You’d think a teacher would know better…
Nah. I’ve basically decided not to be surprised by anything anyone does.
I’m numb to it.
But maybe the assignment was supposed to be to find 3 good reasons for slavery in the bible. They’re certainly there or can be “interpreted” as so. (Afterall, Christians did it for centuries.)
The old “everything-has-two-sides” stance. I’ve taken to telling my college students, “no it doesn’t.”
I’m with @romanigypsyeyes Basically numb to it. Nothing surprises me anymore.
The “every issue has two valid sides” nonsense is seen everywhere. In my nursing forum, it has started creeping in on vaccination threads.
That is what moral relativism evolves into. Giving equal time to ridiculous suppositions. I remember the one thing I disagreed with my kids lower school education was the teachers belief that you should listen to kids all the way through and why they thought the wrong answer. To me that was just ingraining it further. The socratic method can be great, but not when you are 8 and need to know 2 + 2 = 4 and it doesn’t matter why you think it was 5, or that everyone is deserving of equal treatment. Teaching is a necessary and valuable profession, but it doesn’t always attract the best and the brightest.
@eyemamom Agree with the point about moral relativism. I would also add that too often bad administrators and bad, bad, bad public policy drive the best and brightest out of the profession. We attract some, but just can’t keep most of our brightest minds.
First, I think it’s stupid to try to get 4th graders to digest the breadth of slavery issues and respond analytically. They aren’t there yet.
But growing up outside Philadelphia, we had some degree of American history every other year, in lower school. It did go into frank depth- more, as we grew. (We also learned about the issues around “indentured servitude,” as well.) And did acknowledge the historical/economic positions of slavery defenders. But any question was never as simplistic (and perhaps, as misleading,) as asking for “good” reasons. Instead, it might have been about what the pro side claimed.
Asking a little kid to make what amounts to a value judgment on an issue this complex is wrong.
Actually, it’s not that complex. Slavery is wrong and evil. Period.
Now the question of how people were able to justify it to themselves, that’s a bit more complex.
My forth grade teacher once gave our class an assignment of imaging, and then writing about what our lives would be like if we lived in 18th century Williamsburg. Our elementary school had desegregated the a year earlier (finally!) after Virginia lawmakers and school districts had exhausted every method of resisting the Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. The Board of Education, which had been handed down three years before I was even born. The school was situated in the heart of the Williamsburg historic district. From the playground, if you propelled yourself high enough on the swings, you could momentarily peek over the Governor’s Palace wall into the gardens there, and see tourists. Our school was literally adjoined to the Palace Wall, and remains so today. Matthew Whaley School.
Colonial Williamsburg was the town’s main employer. Lots of kids had parents who were employed as “Interpreters” (today, I think they’re called “Cast Members”) for the Foundation. Both my mother and grandmother worked as Slave Kitchen Interpreters, with my grandmother actually retiring from the The CW Foundation after 25yrs. She interpreted for both the Governor’s Palace and The Peyton Randolph House. Given that backdrop to my childhood, I was well aware that any black child of that era would have been born into slavery. Given that I was always an extremely sensitive kid, the assignment really distressed me.
Funnily enough, even though those were charged times of rapidly changing racial and social dynamics, the subject of American slavery was fairly glossed over in our classroom. Instead we were passionately taught about the Great Patriots who were willing to die for the causes of “Equality” and “liberty” under The British Crown. Looking back, that was a pretty skilled high wire act. :-/
I remember thinking there wasn’t much I could write about other than the fact that I would have been a slave. We weren’t taught much of anything about the day to day lives of ordinary people, let alone slaves, so I don’t know what my teacher could have been thinking. My guess is, she was used to assigning this essay to past classes, which would have been full of white children, so she really didn’t take into account the fact that now thirty percent of her classroom population consisted of black children. She simply didn’t think.
Needless to say, my essay was pretty short. I think I wrote, “I would have been a slave.” I don’t remember my grade from that assignment.
What did they say was the main cause of the Civil War?
^^ Yes. The correct question would have been “How did people of the time justify slavery?” I think that is appropriate question when studying history. I think why matters - why people let Hitler rise to power, why did we imprison Japanese citizens, etc? Now as to 4th graders being analytical - sadly my D who teaches has to teach analytical writing to 3rd graders by standards and it is hard. Gone are the days when they can just learn to write a nice paragraph.
However, she teaches social studies which in our state 3rd grade is state history. It covers slavery. It would not be surprising for a student to ask “why did people think it was ok when we know it’s not?” That gets to the general idea that this teacher might have been going for (and missed badly.)
Well… or maybe, how did the white people of the time justify slavery? Because I’m pretty sure that the answer about how black people justified slavery is, they didn’t.
I understand discussing the reasons people used to justify slavery, since understanding how evils were allowed to exist in society is an important part of studying history (you know, so we don’t repeat it …) - but that discussion is not something appropriate for 4th graders. I do not and cannot understand ever asking anyone to give “good” reasons for slavery, and I cannot come up with any “good” reasons a teacher would ever pose this question.
They did write “good” in quotes and bad without quotes. “Good”, to make money, for example.
At first I didn’t notice the scare quotes. That makes a difference. But not enough of one. All “good” reasons for slavery are bad reasons for slavery.
“but that discussion is not something appropriate for 4th graders.”
I think 9 and 10 year olds are quite capable of understanding the history and moral issues of slavery. Many books targeting that age group deal with the issue like the Dear America series books and others which my kids read at a younger age than 4th grade. The American Girl dolls/books have Addy who was a Civil War era slave.
I’d argue that in a lot of ways the discussion should start that young or younger.
My initial reaction was this should not be any surprise in a world where he who shall remain nameless can say there are “good people on both sides” of the KKK.
But if putting the word “good” in quotes really was intended to convey the justification of white people at that time in history, and the teacher worded the thing in a way she didn’t actually mean, I think she needs additional sensitivity training. Unfortunately, you can’t always teach common sense.
I don’t think fourth grader’s have learned about quotes in that context yet. Without parental input, they would have taken the meaning of “good” literally.
Me neither, since so many adults don’t understand scare quotes. Or where not to put apostrophes.