I do not remember much about the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was just another day to someone attending an all-white school in the southwestern corner of Missouri.
I vaguely knew that Dr. King was important, but I had no idea why.
I was an adult when I discovered the civil rights movement and I remember thinking, “Why have I never heard anything about this? “ And I quickly began devouring books on the subject, immersing myself in the stories of the Freedom Riders, the Birmingham church bombing, Freedom Summer, and the murder of Emmett Till.
Today, I teach an eighth grade English class that was made possible by the U. S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and each year my students spend almost the entire third quarter writing a research paper over some aspect of the movement.
One thing I have been able to tell my students is that the civil rights movement changed the way the United States thinks of race. Because of the sacrifices of so many during the 1950s and 1960s, I tell them, even though racism still exists, we have made great strides toward a more harmonious society.
Recent events make me wonder if I have been mistaken.
While the election of Barack Obama was undeniably a step forward for the United States, it has also served to expose the dirty little secret that has been there all along- there is still a significant racist component in this country.
How can we say otherwise when one of the heroes of the movement, John Lewis, is attacked with racial epithets as he approached the House to cast a vote on the most significant bill since the civil rights legislation of the ‘60s.
How can we say that when protesters have no qualms about spitting on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, an African American Congressman from Missouri.
How can we say otherwise when so many in the Tea Party contingent boldly wave signs with racist caricatures of our president, and when the “N” word slips so casually from their lips?
How can we say otherwise when we see venom directed toward Barack Obama that goes far beyond simple disagreement with issues?
The election of Barack Obama has exposed a cancer that has been there all along, but appears to be far greater than we ever realized.
While the majority of those protesting different policies of the Obama Administration most likely are simply those who oppose the expansion of government in our lives, it is becomingly increasingly evident that racism is playing a key role, especially among those who appear willing to use violence and who are willing to brazenly sling racial epithets in public.
My students have completed their research project for this school year. Next year, I may have to rethink how I teach the subject. Those great strides that I have proudly pointed out to my students each year for the past 11 years may have been just a fleeting illusion.
14 comments:
Might be a good idea to rethink that, Randy. Why don't you teach them -- ENGLISH.
You mention the "sacrifices of so many during the 1950s and 1960s" as if it is the blacks who were sacrificing, then. African Americans had been making sacrifices for hundreds of years. The 1950's and 60's were when they said "no more".
No, they didn't sacrifice anything except 'the back of the bus'...what they did was fight for the equality they should have had all along...and they are still fighting for it.
Maybe, when you "rethink" you should really rethink the "English" you use and it's context. (but keep teaching)
Your old pal,
Jim F.
Jim, you are quite correct. I was still thinking more about the way John Lewis was treated over the weekend.
As for anonymous at 3:54, teaching students how to write a research paper is much a part of teaching English as providing instruction on how to conjugate verbs or the meaning of a short story. While they are researching the civil rights movement, they not only are writing papers, but they are doing the non-fiction reading that constantly shows up as a weakness on middle school test scores, they are learning the uses of similes, metaphors and other types of figurative language in the speeches given by Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and others during that era, and they are being given valuable research techniques that can help them not only in English, but in the other classes as they progress through high school and college.
If I understand correctly, you spend that much time on a research paper each year and each year the topic is the same for every student. No wonder you are brainwashed if you read that many papers each year on the same subject which I suspect is slanted to your opinion because of what you tell the kids to begin with. Why are you ignoring all the other great movements and events in history and doing the same thing year after year. Why don't kids get to select their own topics instead of just being channeled by your bias and preference? What about the life and death challenges of the brave pioneers; what about how the Native Americans have had to adapt to a larger culture; what about the heroes in battle (the Sgt. Yorks and the Audie Murphys); what about the struggle to find cures for disease such as smallpox and polio?
The more I learn about your teaching methods, the more I worry.
Having grown up in the Deep South and then moving to Joplin, I was always amazed at how little difference I saw in terms of racism.
The only real difference is that people in the midwest THINK they aren't racist because there are so few minorities for them to actively discriminate against. But all you really have to do is listen to how they talk about other races. Then it's clear.
The students in my class are given 15 topics concerning the civil rights movement. They also are allowed to select a related topic of their own, as long as I can be convinced there is enough material available for the topic. We also have a large collection of civil rights books in the East Middle School Library, which, when added to my own collection, offers the students the ability to employ book, as well as internet research. I am sorry anonymous 5:14 that my choice of a research area does not meet with your approval, but it fits well within the district and state curriculum, and prepares the students for the type of research projects they will have to do in high school and college.
Randy- this would br a good post if the slurs or spitting had happened.
Neither did, and there's a $10,000 bounty on any video showing a single mention of the n-word.
Are you going to be honest enough to write about it once you've studied up?
And the real question- what do you teach your students about how politicians use race to divide white and black communities for their own benefit?
Racism will always exist in some form, but so will those who falsely accuse their political opponents to get some press.
Jim Durbin: You're being silly, reporting bourgeois truth when only revolutionary truth matters to people like Randy.
One only hopes his students figure out someday the difference between the two and which is most important to them.
Randy, I wasn't criticizing your choice of research projects. I WAS criticizing the latent racism I've seen in the midwest--which is so often combined with a denial that the speaker/community is really racist.
My point was that, when you listen to all the talk about "us" and "them," and when you hear all the talk about "the blacks" or "the Mexicans," the language midwesterners use gives them away just as much as if they were using racial epithets.
Randy Turner is the typical liberal school teacher trying to make children into liberal drones like he is through a process of educational assimilation. Call him Goofballus of Borg.
For example, Turner admits to forcing his students into writing some lauditory silliness about the civil rights movement. It would be a foolhardy student who wrote up a hagiography about General Nathan Bedford Forrest and how that worthy was the first President/Grand Dragon of the First White Civil Rights Organization when it became necessary to protect the interests of Southern White People in the face of Northern Black Republican oppression post 1865. Or about how Adolf Hitler protected ethnic Germans from the predations of jew banksters who betrayed Germany in WWI to suborn the Balfour Declaration and brought about the ruinous Versailles Treaty and the hyperinflation of 1924 which destroyed the savings of the German People.
No, Turner would be foaming at the mouth and give the little rebellious White boy an "F," probably call Social Services on the parents of the little budding Goebbels, and personally shovel 200-mg tablets of Ritalin down the nipper's throat.
You see, allegations of racism are the only way that liberals have in trying to maintain their own way and to feel good about theysselfs. They think that their anti-white racism is so moral and fine, and ignore their own hypocrisy.
The fact of the matter is that white people are no longer able to maintain enough to feed themselves and their children, so they don't have anything to give to minorities who are becoming the majority. And if whites are unable to take care of themselves, then they won't have anything left to give as their government due to invading minorities. Things get rough and they get sort of testy and short to these demanding minorities and demanding hypocritical liberal drones -- like Turner.
The fact of the matter was that $500 billion was taken out of Medicare for the care of elderly whites in order to create a trillion-dollar new entitlement for blacks and hispanics. So an entitlement created for elderly sick whites is being destroyed to give to non-paying minorities, most of them not even legally here. So yes, there will be increased racial friction as whites rebel against having to pay higher taxes and having their social safety nets cut. Be grateful that it is still in the talking stage and hasn't turned violent -- yet.
Turner needs to be mindful that he is not teaching in Zimbabwe. Instead, Turner wants to turn this country into Zimbabwe and then whines when we are not grateful for the anticipated results of Turner's rancid moral pretensions.
Turner is an idiot doing his damnedest to create even more idiots in his own idiot image. The same things that made him have to leave journalism should make him leave teaching. Turner should apply his manifest intellectual and moral talents to something fitting Turner's abilities, like used-car sales or becoming a politician.
Racism is wrong. The most important thing that has not been mentioned is that the racism comes from all races, not just the white americans. Randy, you talk about the alleged spitting and racial slurs. I may have missed it during the elections if you spoke out, but what about the black thugs that were outside of election places with sticks. Think that isn't a form of racist threats against voters? It is not just the whites but all races that discriminate against each other.
I am for teaching about the civil rights era, but spending that much time on it takes away from an opportunity to teach about so much more about the beginnings of our great country. The politically correct left has robbed our kids of a balanced learning environment over the last several years!
Racism is wrong. The most important thing that has not been mentioned is that the racism comes from all races, not just the white americans. Randy, you talk about the alleged spitting and racial slurs. I may have missed it during the elections if you spoke out, but what about the black thugs that were outside of election places with sticks. Think that isn't a form of racist threats against voters? It is not just the whites but all races that discriminate against each other.
I am for teaching about the civil rights era, but spending that much time on it takes away from an opportunity to teach about so much more about the beginnings of our great country. The politically correct left has robbed our kids of a balanced learning environment over the last several years!
I have said it time and again and I repeat....I would not allow my child in this man's classroom....I have a great appreciation for public education and come from a long line of teachers (including myself) but it becoming more and more easy to understand home schooling...something I have long opposed...even if home schooling parents have their own agenda...that is no worse than a public school teacher who pushes his or her own agenda....
Turner abuses his teaching position in order to advance his own liberal agenda.
Not as big a problem back when Turner was simply writing lies in the liepapers. Then, if you didn't like what self-serving lies Turner wrote and the idiot publishers published, the solution was simple: simply don't buy and read Turner's garbage or sue Turner for libel and slander. Something like that happened, and everyone was the better, except the schoolchildren, for it.
But Turner forcing children to write some liberal drivel goes too far. These public school teachers need to be sternly told that intellectual development and independence means these children writing about what these children know and love and not writing some stupid liberal crap so that they can keep up with the class suck-up in Turner's class. There are plenty of blogs and citizen's journals on the Internet and now everyone can read whatever they like, and write about it as well, if they learn to think for themselves.
I think Turner needs to be fired from the current job that Turner abuses -- trying to teach children to disobey, despise, and eventually hate their parents, and then, given time, God. Turner is an anti-Christ liberal wanting to turn our children into another liberal drone like himself. Turner can't control his impulses to ruin our children, and wants to turn them into anti-white racists like himself.
Have you noticed that Turner now compares anyone who disagrees with him to Adolf Hitler? Makes you wonder who beat Nazi Germany -- liberals like Turner? Or white men who, now it seems, should have let Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia fight it out, then finished off or made peace with the winner.
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