those who doubt and discount anything outside their playbook

Carson was trashed for saying similar thoughts. Why do you think?

drummerboy said:

please, please show us where Obama used the "same analogy".

I'm sure you heard Rush tell you this. Or maybe Hannity, right?

ETA: yeah, I found it. Again, yet another failure to analogize.

www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/03/07/obama-also-referred-slaves-immigrants/98875122/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/03/07/obama-also-referred-slaves-immigrants/98875122/

what whose point is. mine?

I didn't see the prior post. but that doesn't matter.

CompassRose said:

I believe on the prior thread page, she already posted it from The Federalist. Not sure what your point is?

mtierney said:


http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/11-times-barack-obama-compared-slaves-to-immigrants/

For those who doubt and discount anything outside their playbook

Carson was trashed for saying similar thoughts. Why do you think?

drummerboy said:

please, please show us where Obama used the "same analogy".

I'm sure you heard Rush tell you this. Or maybe Hannity, right?

ETA: yeah, I found it. Again, yet another failure to analogize.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/03/07/obama-also-referred-slaves-immigrants/98875122/

My point is...

It wasn't from Rush or Hannity and she had already posted it from the Federalist. Typically in this type of situation, when I falsely accuse someone of pulling information from a source they didn't pull from, I would apologize to said person.

drummerboy said:

what whose point is. mine?

I didn't see the prior post. but that doesn't matter.

CompassRose said:

I believe on the prior thread page, she already posted it from The Federalist. Not sure what your point is?

mtierney said:


http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/11-times-barack-obama-compared-slaves-to-immigrants/

For those who doubt and discount anything outside their playbook

Carson was trashed for saying similar thoughts. Why do you think?

drummerboy said:

please, please show us where Obama used the "same analogy".

I'm sure you heard Rush tell you this. Or maybe Hannity, right?

ETA: yeah, I found it. Again, yet another failure to analogize.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/03/07/obama-also-referred-slaves-immigrants/98875122/

My point is...

It wasn't from Rush or Hannity and she had already posted it from the Federalist. Typically in this type of situation, when I falsely accuse someone of pulling information from a source they didn't pull from, I would apologize to said person.

drummerboy said:

what whose point is. mine?

I didn't see the prior post. but that doesn't matter.

CompassRose said:

I believe on the prior thread page, she already posted it from The Federalist. Not sure what your point is?

mtierney said:


http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/11-times-barack-obama-compared-slaves-to-immigrants/

For those who doubt and discount anything outside their playbook

Carson was trashed for saying similar thoughts. Why do you think?

drummerboy said:

please, please show us where Obama used the "same analogy".

I'm sure you heard Rush tell you this. Or maybe Hannity, right?

ETA: yeah, I found it. Again, yet another failure to analogize.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/03/07/obama-also-referred-slaves-immigrants/98875122/

However, on the subject of Carson's comment, I will admit that there was a double standard in regards to how Obama's and Carson's comments were treated. It happens. Score one for the right wing.

This is being covered by ABC news right now

It was also covered in the Daily Mail UK online, complete with video and drawings.

srowland,

Thank you for your post. Your facts about how the incident affected your child and family was very insightful.

flimbro,

Enjoyed your posts as well.Very heart felt and truthful.

Some are trying to make this out to be a political issue. Maybe, but the ability to realize teaching our children facts (whether it be re-enacting or giving them facts) is something they can handle and deserve to know especially if it's their country's history.

klinker,

I would have no problem teaching a class on the KKK including the hoods. Better reason to teach the reason the hoods were worn was to hide the identity of the cowards who weren't courageous enough to let their evil be known.

flimbro - very, very well-stated. The subjugation and suffering of Black people has been, relatively speaking, sanitized and trivialized in this country. Even having children draw posters and having a "mock" slave auction frankly "mocks" how absolutely horribly brutal and evil slavery was and yet again trivializes how Black people have been treated. I'll concede that perhaps it was, as srowland noted, something that sparked having conversations in some households about slavery. However, I ask this: would "mock" whippings or "mock" rapes of girls or "mock" shacklings or "mock" lynchings or "mock" brandings or "mock" castrations also be acceptable as a way to teach elementary school children "what life was like in the Colonies", since those were all common aspects of what life was like for Black people living in the colonies as well? And if not, then by what logic are "mock" slave auctions somehow acceptable?

Why does it have to be so hard to convey the brutality of slavery to the point where you have to make it a game? Our children aren't stupid. You can ask them to think about how they would feel if there older brother/sister or a parent was forcibly sent away never to be seen again. Or how they would feel seeing a family member being beaten with about being able to stop it. And the sad thing is that it is still happening in America today when, for example, ICE deports a parent leaving behind children. This is by no means equivalent  to slavery, but it should make a decent person pause and wonder what kind of nation we are.

I agree. It is so important to connect the dots with what is going on in the world of today's students. What are the residual effects of slavery? What is the history of anti- immigrant sentiment in this country? If we're going to teach history at all, these connections, as well as the affective ones you mention, are essential to learning and essential to developing empathy.

marlon4x,

IMO, mock castrations and rapes may best be understood by an older student. The other mock scenarios, I have no problem with. I also am in no way trying to make this about what is the best or worst way to portray slavery.

Do strawberries always come back in the Spring?

MrSuburbs said:

IMO, mock castrations and rapes may best be understood by an older student.

Please tell me you are joking? Under what circumstances would mock castrations or rapes ever be appropriate?

tjohn,

so all the other mock scenarios are appropriate? Rape and castrations were part of the ugliness of slavery. Many movies included them or indications of them. That's history, American history. No joke.

I don't think my daughters would benefit from play-acting rape or castration. And I think all of the reenactment teaching methods with regard to slavery trivialize slavery.

MrSuburbs said:

tjohn,

so all the other mock scenarios are appropriate? Rape and castrations were part of the ugliness of slavery. Many movies included them or indications of them. That's history, American history. No joke.

tjohn,

Rape can also be used as a learning tool as to the different shades of African Americans. Castration to the pride and protection many African American males have to their genitals. Of course this would be leaning more towards a psychological conversation for more educated minds ... Which is why I think those two examples would better be understood by older students.

FWIW, if your daughters are grammar school age, I agree.

I have no words...

MrSuburbs said:

tjohn,

Rape can also be used as a learning tool as to the different shades of African Americans. Castration to the pride and protection many African American males have to their genitals. Of course this would be leaning more towards a psychological conversation for more educated minds ... Which is why I think those two examples would better be understood by older students.

FWIW, if your daughters are grammar school age, I agree.

O.M.G. You know this incident has reached the UK Daily Mail, right? Horrors, and for McSuburbs,double horrors.

stfu already

MrSuburbs said:

tjohn,

Rape can also be used as a learning tool as to the different shades of African Americans. Castration to the pride and protection many African American males have to their genitals. Of course this would be leaning more towards a psychological conversation for more educated minds ... Which is why I think those two examples would better be understood by older students.

FWIW, if your daughters are grammar school age, I agree.

>>IMO, mock castrations and rapes may best be understood by an older student. The other mock scenarios, I have no problem with. MrSuburbs

Essentially, this illustrates my point. Absent the full context of what the institution of "slavery" consisted of, "mock" slave auctions can then be sanitized to at best being a lesson about "....how it felt just to play the role of a slave who is being sold and will likely never see his/her family again". And again I ask, if "mock castrations" and "mock rapes of girls" are unacceptable, then by what logic are "mock" slave auctions somehow acceptable? The only logical answer is that somehow the feeling is that "mock" slave auctions weren't "as bad", which I totally reject. The thought that some human beings auctioning/selling other equally human beings isn't the also the epitome of any evil and absolutely abhorrent is beyond me. By the fact that somehow "slave" auctions are sanitized so that they aren't "as bad" and therefore acceptable - which aligns with my original point about the subjugation and suffering of Black people in this country being sanitized and trivialized - then "mock" slave auctions do indeed "mock" how absolutely horribly brutal and evil slavery was.

I think it may be time to bring the curtain down on your show. You've entertained, now it's time to go.

Really

MrSuburbs said:

tjohn,

Rape can also be used as a learning tool as to the different shades of African Americans. Castration to the pride and protection many African American males have to their genitals. Of course this would be leaning more towards a psychological conversation for more educated minds ... Which is why I think those two examples would better be understood by older students.

FWIW, if your daughters are grammar school age, I agree.

hmm. looks like there has been some thread cleanup here..... can't say that I disagree...

Anyone is entitled to agree or disagree with me. That's your prerogative. But no, I'm not joking and no drummerboy, you will not be the one to tell me when it's time to stfu.

MrSuburbs said:

Anyone is entitled to agree or disagree with me. That's your prerogative. But no, I'm not joking and no drummerboy, you will not be the one to tell me when it's time to stfu.

OK, I'll play along. How on Earth can play-acting of rape convey the true trauma of the experience?

You know, some simulations I can understand. For example, if a young person wanted to understand what it was like fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, I could tell them to dig a hole in Memorial Park in January and stay in that hole for 72 hours with nothing but cold food and cold water while imagining that there were soldiers trying to kill you. But I can't understand how any re-enactment of various aspects of slavery is at all meaningful.

tjohn,

Every documentary of history ever made is a re-enactment. I only commented on rape and castration because someone (forgot who at the moment) used them as examples (in an attempt to be extreme) of unacceptable attempts to teach slavery. I was trying to show them their attempt to show unacceptable ways can be acceptable in the right circumstances.

Not in any way a comparison but look at some of the "stop smoking" cigarette commercials; a person could say "I don't need to see amputations, here wheezing and see tubes or holes in a person's throat to know I shouldn't smoke".

Maybe not but it does get the point across.