I should have said that teachers sustain a heck of a lot more abuse than any given student.

2) Education includes not only content, but also behavioral knowledge, such as following the orders of a superior and respecting one’s elders. There is a big difference between the harm of slavery and the “harm” of mandatory schooling.

Last time I checked, the students have a heck of a lot more “social” conversation than I or other teachers, have a lot more freedom to go to the bathroom, and sustain a heck of a lot more abuse (both verbal and physical) than any given student. For that, we are given a sum of money that is a pittance of the total value that is spent on a single class’s education.

I’m going to guess that due to the fact that the idea of anything mandatory seems to makes you violently ill and that you felt the need to insult “red states,” that you are some product, directly or indirectly, of the 60′s hippie movement.

1. Being denied such basic dignities as “going to the toilet when you please.”

2. If you’re in a red state, being whacked on the butt for trivial for imaginary offenses with no due process.

3. Being forced to study subjects you don’t care about for six hours a day.

4. Being denied the right to social conversation for long periods of the day (sorry to apologists, but talking about school assignments in class doesn’t qualify as real social discourse).

5. Having to endure all that misery and tedium for no money. (corollary: force the teachers to do hard labor for no pay under compulsion, and see how many of them can devise a word to describe it. I wonder if “slavery” would come to mind?)

6. If somebody assaults them or steals from them, they cannot call the police for help.

No wait, that’s too complicated: Let’s just have the teachers pretend to be prison guards (or nannies, if they teacher the lower grades) and see if they can see if its any different from their real job. (But I’ll admit, this isn’t as good as Mr. Aubrey’s suggestion about reenacting the Battle of Trenton. Haha! THAT’s pedagological creativity.)

http://joannejacobs.com/2008/11/29/the-expectations-gap/

kidding, kidding.

I also offer up my own ordeal as a “bound” student in high school. I still suffer from nightmares! {drama /off}

Re-enactment does present more of a grey area. Would the teacher who invented the blue eyes brown eyes demonstration following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. have been allowed to do such a thing today? After all–they were only 2nd or 3rd graders, and she was messing with their heads and they were upset. Was there lasting harm done, or was there harm that outweighed the value of the learning? These are important questions.

McEachern points out that the teacher was white and the students were black–perhaps suggesting that there was in operation an additional layer to possible conditions of the re-enactment. We still ache from the harms of the middle passage and generations of segregation and unequal opportunity in this country. Is this a dimension that ought to have been taken into account? Is this more or less significant than the use of duct tape?

I too recoil from the superintendent’s discomfort barometer. Understanding the Middle Passage, or the holocaust or clan lynchings or force-feeding suffragettes or a good many other injustices should make us and students uncomfortable. That is a good discomfort that that motivate action. On the other hand, I have heard white parents object to young students being taught that Dr. King was killed by a white man–based on their sense (or their children’s sense) of discomfort.

I don’t know that there is an absolutely right response to this situation. I would vote for “stupid” in the use of duct tape, and possibly for isolating black students (if that is what happened–where there white students in the class?). I would probably not be in favor of firing–not only because I believe that some stupidity is redeemable–but because it offers up an illusion that a problem has been solved and will go away. I would prefer to see a solution that brings people together around the teaching and understanding of difficult content. Are there safe and appropriate ways to give students an understanding of the injustices of history? How do we present these things?

If the story’s about the the educational uses of duct tape, it is worth keeping in mind that mandatory attendance means the kids are being instructed about slavery in a venue in which their presence isn’t voluntary. It doesn’t seem to be that outrageous an idea compared to some of the unspeakable nonsense that periodically erupts from ed schools. Certainly it wouldn’t result in graduating hordes of functional illiterates from the nation’s high schools which seems rather the greater crime.

If the story’s about Sharon McEachern’s near-hysteria at the incident and her umbrage at the dearth of public outrage, who gives a damn? If Sharon McEachern feels cheated by history because the civil rights era came to an end before she had a chance to put on her spandex superhero costume and set right the wrongs of racism that’s of concern to adults for what reason? I don’t find my own self-indulgences all that interesting much less the self-indulgent yearnings of a frustrated Freedom Rider wannabee.