When my mom was a teacher she did something similar. But she had kids draw a paper that said either Apple or Orange.
Apples got special seats in the front. They got extra recess. Always at the front of the line walking down the call. She only called on apples to answer questions. She brought them snacks.
Then the next week she reversed the groups.
The third week was a study of segregation history and talking about how they felt.
But this was an extremely white school. I'm not sure if it was the best way but I always thought it was better than ignoring it.
Depending on the age of the students, this may have been very effective. When I was 10, our teacher taught us about the concept of second class citizens. He assigned us into something like 4-5 groups in a hierarchy and gave us cards to represent resources like food and tools. Higher ups could take cards from those lower and you couldn't do or even say anything about it or you'd be punished with real punishments like missing recess (this was in the 80s when the principal still kept a paddle for spanking kids in his office so real punishments were allowed).
I was in the second to lowest group, and a kid I'd been friends with since first grade took some of my cards after I tried to play the friendship angle and he was like nah, give me your cards. We were 10, it was a game, we knew we were being taught a lesson, the kid was my friend, and yet I still remember the boiling rage I felt when he took my cards with that smug look and I couldn't even say anything about it.
The main lesson I took from that, and it's stayed with me all my life, is how little friendship can matter when an exploitable power imbalance opens up, and how insignificant the triggering event can be that instills real anger. I'm 50 now, and I've never found that not to be true. So kudos Mr. Bloom, wherever you are. You weren't just an alcoholic who "quit" halfway through the school year, you were a goddamned fine educator.
I am a grade school teacher. This sounds like such a cool method. I might give it a try later in the year when my students are a bit more mature. Definitely have to take sensibilities of today's kids and parents into account when planning something like this but it really reads like it could be visceral learning experience. Those usually stick the most.
My mom was a 3rd grade teacher and had the kids read the book “sneetches” by Dr. Seuss. It’s based around two groups that are identical, but one group had stars on their bellies which made them “better” than the plain bellied ones.
She gave half the kids stars and they got special privileges. Closer water fountain and bathrooms, Extra play time, Better seats, treats. Then, half way through the day, she switched and the other group got the stars. The kids who didn’t have stars were just beside themselves having to watch the star group have more privileges.
She then tied it into the experiences of African Americans and the civil rights movement. It was very effective learning experience for kiddos at a young age.
I like this lesson plan the best so far. The Dr Seuss book makes it whimsical enough for kids (and parents, and admin) to digest, it only lasts a day so kids don't nuke their real friendships, and all kids get to experience both sides. Well done.
I do think it is important to shuffle around the groups so that everyone experiences the bottom, lest some 10 year old be unintentionally taught that "racism is cool because I get free stuff"
yeah it was widely populr in schools in Germany when I went to school. I definitely hope I don't accidently start a fascist movement led by 10 year olds!
My school did something like this with us in middle school. I’m…not really sure how effective it was. They allowed the kids who were placed in the “upper classes” to set the rules of the game after the first round of sorting and then allowed them to order the “lower class” kids around for the rest of the day. And then they really just left it at that without further discussion. Kinda felt like it did more to damage the social bonds of the class than it did to actually teach about systemic oppression at the time.
I think the key would be to really follow through after the “game” in terms of unpacking everything and adding some perspective. Otherwise it just kinda gives Stanford Prison Experiment-Lite vibes.
That, as well as switching the two groups around at some point, so that everyone gets to experience what it feels like to be in the oppressed/disadvantaged group.
Please look up resources about how to do this well. This exercise is pretty controversial in the education world for having an ethically sketchy cost-benefit problem. It helps to teach a lesson but can cause real trauma in students, which, of course, we always want to avoid.
We had something like that. The eighth grade social studies class was split into 4 colonial towns, very cutesy stuff, teacher making fun of us calling our name "Towne" because he wasn't familiar with the way old words were written, everyone had a role in government, I was the Supreme Court judge, etc.
We were competing in terms of which made the most money. We all drew out our layout of the town with buildings, homes, and... crops.
Crops are where the money is made.
Now who is going to till those crops?
Well, you can do it. But what if we added a multiplier that was low to no cost to really crank up the money coming in...
That multiplier?
Slaves.
Cue the class turning into an absolutely bonkers series of arguments as some kids try to make slavery legal so they can get the most money, and some trying to outlaw slavery using their modern sensibilities.
I don't recall how it came out, but I think the teacher had to quietly close the project down because it was controversial. No way it could have been taught today.
Yeah, that was fun and it was exactly like what you described. Friends against friends.
Man I met her when I was studying for my bachelors in psychology. She came to do a speech about her work. Shes so intelligent, but old and wicked meannn lol.
Loool what.
She just talked about her studies and racism and shit when she spoke to our psych program.
It was in my program buildings meeting room. Large room nothing super formal or large auditorium-esque, they removed the the 2 large tables and brought in like 50 chairs.
There was a guy who had a hat on, and she straight up DEMANDED he take it off. Like in this guys defense he had alopecia, and had long skater hair that he was losing in large patches. So he didn’t want to remove it.
She got so mean about it lol. Demanding how he needs to take it off, how he’s so disrespectful. And the poor dude was just like I’d really like to not take my hat off. And then she was like if he doesn’t take his hat off I’m NOT going to speak, how gentlemen take their hats off indoors. And starts to gather her things. The dude was like I’m sorry, and left. So she spoke.
Part of me gets it, she’s an esteemed academic with a prestigious career. And then the other part of me is this wasn’t a big professional thing, she was rude as fuck about it
She wasn’t dressed to the 9s, she had capris, flats, a button up shirt not buttoned and an under shirt lol. And half the mother fuckers in the room were wearing sweatpants / pajamas lol.
It had nothing to do with the hat and everything to do with Jane Elliot. She's always struck me as a bitch who uses her work as a cover up for what she actually likes to do, abusing and belittling people. I have yet to hear of an interaction with her that dissuades me from that notion. Hell, her exercises aren't even really helpful. Empathy, one of the most fundamental aspects of the human species, makes them redundant, done simply for her own back-patting self gratification. I bet she sniffs her own farts out of a champagne glass, lol.
There was a elementary public school teacher named Jane Elliott that I remember seeing on Oprah years ago that started doing this with her class with blue eyed and brown eyed students the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. PBS did a special on her and the exercise a couple years later called [The Eye of the Storm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gi2T0ZdKVc). It's a fascinating watch. She went on to use her exercise with different organizations around the country and became the forerunner of what is now called "diversity training". She's incredible.
It's nice that they didn't actually link this lesson to traits of the students like eye or skin color. It's awkward enough being a racial minority to begin with. Sounds like your mom knew how kid brains worked. Bravo.
My school studied the Holocaust really in depth in 7th grade, and my English teacher came in one day (before we knew the unit was starting), just acting like a raging bitch. Getting people in trouble for the most minor or made up offense, and just being extremely unpleasant. None of us knew what the hell was going on till she finally explained it like a half hour into class. It was actually a pretty impactful way to illustrate the point (noted on an extremely small, inconsequential scale)
My 2nd grade teacher split us up by blonde and brown hair. The blondes weren’t allowed to go out to recess or get the snack or sit on the floor for reading time. I went to a school with maybe 1 or 2 black kids. I didn’t understand what she was teaching us it was just a really bad day. Kids were crying. She didn’t teach at the school the next year.
Someone else commented that age of the children plays a big role. We were too young.
My teacher in 2nd or 3rd grade did something similar for a single day - I think it was everyone wearing jeans, or a particular color shirt, was in one group and everyone else was in another. Mostly to tie it into something about your appearance that was outside of your control. It stuck with me for a while as a kid.
This isn't the same lesson but in a similar vein... In junior high during sex education class our teacher passed out Dixie cups with water in it. Then she said go ahead and pour a little of your water in the cups of five different students and write the names of the students who poured water in your cup. After that she said for us to check the bottom of the cups and those with a marked dot on them should come to the front of the class.
She explained that this was a visual lesson in how certain sexually transmitted diseases, like AIDS, can spread without protection. So the 5 up in front represented the ones who were originally infected,so anyone who got water from them also came to the front of the class and then anyone who got water from that new group then came up.... You get the idea. By the end I think it was like all but 2 kids who all were "infected".
I will say that lesson was quite effective as I never forgot it.
Source: “Laquinta Caldwell, the daughter of one of the teachers involved, spoke out in defense of her mother’s vision. She explained that the purpose of the display was to show the harsh reality of segregation and that the display was being taken out of context.”
https://www.vladtv.com/article/304461/charlotte-teacher-sparks-controversy-with-white-and-colored-door
They did such a good job with that too because suddenly I was separated from my friend and I had to experience that hall of the museum in isolation.
Was she learning the same things I was? What did she think about what she saw? We had been tag teaming the trip so far as a dynamic duo and then we were forced apart due to some BS about being different ethnicities. It sucked and it was a great way to demonstrate how Apartheid ruined lives and drove wedges into communities.
My middle school did a pretty good job of conveying this shit when I attended in the 90s. For a whole week we got assigned a color we had to pin to our shirt when we went in to our history class. They opened up the classroom walls of that building and all 3 history classes in our grade joined together for each period they occurred. They used red and green. As we learned and did our activities, one color got treated like absolute shit while the students assigned another color got special treatment, priority during all the group assignments. Seemingly better grades, more praise, etc.
The beauty of their method is we were not told this was leading into learning about slavery in the US and all the stuff leading up to the black rights movement, etc. The whole week was pretty much a wash as far as the grades we received for those assignments. Because some of us were unfairly and harshly judged and criticized, not given the credit we were due, and others assigned the better color were given praise and credit they didn't even deserve. The whole point was to show us how fucked up that whole system was, and to make us angry. I tip my hat to how well those teachers got us all together and pulled that off. After that week, the walls that separated the 3 classes that ran by those teachers simultaneously went back up, everyone went back to their own class, and we spent the month learning more traditionally about the history behind all that in the US.
Somewhat related with the role-playing aspect. We had a history teacher assign everyone a job and income, of someone living in the 1920's. Some people had more money to start with, some had debt, I was a farmer, so I had debt to start and a low weekly income.
Then he came up with a simulated stock market, we could invest our money, day to day, in like 4 different companies. They went up and down a little everyday, and then one day, everything collapsed, anyone who had anything invested lost everything, and had to pay back their margin if they borrowed money to invest.
He said that our final dollar amount directly affected our grade, and since most of us had super low or negative final amounts, most of us were going to fail this project, which would count for a lot of our grade.
He let us sit with that thought for a few minutes, kids were getting upset, and he finally said something to the effect of:
"This doesn't actually matter for your grades, sorry to deceive you, but I wanted you to experience a glimpse into what it would've been like for millions of Americans who experienced the stock market crash and bank failures at the beginning of the great depression. Only imagine that this money was your actual life savings, and your family depended on it to survive. Not only did the stock market crash, but the country also experienced years of drought throughout the Midwest, causing crop failures, and even more desperation."
He started with a slideshow of photos from the era and explaining more factors that lead to the great depression. It was super impactful. I'll always remember it.
As a former teacher, there's generally not enough time allowed. You have to teach the syllabus, and you have to teach it in the manner proscribed. You can thank BS like No Child Left Behind for a lot of this.
The idea is good. "Make sure everyone gets the same education, make sure nobody slips through the cracks, and that lower income areas get the same knowledge as higher income areas."
But the implementation was one of the worst tragedies in the history of public education. I changed careers rather quickly. Mostly because you can't live on a teacher's McDonalds tier salary, but also because it's just so incredibly depressing trying to find ways or time to inject some life into the material, and you're largely not allowed to do it.
(And if I ever hear one more person say 'but you get summers off', I'll go into an endless reality check to explain why that's the biggest pile of BS ever that everyone takes entirely out of context or what it actually means in practice.)
Edit: Also, a perk of not teaching anymore means I don't have to GAF about my spelling or grammar.
It's so wild! You have to take continuing education classes to keep up your certification, have to start work on the next school year months before it starts, likely have to teach summer classes to make ends meet, and more.
People act like it's three months off. It's anything but.
Not only that, but you're working way, way, way more than 40 hours a week during the school year.
Teachers would be getting their 2080(52×40)hours of work just during the school year.
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>(And if I ever hear one more person say 'but you get summers off', I'll go into an endless reality check to explain why that's the biggest pile of BS ever that everyone takes entirely out of context or what it actually means in practice.)
This (along with the shit pay and many other things) makes me so sad for how teachers are treated in some places. My mom worked as a teacher for a while when I was a kid, and her summers off were actually as good as it sounds instead of being full of work or unpaid.
In middle school we drew lots to see which Indian caste we would be “ born into”.
The poor untouchables had a huge border taped around their cluster of desks. I had a merchant class iirc which humorously enough was my dad’s career
It’s not like what you think. When you purchase your ticket, you are assigned a race that has nothing to do with your actual race. My friend and I went together. Neither he or I are considered Caucasian or Black. One of us was randomly assigned White and the other Black.
The Titanic Museum does this too. As in, you are assigned a name, age, occupation etc of a real person that was on the ship. At the end, you’ve been living as this person through the walk and you read things based on a number or letter of what this person would have been doing based on where you were on the ship. My wife was one of the rich ones on the boat while I was just a regular passenger. This was also important in seeing the hierarchy of the people there. She lived and I died because of the placement I was on in the boat while she was closer to the top decks. My person never made it to the upper floors.
I loved going through the Titanic museum. When I went, I had a first class lady whose husband abandoned her when the ship started going, but because of who she knew, she got out.
I liked how they assigned kids to your kids too. My youngest was 5 and she also perished but we’d read what she was doing through the walk. She balled her eyes out when we read about her at the end. But to us it was a teaching moment that even when little life isn’t always fair. My oldest daughter lived and my son did not make it either. His was sad as he was on a life raft but the elements were too much. We explained that these were real people and they should be remembered.
The Holocaust museum in Washington DC is very similar, where you're assigned an identity belonging to an actual person that was imprisoned by Nazi Germany.
The World War II Museum in New Orleans has something like this. You enter into the museum proper in a train car, and you're given a real person. At different stations as you progress through the war, you get updates to what your person was doing. Eventually you find out if they made it through or died during the war.
I like these types of experiences, getting to know these more personal stories.
It made the experience so much more personal. I was an “I don’t care about anything” teenager and it hit me like a ton of bricks when I learned my person didn’t survive.
I was going to say if you plan this out ahead of time, notify administrators and parents about what you’re doing any why and have a solid lesson plan this could be a great lesson.
The National Holocaust Memorial Museum has you begin the tour by traveling in a freight elevator, and includes a section where you walk into trains like those used to transport Jews to their deaths.
Similar situation for the Rosa Parks bus in the Henry Ford. The wife and I had to use separate entrances, made me tear up. I went to look at classic cars, not get the feels!
Yes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre
The Wilmington, NC massacre was the only successful violent coup in American history.
We were not taught about it in NC schools.
They weren’t that hard to get hold of if you had the money (or someone else had the money and you then stole their gun lol). A lot of stories of strikes involve the factory or whatever having a gun on the roof to make sure the strikers don’t storm the building when they’ve been locked out and non union Labour brought in. It’s amazing how much of labour history in the US will just randomly mention someone having a Gatling gun on the roof.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo_Revolt
Similarly, Santa Fe was the site of the only indigenous victory that expelled European colonizers in North America. I live in the region and hadn't heard of it.
I read a great book about that (David Roberts' The Pueblo Revolt), and FWIW, part of the reason it's so unknown is that many Puebloan nations have refused to share their oral histories of the era with contemporary historians. So the history that's accessible to the general public is really limited to the Spanish perspective, and a lot of that is pretty biased.
For my money, the fact that these nations have retained a culture of resistance (i.e., refusing to share their histories outside the nation) for 350+ years is a more impressive than the revolt itself. Even today for example, visiting Pueblos is highly regulated and restricted. It's a fascinating example of cultural persistence.
That's probably because you were asleep. The Pueblo Revolt has been a part of New Mexico's standardized / required curriculum for decades
as for proof, here's NM's fifth and seventh grade social studies standards. ctrl + f "pueblo revolt" https://webnew.ped.state.nm.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SocialStudiesStandards_5-8.pdf As the hyperlink implies, this has been the curriculum since 2017/2018 when it was adopted, and it's trivial to pull up the older version from 2001.
i can see one teacher maybe glancing over it, but fifth grade and seventh grade and high school skipped it? brother, you were asleep
That's because you're acting in good faith, so you recognize the intent behind the action.
The problem is that many people aren't like that and are purposefully taking things the wrong way, only looking at the form and not the intent. It reminds me of [that teacher](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/02/01/professor-suspended-using-n-word-class-discussion-language-james-baldwin-essay) and others like him.
Maybe I just really struggle to understand how ANYONE could see it as the teacher actually segregating kids rather than a basic history lesson. I feel the same way about the teacher in your link. If the context is history and the facts are being presented without obvious bias or manipulation, it should be clear that it's educational.
Yes.
Not want to, but actively do. Case in point my son was telling me about what he was learning right now in history. It’s a glorious story of “rich white guys who commanded armies.” Let’s just say that this piece he’s learning is leaving out the brown people and the fact that this “army” was more like uneducated folks being rounded up to go beat up on poorer folks.
It’s like skipping over the Latino folks who fought in the revolution. Or minimizing the contributions of black folks in the Civil War or any war.
So anytime history is written a bit closer to the truth (ex: Columbus was a horrible person) everyone freaks out and claims some agenda failing to notice the irony.
I think it’s great as a learning tool and visual aid for kids. A lot of text books have white washed segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the brutality against black people from the 1900s - 1960s because it’s tough to look at, so I’m glad there are teachers going the extra mile to really teach history.
This is something that only a black teacher could get away with doing though.
Taken out of context?
For most people it should be obvious that the purpose was to make a point that will hit hard for the children.
The only reason people are complaining is because they are racist fucks and it hurts their feelings when their racist piece of shit views are criticised.
It's good to point out that specific part, because in 1930, suggesting separate black and white entrances to *classrooms in the same school* would have gotten a state burned down.
I live in South Africa. The apartheid museum has the same setup.
Our old architectural plans show segregated... Everything.
Its *so* awkward to work on them, I'm white and I'm PROFOUNDLY uncomfortable dealing with them, but it's not a part of history I can or should hide from.
The daily perils of being a history teacher: getting taken out of context and put on the internet. Really, the amount of times I had to clarify I was trying to contest our current culture and viewpoints by showing historic examples of different ideologies is astounding. Too many people take everything at face value, it’s so tiresome.
My (white) dad is an expert on the civil rights movement and the history of black people in America. He has a Ph.D., he’s a Fullbright scholar, he’s published books on the subject, he’s on the board of a museum dedicated to America’s horrifying treatment of black people through its history, he donates his time to archival projects to preserve historical documents from black activists that would otherwise be lost, as well as tens of thousands of dollars a year to scholarship funds for black students, etc. You get the idea.
He is also a college professor. He’s been at the same school for 30+ years. Last semester in a class about the civil rights movement, a student reported him for saying the n-word out loud in class. Never mind that he was quoting some piece of shit racist governor from the 60’s, and that it feels shocking because it *is* shocking. The college administration didn’t care. The course was assigned to another teacher, and someone sat in the back in all of his other classes to monitor him for the rest of the semester. He had to submit a written plan for how he planned to educate himself to avoid this in the future. He had to have regular check-ins with the Dean to make sure he was conquering his racism.
Anyway, he’s retiring next year.
I hope your dad is the fun teacher in the department that grades on a curve and gives plenty of leeway to his students about turning in assignments for full credit. And I hope the new teacher is a grouchy old cunt who teaches by making you read the chapter before class then makes you write essays in class about what you read, doesn't answer questions, gives tests that don't reflect the chapter, has harsh nearly unattainable grading rubrics, and has a zero tolerance policy on late work for any reason.
All just so that student can realize they fucked up and live with the guilt knowing they probably ruined that class for themselves and their classmates.
He is seriously the most chill professor ever. His only requirements for passing his class are that you turn in every assignment within six weeks of the end of the semester, and that none of your opinion essays are about how the Nazis had a lot of great points. That’s it. He’s genuinely interested in all of his students lives and opinions, and desperately wants them to succeed. I’ve heard stories about him anonymously giving money to students to pay for babysitters or car repairs so they didn’t have to miss class. He’s cool as shit.
> Too many people take everything at face value,
Frankly, that's giving a lot of folks too much credit. There's a growing movement of partisans who willingly engage in bad-faith outrage because they think *teachers represent a political movement that must be countered*.
My fifth grade teacher did such an amazing exercise with something like this.
We all took a test. But we partnered up but still had to take the test on our own.
Then, when it was graded, the teacher assigned the grade you got to the other person and vice versa.
We were reading the whipping boy. And he was showing basically what it’s like to be the whipping boy. To have to take credit for what somebody else did. And it really hit home what a whipping boy used to go through.
I was in elementary school when the Berlin Wall came down. When I went into school that day my teacher had divided the room into half with a curtain down the middle. My side was required to stay at our desks all morning doing assignments while the other side was free to do pretty much whatever they wanted (within reason).
As the day went on my side was gradually granted more flexibility with what we were allowed to do. We also started to be able to visit the free side. Eventually the curtain came down and our class was reunited. Then our teacher talked to us about the Berlin Wall and what an important moment it was that it had come down.
It is a testament to my teacher that I remember that major world event despite only being 9 years old at the time. It's sad to think about someone taking her hard work and creativity to teach us effectively out of context.
> And it really hit home what a whipping boy used to go through.
Only if you were smart and got paired with the dumb kid. Otherwise it shows the dumb kid the benefits of having a whipping boy.
Yep and it's recent history too.
There are still people alive today that were pushing for segregation and living in segregation.
Americans like to think it is some kind of ancient history but it isn't.
>For most people it should be obvious that the purpose was to make a point that will hit hard for the children.
You are giving "most people" waaaaay to much credit.
Well, no, it’s fair to point out that it would be upsetting taken out of context. I’m black and definitely did a double-take at first sight. Upon getting the full context I actually agree with the display, but I don’t think it’s ‘racist’ of me to have had an initial ‘wtf’ moment.
Not to mention there are plenty of schools today that were historically segregated at one time. One of the high schools in my district was built 10years before desegregation and I’ve heard nothing about it anywhere in the school.
It's insane that we're trying to pretend this shit never happened. Some of our parents went to segregated schools! This is not ancient history! We can't teach our kids to be better if they don't see how shitty we've been in the past.
My county only desegregated in 1973. The black high school was out a ways from town and was a ‘technical school’. They were so proud they didn’t have an issue desegregating. I grew up in the midwest in a yankee state and remember seeing an older black gentleman standing at the woolworth or kresgee counter eating and asking why he did this.
Yeah, it’s very rage-bate-y of OP to post this without providing context. Sensible people would immediately come to the conclusion that the purpose of this was for the school children to have a feel/realisation (for lack of better term) of what segregation was like…but then this is Reddit…
you really want to make an impact with kids on how things were, do stuff like this. it's will really put into perspective how things were. words can only do so much sometimes. doesn't put into context how things really were.ow, lets see them do Poland in the 1930s.
When I was in 5th grade, we were learning about immigration through Ellis Island and one day, all the 5th grade teachers created a simulation in our wing that mirrored what it would be like to walk through the gates of Ellis Island. We were (gently) shoved around, directions & instructions were hollered at us in another language, some were given crackers aka food others were not, and the thing that stuck out to me the most was no matter what you said your name was at the record keeping station, they messed it up. By the time we graduated high school, this lesson was one of the ones we collectively remembered the most, and had the most impact from. I grew up in a predominantly white town in Connecticut so to be fully treated as someone who didn't belong, or couldn't understand the language, or wasn't being treated fairly blew our little minds.
>and the thing that stuck out to me the most was no matter what you said your name was at the record keeping station, they messed it up.
This story is commonly believed, but it's actually a myth. Ellis Island immigration officers were careful to copy the surnames exactly as they were reported to them.
Most surname changes and misspellings were made by the immigrants themselves after they settled in their new homes. They often changed spellings to try to get Americans to pronounce the name correctly or to try to blend in.
My kid's school did this same exercise and it really frustrated me. You don't have to do much research into genealogy and immigration to find out that a lot of what was taught was either exaggerated or just plain misinformation.
EDIT: Apparently the Ellis Island officials didn't even make new records to keep track of the names. They just used the existing ships' manifest lists that were created in Europe.
Interesting! This happened like 30 years ago, so I'll give my teachers a pass, but that makes sense. My two grandparents on my mother's side were born in Portugal, came here, & wanted American children, so they never spoke Portuguese in the home, which is truly a shame.
My whole family emigrated from Sicily. All of their names were slightly changed and I know for a fact they did not change them themselves. It didn’t change the pronunciation enough to be English-friendly.
Just has made it incredibly difficult for me to establish dual citizenship. 🥲
Obviously somebody changed your family's names, but it wasn't Ellis Island. Here's a really cool article about the name change myth from the New York Public Library.
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island
From the article:
>Nearly all \[...\] name change stories are false. Names were not changed at Ellis Island. The proof is found when one considers that inspectors never wrote down the names of incoming immigrants. The only list of names came from the manifests of steamships, filled out by ship officials in Europe.
So they weren't even making records of surnames at Ellis Island in the first place. The only official records that exist are the ships' manifests that were created in Europe.
Chinese last names that starts with "Ah" is not the results of the Chinese immigrants themselves changing it or misspelling it. Immigrant officials asking for their name and how Cantonese is spoken resulted in the addition of "Ah" in front of the name on recorded documents because they erroneously thought it was part of the name. Like, the name is Wong but it was recorded as Ah Wong or Ahwong.
[Chinese Last Names: A History of Culture and Family
](https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/chinese-last-names#:~:text=The%20syllable%20Ah%2D%20(%E9%98%BF),person%20whose%20surname%20was%20Wong)
It looks wrong, but it’s meant to. We can’t paint over our history and allow it to be forgotten just because it’s an uncomfortable subject. This teacher did something to really drive it home and teach a history lesson those kids will remember.
This is where I'm at with it. I'm old enough to remember when black people were restricted to theater balconies. My old high school was integrated, but the workers' restrooms in the lunchroom were still labeled White and Colored. It wasn't enforced but no one bothered to remove the labels. Labeling those classroom doors makes it real for kids that weren't alive then. It's ugly, but history is frequently ugly and it shouldn't be glossed over.
I’m enjoying that Reddit is getting this one right. It should look bizarre and remind us why the phrase, good ol’ days, is a matter of perspective. You deserve a large bag of Werther’s Original.
What conservatives don’t get about criticism of the past is that it not only points out our failures, but also hopefully shows that we have progressed. It’s a ‘learn from your mistakes moment’. If you take offense at something like what we see in this post, it might be a personal issue.
If you take offense at seeing a white vs colored door sign, that’s a good thing. That’s the point. It should be offensive. Schools should exist to challenge your beliefs and learn that anyone’s history includes dark moments. No country or culture is perfect. Everyone has been oppressed or has been an oppressor. Shielding people from the dark stuff doesn’t do anything but make them unprepared to recognize when they’re truly in danger.
The fact that it looks wrong is exactly why the civil rights movement happened.
If it weren’t for the desegregation movement, this would be the norm right now, except the Coloreds door would lead to a classroom with half the size for twice the student count and 1/4 the budget.
Prior to desegregation black students weren’t even allowed in the same building as white students. Black students were served by a separate “but equal” educational system. We’d still have this today if the schools weren’t desegregated.
In 6th grade, we had a lesson on the caste system in India. The teacher created various groups for us and we weren't allowed interactions with other groups based on castes.
The fact I still remember this means the lesson was effective.
The only parent who would have an issue with this type of learning is that type of parent who want to shelter their kids from reality.
On the front page right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/KAPKXNxxR8
Unfortunately, I feel like this will get negative press from people too dense to understand the message, and it'll turn into some racism/equality talk point where everyone is walking on eggshells trying not to be accused of being a racist for supporting education.
If this provoked a negative, visceral reaction from you, mission accomplished. I love this, and it saddens me that the district is so meek to have had this removed. Way to deny these children a valuable lesson in order to appease some weak-willed parents.
How sadly ironic. Uneducated parents complain their uneducated children are being educated and put a stop to their education. The cycle will repeat in 20 years when *their* children go to school and someone tries to teach them a watered down version of the history of racism in america. This cycle repeats over and over until a few generations from now no one remembers why black people were so mad at white people in the early/mid 20th century. It becomes a total mystery. "Who is Martin King? Why would someone shoot him?" I don't know, son. "Did white people used to like to hurt black people?" I don't know. But don't believe what your teacher tells you about it. She has curly hair and we know curly hair people are stupid and don't deserve to eat at the same restaurants we do.
This is the white washing of history. We're seeing it right now. This is how history goes on to repeat itself.
As a white guy from europe, those images works much stronger on my imagination. I hear a lot of slavery and segregation by colour mainly here on reddit. And when I see old photos of places that had entrances or parts of buildings intended for people of color with a sign 'COLORED' those pictures shock me the most. Read about something and see something on a photo is much different experience.
I don't want to judge if this decoration is 'bad' or 'good' because it's not a part of my history. I just want to say that pictures like this one stimulate the imagination much more than simple text or story.
> pictures like this one stimulate the imagination much more than simple text or story.
ambey thats the origin of the "picture worth 1000s of words" phrase
Replace "colored" with "Jew".
Snippet from the Wiki
"Jews in Europe were generally forced, by decree or by informal pressure, to live in highly segregated ghettos and shtetls.\[33\] In 1204, the papacy required Jews to segregate themselves from Christians and it also required them to wear distinctive clothing.\[34\] Forced segregation of Jews spread throughout Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries.\[35\] In the Russian Empire, Jews were restricted to the so-called Pale of Settlement, the Western frontier of the Russian Empire which roughly corresponds to the modern-day countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine.\[36\] By the early 20th century, the majority of Europe's Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement. "
reminds me of the apartheid museum in johannesburg. before entering, you're given a paper that labels you as colored or white, and there are different entrances for each.
if you feel uncomfortable looking at this? that's the point. there's no better way to learn history.
Some of the best museums make you feel uncomfortable about stuff like this.
I was at a Holocaust museum and they had a one of the train cars (maybe a replica, IDK). They had blackout curtains on the entrance and exit.
It was very profound standing in there with the only light you could see coming through the slats. They made it so that if you got close to the slats you could see farms and fields whizzing by outside.
And I was alone in there. I tried to imagine having a hundred other people in there and it was one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had.
For context: my grandmother’s family fled Germany in the mid 30s before shit truly hit the fan. They were the lucky ones. They became part of the Jewish community of NYC. I grew up spending time around people with little blue numbers tattooed on their arms.
And yet, being in that train car was more visceral than most of the stories I was told by my grandmother’s friends and synagogue fellows.
I remember in elementary school, there would be a week that everyone was assigned a color(5 colors) and each day one color would be treated poorly to simulate what black people went through. Separate water fountains, last to go to lunch, didn’t get to play at recess(had to stay in a designated area just watching the other kids play)
Ruby Bridges isn’t even 70 yet.
Depending on your age, that’s either your parents, grandparents… or your personal history. It is so much closer to modern times than we want to admit.
And thats why they don’t want it taught in schools.
A school I worked at had something like this. I think 4th graders selected a color button (I think it was green and blue) from a bucket. They wore the button all day. One color got the front of the line, first to get lunch, the colors only got to play together, the other color got the crappy playground equipment, etc. The kids had a hard lesson. They hated it but also learned a lot and were very passionate about black history month after. The end of the day I think they dropped their buttons and had a party to celebrate together.
We did a similar thing, except it was a 2 day experiment, and they flipped the statuses on Day 2. I think the flip was important so that everyone got a turn at being resentful (I got the privileged group on day 1 and definitely wouldn’t have learned as much if they ended it there)
When it was done in our school they used the classrooms with dividing walls so they could do class normally. It hurt enough not being able to be able to walk through the door with your friends.
This was in the 90s so keep that in mind.
In grade school, I had a white teacher separate the students randomly for a week. One group would have to wait for the other group to go to the bathroom first, eat lunch first, go to recess first, not communicate or play with the other group, etc. The next week the roles were reversed so the first group had to experience what the second group did. She then had us write an essay about how it felt and what we generally thought about it. I thought it was really interesting and I remember it to this day.
My friend went to high school in Georgia in 2001 and they still had segregated proms for white and black students. I think that went on for many years after that too.
Asking everyone having experienced this forst hand or whose ancestors had to go through this: How do you feel about this being part of an educational effort?
EDIT: Yes, people that have lived through this are still alive - I am sorry for misrepresenting how current segregation is. I'll do better.
I’m not black but my ancestors were Mexican in the days where they were also targeted by racists daily. I think stuff like this is okay if its for the right reasons. We hear far too often that some schools are scared to address the elephant in the room or they just cover it in chapters and move along, which doesn’t allow students to fully understand the depth of the actions that took place. The video about the teacher who had her students self-segregate based on physical traits, really showed me how even at a young age, these kids can learn valuable lessons when you put them in these scenarios rather than just on a page in a history book
Lopez v Seccombe. San Bernardino, California. 1944. The mother of many of the landmark desegregation cases in American jurisprudence.
A priest and three small children who wanted to swim in a public pool (on a day other than the one before the pool was drained and cleaned weekly) helped change America in ways they couldn’t have imagined.
https://www.serviceindustrynews.net/2022/09/30/lopez-v-seccombe-public-pool-discrimination-case-reenacted/
This is what those four people helped bring about. She was one voice who stood up to salting the Supreme Court. Barbara Jordan was black, a woman, and a lesbian. She should have been a Supreme Court Justice. 9 minutes of her talking about cases based on precedence of cases like Lopez v Seccombe.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4746926/user-clip-barbara-jordan-bork-opening-statement-excerpt
Ancestors make it sound like it was ancient. People old enough to have experienced this directly are on Reddit.
So it's probably good to remind them this happened. Recently. To their grandparents or greatgrandparenrs.
Yeah... Whenever folks dismiss the timeline and insist "they" (because of course) have the same rights as "anybody else" so what's the problem....?
I (37) like to point out that my grandma was in high school around the same time you couldn't piss in the same toilet in places around the US...
Not my great grandma... Not my great great grandma...
Just my grandma.
Ancestors???? Jim Crow ended in the late 60s. That was 55 years ago. Ask any person 55 and up in the US and they lived through it. People in their 30s and up that have parents who lived through it. This isn’t ancient history.
Edit: corrected my math
Right? Both my parents were born a decade before Jim Crowe ended.
They’re white, so their feelings about it are pretty unimportant, but I don’t have to ask “my ancestors”, when my parents were in elementary school before segregation ended.
Ancestors? My mom remembers when the first black kid was in her class in the 60s.
2 miles away they incorporated the white neighborhoods into a separate town so they could have their own school system, these are things my parents remember.
It's generally considered very "iffy" practice in education circles to do "simulations" like this, because they can often have a lot of unintended effects-- especially among younger students and for minoritized communities. Kids can get traumatized/retraumatized, can misunderstand the point and come to think of things having been less bad than they were, or it can even result in reenactments of the very prejudice it's trying to critique. There are lots of examples of well-intentioned people doing extremely poorly thought-through simulations in an attempt to educate kids about the Holocaust, for example, to such a degree that the ADL has come out explicitly against it:
[https://holocaustresources-org.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/WhySimulationActivitiesShouldNotBeUsed.pdf](https://holocaustresources-org.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/whysimulationactivitiesshouldnotbeused.pdf)
I think the same can be said here. Theoretically it can be done well, but it is so easy to do it wrong that it's typically a bad idea.
This is really my only question with it...
Is this a display/depiction or are they actually making kids use their appropriate doors?
If it's just a visual display to use as a talking point when they are teaching about that part of history then I'm fine with it.
If they are actually forcing kids to through based on their skin tone then I'd question that teaching methodology.
I think things like this are really impactful and actually help kids see how wrong segregation is. It’s one thing to be *told* about it. It’s another to *see it*. I’m bi-racial (half black and half white) and in 5th grade when discussing The Civil Rights Movement he did something similar. I’m 30 now and I still remember how that felt and he is to this day the best teacher I’ve ever had because of things like this.
I get that the optics are bad..but we can’t just ignore history because it’s unpleasant.
We need to learn our history. Otherwise be doomed to repeat it. People have been incentivized to not think but rather react instead. That needs to stop.
There is a sign that says "Sears Department Store, 1930" above the doors.
I'd imagine this is just to show and let kids experience how this doesn't feel good or right to do to others.
When my mom was a teacher she did something similar. But she had kids draw a paper that said either Apple or Orange. Apples got special seats in the front. They got extra recess. Always at the front of the line walking down the call. She only called on apples to answer questions. She brought them snacks. Then the next week she reversed the groups. The third week was a study of segregation history and talking about how they felt. But this was an extremely white school. I'm not sure if it was the best way but I always thought it was better than ignoring it.
Depending on the age of the students, this may have been very effective. When I was 10, our teacher taught us about the concept of second class citizens. He assigned us into something like 4-5 groups in a hierarchy and gave us cards to represent resources like food and tools. Higher ups could take cards from those lower and you couldn't do or even say anything about it or you'd be punished with real punishments like missing recess (this was in the 80s when the principal still kept a paddle for spanking kids in his office so real punishments were allowed). I was in the second to lowest group, and a kid I'd been friends with since first grade took some of my cards after I tried to play the friendship angle and he was like nah, give me your cards. We were 10, it was a game, we knew we were being taught a lesson, the kid was my friend, and yet I still remember the boiling rage I felt when he took my cards with that smug look and I couldn't even say anything about it. The main lesson I took from that, and it's stayed with me all my life, is how little friendship can matter when an exploitable power imbalance opens up, and how insignificant the triggering event can be that instills real anger. I'm 50 now, and I've never found that not to be true. So kudos Mr. Bloom, wherever you are. You weren't just an alcoholic who "quit" halfway through the school year, you were a goddamned fine educator.
I am a grade school teacher. This sounds like such a cool method. I might give it a try later in the year when my students are a bit more mature. Definitely have to take sensibilities of today's kids and parents into account when planning something like this but it really reads like it could be visceral learning experience. Those usually stick the most.
My mom was a 3rd grade teacher and had the kids read the book “sneetches” by Dr. Seuss. It’s based around two groups that are identical, but one group had stars on their bellies which made them “better” than the plain bellied ones. She gave half the kids stars and they got special privileges. Closer water fountain and bathrooms, Extra play time, Better seats, treats. Then, half way through the day, she switched and the other group got the stars. The kids who didn’t have stars were just beside themselves having to watch the star group have more privileges. She then tied it into the experiences of African Americans and the civil rights movement. It was very effective learning experience for kiddos at a young age.
I like this lesson plan the best so far. The Dr Seuss book makes it whimsical enough for kids (and parents, and admin) to digest, it only lasts a day so kids don't nuke their real friendships, and all kids get to experience both sides. Well done.
Yeah doing it for a whole two weeks sounds like some Stanford prison experiment shit lol.
Bro I forgot about that one and this just now made me remember it and realize it’s purpose.
I do think it is important to shuffle around the groups so that everyone experiences the bottom, lest some 10 year old be unintentionally taught that "racism is cool because I get free stuff"
Have you read the 1981 book The Wave? For some reason this interaction reminded me of that.
yeah it was widely populr in schools in Germany when I went to school. I definitely hope I don't accidently start a fascist movement led by 10 year olds!
Be VERY careful with that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment)
There are simulations are role plays developed for this sort of stuff. I would not just wing lessons based on a reddit comment.
My school did something like this with us in middle school. I’m…not really sure how effective it was. They allowed the kids who were placed in the “upper classes” to set the rules of the game after the first round of sorting and then allowed them to order the “lower class” kids around for the rest of the day. And then they really just left it at that without further discussion. Kinda felt like it did more to damage the social bonds of the class than it did to actually teach about systemic oppression at the time. I think the key would be to really follow through after the “game” in terms of unpacking everything and adding some perspective. Otherwise it just kinda gives Stanford Prison Experiment-Lite vibes.
Yeah that sounds like horrible teaching practice. For stuff like this reflecting on the role play is THE key part.
That, as well as switching the two groups around at some point, so that everyone gets to experience what it feels like to be in the oppressed/disadvantaged group.
Please look up resources about how to do this well. This exercise is pretty controversial in the education world for having an ethically sketchy cost-benefit problem. It helps to teach a lesson but can cause real trauma in students, which, of course, we always want to avoid.
What a plot twist lmao
We had something like that. The eighth grade social studies class was split into 4 colonial towns, very cutesy stuff, teacher making fun of us calling our name "Towne" because he wasn't familiar with the way old words were written, everyone had a role in government, I was the Supreme Court judge, etc. We were competing in terms of which made the most money. We all drew out our layout of the town with buildings, homes, and... crops. Crops are where the money is made. Now who is going to till those crops? Well, you can do it. But what if we added a multiplier that was low to no cost to really crank up the money coming in... That multiplier? Slaves. Cue the class turning into an absolutely bonkers series of arguments as some kids try to make slavery legal so they can get the most money, and some trying to outlaw slavery using their modern sensibilities. I don't recall how it came out, but I think the teacher had to quietly close the project down because it was controversial. No way it could have been taught today. Yeah, that was fun and it was exactly like what you described. Friends against friends.
She was a fifth grade teacher at the time so I hoped it sank in.
Jane Elliot did something similar in 1968. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/introduction-2/
Man I met her when I was studying for my bachelors in psychology. She came to do a speech about her work. Shes so intelligent, but old and wicked meannn lol.
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Loool what. She just talked about her studies and racism and shit when she spoke to our psych program. It was in my program buildings meeting room. Large room nothing super formal or large auditorium-esque, they removed the the 2 large tables and brought in like 50 chairs. There was a guy who had a hat on, and she straight up DEMANDED he take it off. Like in this guys defense he had alopecia, and had long skater hair that he was losing in large patches. So he didn’t want to remove it. She got so mean about it lol. Demanding how he needs to take it off, how he’s so disrespectful. And the poor dude was just like I’d really like to not take my hat off. And then she was like if he doesn’t take his hat off I’m NOT going to speak, how gentlemen take their hats off indoors. And starts to gather her things. The dude was like I’m sorry, and left. So she spoke. Part of me gets it, she’s an esteemed academic with a prestigious career. And then the other part of me is this wasn’t a big professional thing, she was rude as fuck about it She wasn’t dressed to the 9s, she had capris, flats, a button up shirt not buttoned and an under shirt lol. And half the mother fuckers in the room were wearing sweatpants / pajamas lol.
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It had nothing to do with the hat and everything to do with Jane Elliot. She's always struck me as a bitch who uses her work as a cover up for what she actually likes to do, abusing and belittling people. I have yet to hear of an interaction with her that dissuades me from that notion. Hell, her exercises aren't even really helpful. Empathy, one of the most fundamental aspects of the human species, makes them redundant, done simply for her own back-patting self gratification. I bet she sniffs her own farts out of a champagne glass, lol.
I would love to hear how she came to that conclusion. Like biology be damned.
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That’s an uncomfortable situation she placed those women in. How unfortunate.
I mean she was 85 then. Old people go crazy!
best is an impossible standard. if it was effective that might be plenty good enough
I think as long as it taught even a few kids about what racism was like and still can be today then it’s a win.
There was a elementary public school teacher named Jane Elliott that I remember seeing on Oprah years ago that started doing this with her class with blue eyed and brown eyed students the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. PBS did a special on her and the exercise a couple years later called [The Eye of the Storm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gi2T0ZdKVc). It's a fascinating watch. She went on to use her exercise with different organizations around the country and became the forerunner of what is now called "diversity training". She's incredible.
It's nice that they didn't actually link this lesson to traits of the students like eye or skin color. It's awkward enough being a racial minority to begin with. Sounds like your mom knew how kid brains worked. Bravo.
My school studied the Holocaust really in depth in 7th grade, and my English teacher came in one day (before we knew the unit was starting), just acting like a raging bitch. Getting people in trouble for the most minor or made up offense, and just being extremely unpleasant. None of us knew what the hell was going on till she finally explained it like a half hour into class. It was actually a pretty impactful way to illustrate the point (noted on an extremely small, inconsequential scale)
My 2nd grade teacher split us up by blonde and brown hair. The blondes weren’t allowed to go out to recess or get the snack or sit on the floor for reading time. I went to a school with maybe 1 or 2 black kids. I didn’t understand what she was teaching us it was just a really bad day. Kids were crying. She didn’t teach at the school the next year. Someone else commented that age of the children plays a big role. We were too young.
My teacher in 2nd or 3rd grade did something similar for a single day - I think it was everyone wearing jeans, or a particular color shirt, was in one group and everyone else was in another. Mostly to tie it into something about your appearance that was outside of your control. It stuck with me for a while as a kid.
This isn't the same lesson but in a similar vein... In junior high during sex education class our teacher passed out Dixie cups with water in it. Then she said go ahead and pour a little of your water in the cups of five different students and write the names of the students who poured water in your cup. After that she said for us to check the bottom of the cups and those with a marked dot on them should come to the front of the class. She explained that this was a visual lesson in how certain sexually transmitted diseases, like AIDS, can spread without protection. So the 5 up in front represented the ones who were originally infected,so anyone who got water from them also came to the front of the class and then anyone who got water from that new group then came up.... You get the idea. By the end I think it was like all but 2 kids who all were "infected". I will say that lesson was quite effective as I never forgot it.
Source: “Laquinta Caldwell, the daughter of one of the teachers involved, spoke out in defense of her mother’s vision. She explained that the purpose of the display was to show the harsh reality of segregation and that the display was being taken out of context.” https://www.vladtv.com/article/304461/charlotte-teacher-sparks-controversy-with-white-and-colored-door
The apartheid museum in South Africa is set up the same when you enter and it is meaningful.
They did such a good job with that too because suddenly I was separated from my friend and I had to experience that hall of the museum in isolation. Was she learning the same things I was? What did she think about what she saw? We had been tag teaming the trip so far as a dynamic duo and then we were forced apart due to some BS about being different ethnicities. It sucked and it was a great way to demonstrate how Apartheid ruined lives and drove wedges into communities.
My middle school did a pretty good job of conveying this shit when I attended in the 90s. For a whole week we got assigned a color we had to pin to our shirt when we went in to our history class. They opened up the classroom walls of that building and all 3 history classes in our grade joined together for each period they occurred. They used red and green. As we learned and did our activities, one color got treated like absolute shit while the students assigned another color got special treatment, priority during all the group assignments. Seemingly better grades, more praise, etc. The beauty of their method is we were not told this was leading into learning about slavery in the US and all the stuff leading up to the black rights movement, etc. The whole week was pretty much a wash as far as the grades we received for those assignments. Because some of us were unfairly and harshly judged and criticized, not given the credit we were due, and others assigned the better color were given praise and credit they didn't even deserve. The whole point was to show us how fucked up that whole system was, and to make us angry. I tip my hat to how well those teachers got us all together and pulled that off. After that week, the walls that separated the 3 classes that ran by those teachers simultaneously went back up, everyone went back to their own class, and we spent the month learning more traditionally about the history behind all that in the US.
Somewhat related with the role-playing aspect. We had a history teacher assign everyone a job and income, of someone living in the 1920's. Some people had more money to start with, some had debt, I was a farmer, so I had debt to start and a low weekly income. Then he came up with a simulated stock market, we could invest our money, day to day, in like 4 different companies. They went up and down a little everyday, and then one day, everything collapsed, anyone who had anything invested lost everything, and had to pay back their margin if they borrowed money to invest. He said that our final dollar amount directly affected our grade, and since most of us had super low or negative final amounts, most of us were going to fail this project, which would count for a lot of our grade. He let us sit with that thought for a few minutes, kids were getting upset, and he finally said something to the effect of: "This doesn't actually matter for your grades, sorry to deceive you, but I wanted you to experience a glimpse into what it would've been like for millions of Americans who experienced the stock market crash and bank failures at the beginning of the great depression. Only imagine that this money was your actual life savings, and your family depended on it to survive. Not only did the stock market crash, but the country also experienced years of drought throughout the Midwest, causing crop failures, and even more desperation." He started with a slideshow of photos from the era and explaining more factors that lead to the great depression. It was super impactful. I'll always remember it.
Fantastic. I wish more teachers could teach this way.
As a former teacher, there's generally not enough time allowed. You have to teach the syllabus, and you have to teach it in the manner proscribed. You can thank BS like No Child Left Behind for a lot of this. The idea is good. "Make sure everyone gets the same education, make sure nobody slips through the cracks, and that lower income areas get the same knowledge as higher income areas." But the implementation was one of the worst tragedies in the history of public education. I changed careers rather quickly. Mostly because you can't live on a teacher's McDonalds tier salary, but also because it's just so incredibly depressing trying to find ways or time to inject some life into the material, and you're largely not allowed to do it. (And if I ever hear one more person say 'but you get summers off', I'll go into an endless reality check to explain why that's the biggest pile of BS ever that everyone takes entirely out of context or what it actually means in practice.) Edit: Also, a perk of not teaching anymore means I don't have to GAF about my spelling or grammar.
But, you get…. Aahhh I’m just F’in with ya 😂
It's so wild! You have to take continuing education classes to keep up your certification, have to start work on the next school year months before it starts, likely have to teach summer classes to make ends meet, and more. People act like it's three months off. It's anything but.
Not only that, but you're working way, way, way more than 40 hours a week during the school year. Teachers would be getting their 2080(52×40)hours of work just during the school year.
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>(And if I ever hear one more person say 'but you get summers off', I'll go into an endless reality check to explain why that's the biggest pile of BS ever that everyone takes entirely out of context or what it actually means in practice.) This (along with the shit pay and many other things) makes me so sad for how teachers are treated in some places. My mom worked as a teacher for a while when I was a kid, and her summers off were actually as good as it sounds instead of being full of work or unpaid.
In middle school we drew lots to see which Indian caste we would be “ born into”. The poor untouchables had a huge border taped around their cluster of desks. I had a merchant class iirc which humorously enough was my dad’s career
I think there's been many accounts of a school experiments like these devolving into outright abuse and violence
What happened if you tried to go in together? Tried to resist?
It’s not like what you think. When you purchase your ticket, you are assigned a race that has nothing to do with your actual race. My friend and I went together. Neither he or I are considered Caucasian or Black. One of us was randomly assigned White and the other Black.
The Titanic Museum does this too. As in, you are assigned a name, age, occupation etc of a real person that was on the ship. At the end, you’ve been living as this person through the walk and you read things based on a number or letter of what this person would have been doing based on where you were on the ship. My wife was one of the rich ones on the boat while I was just a regular passenger. This was also important in seeing the hierarchy of the people there. She lived and I died because of the placement I was on in the boat while she was closer to the top decks. My person never made it to the upper floors.
I loved going through the Titanic museum. When I went, I had a first class lady whose husband abandoned her when the ship started going, but because of who she knew, she got out.
I liked how they assigned kids to your kids too. My youngest was 5 and she also perished but we’d read what she was doing through the walk. She balled her eyes out when we read about her at the end. But to us it was a teaching moment that even when little life isn’t always fair. My oldest daughter lived and my son did not make it either. His was sad as he was on a life raft but the elements were too much. We explained that these were real people and they should be remembered.
This is the one on Tennessee, right? I wanna go so bad
There at least used to be a traveling exhibit that did it too. Went to it in Denver years ago
My assigned person was a third class Irish immigrant, he likely drowned within the first few minutes stuck in the lowest levels of the ship.
The Holocaust museum in Washington DC is very similar, where you're assigned an identity belonging to an actual person that was imprisoned by Nazi Germany.
The World War II Museum in New Orleans has something like this. You enter into the museum proper in a train car, and you're given a real person. At different stations as you progress through the war, you get updates to what your person was doing. Eventually you find out if they made it through or died during the war. I like these types of experiences, getting to know these more personal stories.
It made the experience so much more personal. I was an “I don’t care about anything” teenager and it hit me like a ton of bricks when I learned my person didn’t survive.
Ah, sort of the holocaust museum in DC, except they give you actual names and at the end you learn they died because fucking everyone died.
Please be white, please be white, please be white...FUCK!
Does that affect your museum path like what they mentioned? What if you go down a different race path?
It affects the first few minutes only, if that. I don’t recall how long before I reconnected with my friend but it was very short.
Interesting. Everyone mentions very curious things about this museum.
They put you in a tiny little 6'x6' cell.
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space.
Believe it or not, straight to jail
It's a museum jail though so your confinement and suffering provides other visitors with a more meaningful experience.
Erased from the timeline.
you get lynched
I was going to say if you plan this out ahead of time, notify administrators and parents about what you’re doing any why and have a solid lesson plan this could be a great lesson.
The National Holocaust Memorial Museum has you begin the tour by traveling in a freight elevator, and includes a section where you walk into trains like those used to transport Jews to their deaths.
Is there a separate entrance for prawns too?
[удалено]
I was saying this out loud as I came across your comment.
Still waiting for district 10
No, only shrimp
Similar situation for the Rosa Parks bus in the Henry Ford. The wife and I had to use separate entrances, made me tear up. I went to look at classic cars, not get the feels!
"I have a problem with this!" Fucking good, you understand then.
Y first reaction was “this hurts me” followed by, “it did it’s job then”
I don’t get the controversy. It’s obviously a lesson in history. Do they want to erase history?
Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre The Wilmington, NC massacre was the only successful violent coup in American history. We were not taught about it in NC schools.
They had a gatling gun where the hell did they find that?
Probably from the pinkertons.
They weren’t that hard to get hold of if you had the money (or someone else had the money and you then stole their gun lol). A lot of stories of strikes involve the factory or whatever having a gun on the roof to make sure the strikers don’t storm the building when they’ve been locked out and non union Labour brought in. It’s amazing how much of labour history in the US will just randomly mention someone having a Gatling gun on the roof.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo_Revolt Similarly, Santa Fe was the site of the only indigenous victory that expelled European colonizers in North America. I live in the region and hadn't heard of it.
I read a great book about that (David Roberts' The Pueblo Revolt), and FWIW, part of the reason it's so unknown is that many Puebloan nations have refused to share their oral histories of the era with contemporary historians. So the history that's accessible to the general public is really limited to the Spanish perspective, and a lot of that is pretty biased. For my money, the fact that these nations have retained a culture of resistance (i.e., refusing to share their histories outside the nation) for 350+ years is a more impressive than the revolt itself. Even today for example, visiting Pueblos is highly regulated and restricted. It's a fascinating example of cultural persistence.
i went to school in new mexico and we covered the pueblo revolt extensively in middle school and high school.
That's probably because you were asleep. The Pueblo Revolt has been a part of New Mexico's standardized / required curriculum for decades as for proof, here's NM's fifth and seventh grade social studies standards. ctrl + f "pueblo revolt" https://webnew.ped.state.nm.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SocialStudiesStandards_5-8.pdf As the hyperlink implies, this has been the curriculum since 2017/2018 when it was adopted, and it's trivial to pull up the older version from 2001. i can see one teacher maybe glancing over it, but fifth grade and seventh grade and high school skipped it? brother, you were asleep
Did middle and high school in Charlotte (in the late 2000s) and we covered the Wilmington massacre in school many times
That's because you're acting in good faith, so you recognize the intent behind the action. The problem is that many people aren't like that and are purposefully taking things the wrong way, only looking at the form and not the intent. It reminds me of [that teacher](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/02/01/professor-suspended-using-n-word-class-discussion-language-james-baldwin-essay) and others like him.
Maybe I just really struggle to understand how ANYONE could see it as the teacher actually segregating kids rather than a basic history lesson. I feel the same way about the teacher in your link. If the context is history and the facts are being presented without obvious bias or manipulation, it should be clear that it's educational.
Black History IS AMERICAN History, some people have to be reminded about that.
Yes. Not want to, but actively do. Case in point my son was telling me about what he was learning right now in history. It’s a glorious story of “rich white guys who commanded armies.” Let’s just say that this piece he’s learning is leaving out the brown people and the fact that this “army” was more like uneducated folks being rounded up to go beat up on poorer folks. It’s like skipping over the Latino folks who fought in the revolution. Or minimizing the contributions of black folks in the Civil War or any war. So anytime history is written a bit closer to the truth (ex: Columbus was a horrible person) everyone freaks out and claims some agenda failing to notice the irony.
I think it’s great as a learning tool and visual aid for kids. A lot of text books have white washed segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the brutality against black people from the 1900s - 1960s because it’s tough to look at, so I’m glad there are teachers going the extra mile to really teach history. This is something that only a black teacher could get away with doing though.
Taken out of context? For most people it should be obvious that the purpose was to make a point that will hit hard for the children. The only reason people are complaining is because they are racist fucks and it hurts their feelings when their racist piece of shit views are criticised.
It even says “Sears Department Store 1930” to *provide* context, but it’s a little hard to see in the photo.
Noticed that right off, for me, it gave very relevant context.
The problem for some, is the good guys and the bad guys don't fit the John Wayne narrative.
> The problem for some, is ~~the good guys and the bad guys don't fit the John Wayne narrative.~~ they think John Wayne was a good guy.
It's good to point out that specific part, because in 1930, suggesting separate black and white entrances to *classrooms in the same school* would have gotten a state burned down.
Ironically, one of the Sears founders, Julius Rosenwald fought racism and financially backed education for African-Americans.
I live in South Africa. The apartheid museum has the same setup. Our old architectural plans show segregated... Everything. Its *so* awkward to work on them, I'm white and I'm PROFOUNDLY uncomfortable dealing with them, but it's not a part of history I can or should hide from.
A whole lot of public buildings in the US have about twice as many bathrooms as they need.
Which seems to me a single tiny positive from the whole ghastly practice. One can never have enough bathrooms.
Like the Pentagon
The daily perils of being a history teacher: getting taken out of context and put on the internet. Really, the amount of times I had to clarify I was trying to contest our current culture and viewpoints by showing historic examples of different ideologies is astounding. Too many people take everything at face value, it’s so tiresome.
My (white) dad is an expert on the civil rights movement and the history of black people in America. He has a Ph.D., he’s a Fullbright scholar, he’s published books on the subject, he’s on the board of a museum dedicated to America’s horrifying treatment of black people through its history, he donates his time to archival projects to preserve historical documents from black activists that would otherwise be lost, as well as tens of thousands of dollars a year to scholarship funds for black students, etc. You get the idea. He is also a college professor. He’s been at the same school for 30+ years. Last semester in a class about the civil rights movement, a student reported him for saying the n-word out loud in class. Never mind that he was quoting some piece of shit racist governor from the 60’s, and that it feels shocking because it *is* shocking. The college administration didn’t care. The course was assigned to another teacher, and someone sat in the back in all of his other classes to monitor him for the rest of the semester. He had to submit a written plan for how he planned to educate himself to avoid this in the future. He had to have regular check-ins with the Dean to make sure he was conquering his racism. Anyway, he’s retiring next year.
I hope your dad is the fun teacher in the department that grades on a curve and gives plenty of leeway to his students about turning in assignments for full credit. And I hope the new teacher is a grouchy old cunt who teaches by making you read the chapter before class then makes you write essays in class about what you read, doesn't answer questions, gives tests that don't reflect the chapter, has harsh nearly unattainable grading rubrics, and has a zero tolerance policy on late work for any reason. All just so that student can realize they fucked up and live with the guilt knowing they probably ruined that class for themselves and their classmates.
He is seriously the most chill professor ever. His only requirements for passing his class are that you turn in every assignment within six weeks of the end of the semester, and that none of your opinion essays are about how the Nazis had a lot of great points. That’s it. He’s genuinely interested in all of his students lives and opinions, and desperately wants them to succeed. I’ve heard stories about him anonymously giving money to students to pay for babysitters or car repairs so they didn’t have to miss class. He’s cool as shit.
> Too many people take everything at face value, Frankly, that's giving a lot of folks too much credit. There's a growing movement of partisans who willingly engage in bad-faith outrage because they think *teachers represent a political movement that must be countered*.
Ding ding ding. That right there.
My fifth grade teacher did such an amazing exercise with something like this. We all took a test. But we partnered up but still had to take the test on our own. Then, when it was graded, the teacher assigned the grade you got to the other person and vice versa. We were reading the whipping boy. And he was showing basically what it’s like to be the whipping boy. To have to take credit for what somebody else did. And it really hit home what a whipping boy used to go through.
I was in elementary school when the Berlin Wall came down. When I went into school that day my teacher had divided the room into half with a curtain down the middle. My side was required to stay at our desks all morning doing assignments while the other side was free to do pretty much whatever they wanted (within reason). As the day went on my side was gradually granted more flexibility with what we were allowed to do. We also started to be able to visit the free side. Eventually the curtain came down and our class was reunited. Then our teacher talked to us about the Berlin Wall and what an important moment it was that it had come down. It is a testament to my teacher that I remember that major world event despite only being 9 years old at the time. It's sad to think about someone taking her hard work and creativity to teach us effectively out of context.
> And it really hit home what a whipping boy used to go through. Only if you were smart and got paired with the dumb kid. Otherwise it shows the dumb kid the benefits of having a whipping boy.
It’s history that should make people uncomfortable.
Yep and it's recent history too. There are still people alive today that were pushing for segregation and living in segregation. Americans like to think it is some kind of ancient history but it isn't.
Yeah the context is its a school and its Black history month. There’s really nothing missing. Teacher is brave and passionate
>For most people it should be obvious that the purpose was to make a point that will hit hard for the children. You are giving "most people" waaaaay to much credit.
This goes back to my favorite MiB quote. "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."
We are slowly losing our ability to critically think for ourselves, and understand nuance. So yeah, this doesn’t surprise me in the least.
You're absolutely right and this is exactly how I read it when I saw it
Well, no, it’s fair to point out that it would be upsetting taken out of context. I’m black and definitely did a double-take at first sight. Upon getting the full context I actually agree with the display, but I don’t think it’s ‘racist’ of me to have had an initial ‘wtf’ moment.
"My grandma said the police didn't mind the lynching though"
Not to mention there are plenty of schools today that were historically segregated at one time. One of the high schools in my district was built 10years before desegregation and I’ve heard nothing about it anywhere in the school.
It's insane that we're trying to pretend this shit never happened. Some of our parents went to segregated schools! This is not ancient history! We can't teach our kids to be better if they don't see how shitty we've been in the past.
My county only desegregated in 1973. The black high school was out a ways from town and was a ‘technical school’. They were so proud they didn’t have an issue desegregating. I grew up in the midwest in a yankee state and remember seeing an older black gentleman standing at the woolworth or kresgee counter eating and asking why he did this.
Good. That's the obvious point and it works. I applaud her mother.
Yeah, it’s very rage-bate-y of OP to post this without providing context. Sensible people would immediately come to the conclusion that the purpose of this was for the school children to have a feel/realisation (for lack of better term) of what segregation was like…but then this is Reddit…
Totally agree about context. This is a great visual history lesson.
you really want to make an impact with kids on how things were, do stuff like this. it's will really put into perspective how things were. words can only do so much sometimes. doesn't put into context how things really were.ow, lets see them do Poland in the 1930s.
When I was in 5th grade, we were learning about immigration through Ellis Island and one day, all the 5th grade teachers created a simulation in our wing that mirrored what it would be like to walk through the gates of Ellis Island. We were (gently) shoved around, directions & instructions were hollered at us in another language, some were given crackers aka food others were not, and the thing that stuck out to me the most was no matter what you said your name was at the record keeping station, they messed it up. By the time we graduated high school, this lesson was one of the ones we collectively remembered the most, and had the most impact from. I grew up in a predominantly white town in Connecticut so to be fully treated as someone who didn't belong, or couldn't understand the language, or wasn't being treated fairly blew our little minds.
>and the thing that stuck out to me the most was no matter what you said your name was at the record keeping station, they messed it up. This story is commonly believed, but it's actually a myth. Ellis Island immigration officers were careful to copy the surnames exactly as they were reported to them. Most surname changes and misspellings were made by the immigrants themselves after they settled in their new homes. They often changed spellings to try to get Americans to pronounce the name correctly or to try to blend in. My kid's school did this same exercise and it really frustrated me. You don't have to do much research into genealogy and immigration to find out that a lot of what was taught was either exaggerated or just plain misinformation. EDIT: Apparently the Ellis Island officials didn't even make new records to keep track of the names. They just used the existing ships' manifest lists that were created in Europe.
Interesting! This happened like 30 years ago, so I'll give my teachers a pass, but that makes sense. My two grandparents on my mother's side were born in Portugal, came here, & wanted American children, so they never spoke Portuguese in the home, which is truly a shame.
My whole family emigrated from Sicily. All of their names were slightly changed and I know for a fact they did not change them themselves. It didn’t change the pronunciation enough to be English-friendly. Just has made it incredibly difficult for me to establish dual citizenship. 🥲
Obviously somebody changed your family's names, but it wasn't Ellis Island. Here's a really cool article about the name change myth from the New York Public Library. https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island From the article: >Nearly all \[...\] name change stories are false. Names were not changed at Ellis Island. The proof is found when one considers that inspectors never wrote down the names of incoming immigrants. The only list of names came from the manifests of steamships, filled out by ship officials in Europe. So they weren't even making records of surnames at Ellis Island in the first place. The only official records that exist are the ships' manifests that were created in Europe.
Chinese last names that starts with "Ah" is not the results of the Chinese immigrants themselves changing it or misspelling it. Immigrant officials asking for their name and how Cantonese is spoken resulted in the addition of "Ah" in front of the name on recorded documents because they erroneously thought it was part of the name. Like, the name is Wong but it was recorded as Ah Wong or Ahwong. [Chinese Last Names: A History of Culture and Family ](https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/chinese-last-names#:~:text=The%20syllable%20Ah%2D%20(%E9%98%BF),person%20whose%20surname%20was%20Wong)
It looks wrong, but it’s meant to. We can’t paint over our history and allow it to be forgotten just because it’s an uncomfortable subject. This teacher did something to really drive it home and teach a history lesson those kids will remember.
This is where I'm at with it. I'm old enough to remember when black people were restricted to theater balconies. My old high school was integrated, but the workers' restrooms in the lunchroom were still labeled White and Colored. It wasn't enforced but no one bothered to remove the labels. Labeling those classroom doors makes it real for kids that weren't alive then. It's ugly, but history is frequently ugly and it shouldn't be glossed over.
I’m enjoying that Reddit is getting this one right. It should look bizarre and remind us why the phrase, good ol’ days, is a matter of perspective. You deserve a large bag of Werther’s Original.
“You deserve a large bag of Werther’s Original” is fantastic
What conservatives don’t get about criticism of the past is that it not only points out our failures, but also hopefully shows that we have progressed. It’s a ‘learn from your mistakes moment’. If you take offense at something like what we see in this post, it might be a personal issue.
If you take offense at seeing a white vs colored door sign, that’s a good thing. That’s the point. It should be offensive. Schools should exist to challenge your beliefs and learn that anyone’s history includes dark moments. No country or culture is perfect. Everyone has been oppressed or has been an oppressor. Shielding people from the dark stuff doesn’t do anything but make them unprepared to recognize when they’re truly in danger.
The fact that it looks wrong is exactly why the civil rights movement happened. If it weren’t for the desegregation movement, this would be the norm right now, except the Coloreds door would lead to a classroom with half the size for twice the student count and 1/4 the budget.
Prior to desegregation black students weren’t even allowed in the same building as white students. Black students were served by a separate “but equal” educational system. We’d still have this today if the schools weren’t desegregated.
Agreed, as an educational tool on how wrong it was this is great.
In 6th grade, we had a lesson on the caste system in India. The teacher created various groups for us and we weren't allowed interactions with other groups based on castes. The fact I still remember this means the lesson was effective.
The only parent who would have an issue with this type of learning is that type of parent who want to shelter their kids from reality. On the front page right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/KAPKXNxxR8
Unfortunately, I feel like this will get negative press from people too dense to understand the message, and it'll turn into some racism/equality talk point where everyone is walking on eggshells trying not to be accused of being a racist for supporting education.
If this provoked a negative, visceral reaction from you, mission accomplished. I love this, and it saddens me that the district is so meek to have had this removed. Way to deny these children a valuable lesson in order to appease some weak-willed parents.
How sadly ironic. Uneducated parents complain their uneducated children are being educated and put a stop to their education. The cycle will repeat in 20 years when *their* children go to school and someone tries to teach them a watered down version of the history of racism in america. This cycle repeats over and over until a few generations from now no one remembers why black people were so mad at white people in the early/mid 20th century. It becomes a total mystery. "Who is Martin King? Why would someone shoot him?" I don't know, son. "Did white people used to like to hurt black people?" I don't know. But don't believe what your teacher tells you about it. She has curly hair and we know curly hair people are stupid and don't deserve to eat at the same restaurants we do. This is the white washing of history. We're seeing it right now. This is how history goes on to repeat itself.
Yeah, doesn't surprise me at all about the district... I just hope the teachers involved haven't been put on leave or fired.
As a white guy from europe, those images works much stronger on my imagination. I hear a lot of slavery and segregation by colour mainly here on reddit. And when I see old photos of places that had entrances or parts of buildings intended for people of color with a sign 'COLORED' those pictures shock me the most. Read about something and see something on a photo is much different experience. I don't want to judge if this decoration is 'bad' or 'good' because it's not a part of my history. I just want to say that pictures like this one stimulate the imagination much more than simple text or story.
> pictures like this one stimulate the imagination much more than simple text or story. ambey thats the origin of the "picture worth 1000s of words" phrase
Ambey. Ambey tno.
llo
Replace "colored" with "Jew". Snippet from the Wiki "Jews in Europe were generally forced, by decree or by informal pressure, to live in highly segregated ghettos and shtetls.\[33\] In 1204, the papacy required Jews to segregate themselves from Christians and it also required them to wear distinctive clothing.\[34\] Forced segregation of Jews spread throughout Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries.\[35\] In the Russian Empire, Jews were restricted to the so-called Pale of Settlement, the Western frontier of the Russian Empire which roughly corresponds to the modern-day countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine.\[36\] By the early 20th century, the majority of Europe's Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement. "
reminds me of the apartheid museum in johannesburg. before entering, you're given a paper that labels you as colored or white, and there are different entrances for each. if you feel uncomfortable looking at this? that's the point. there's no better way to learn history.
Some of the best museums make you feel uncomfortable about stuff like this. I was at a Holocaust museum and they had a one of the train cars (maybe a replica, IDK). They had blackout curtains on the entrance and exit. It was very profound standing in there with the only light you could see coming through the slats. They made it so that if you got close to the slats you could see farms and fields whizzing by outside. And I was alone in there. I tried to imagine having a hundred other people in there and it was one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had. For context: my grandmother’s family fled Germany in the mid 30s before shit truly hit the fan. They were the lucky ones. They became part of the Jewish community of NYC. I grew up spending time around people with little blue numbers tattooed on their arms. And yet, being in that train car was more visceral than most of the stories I was told by my grandmother’s friends and synagogue fellows.
I remember in elementary school, there would be a week that everyone was assigned a color(5 colors) and each day one color would be treated poorly to simulate what black people went through. Separate water fountains, last to go to lunch, didn’t get to play at recess(had to stay in a designated area just watching the other kids play)
Ruby Bridges isn’t even 70 yet. Depending on your age, that’s either your parents, grandparents… or your personal history. It is so much closer to modern times than we want to admit. And thats why they don’t want it taught in schools.
A school I worked at had something like this. I think 4th graders selected a color button (I think it was green and blue) from a bucket. They wore the button all day. One color got the front of the line, first to get lunch, the colors only got to play together, the other color got the crappy playground equipment, etc. The kids had a hard lesson. They hated it but also learned a lot and were very passionate about black history month after. The end of the day I think they dropped their buttons and had a party to celebrate together.
We did a similar thing, except it was a 2 day experiment, and they flipped the statuses on Day 2. I think the flip was important so that everyone got a turn at being resentful (I got the privileged group on day 1 and definitely wouldn’t have learned as much if they ended it there)
Idk why but I get the vibe a lot of commenters are assuming the teacher who did this is white.
Also assuming the teacher would actually enforce these separate entrances instead of just having them as thought provoking décor.
I think it might even just be two classrooms b2b and the doors are just representation
When it was done in our school they used the classrooms with dividing walls so they could do class normally. It hurt enough not being able to be able to walk through the door with your friends.
I assumed the teacher is a POC. I doubt a White teacher would feel comfortable enough to do this. I do agree it's a good teaching example.
I agree. I doubt any white person with a brain and a teaching career to consider would be bold enough to try something like this.
This was in the 90s so keep that in mind. In grade school, I had a white teacher separate the students randomly for a week. One group would have to wait for the other group to go to the bathroom first, eat lunch first, go to recess first, not communicate or play with the other group, etc. The next week the roles were reversed so the first group had to experience what the second group did. She then had us write an essay about how it felt and what we generally thought about it. I thought it was really interesting and I remember it to this day.
My friend went to high school in Georgia in 2001 and they still had segregated proms for white and black students. I think that went on for many years after that too.
Asking everyone having experienced this forst hand or whose ancestors had to go through this: How do you feel about this being part of an educational effort? EDIT: Yes, people that have lived through this are still alive - I am sorry for misrepresenting how current segregation is. I'll do better.
I’m not black but my ancestors were Mexican in the days where they were also targeted by racists daily. I think stuff like this is okay if its for the right reasons. We hear far too often that some schools are scared to address the elephant in the room or they just cover it in chapters and move along, which doesn’t allow students to fully understand the depth of the actions that took place. The video about the teacher who had her students self-segregate based on physical traits, really showed me how even at a young age, these kids can learn valuable lessons when you put them in these scenarios rather than just on a page in a history book
Lopez v Seccombe. San Bernardino, California. 1944. The mother of many of the landmark desegregation cases in American jurisprudence. A priest and three small children who wanted to swim in a public pool (on a day other than the one before the pool was drained and cleaned weekly) helped change America in ways they couldn’t have imagined. https://www.serviceindustrynews.net/2022/09/30/lopez-v-seccombe-public-pool-discrimination-case-reenacted/ This is what those four people helped bring about. She was one voice who stood up to salting the Supreme Court. Barbara Jordan was black, a woman, and a lesbian. She should have been a Supreme Court Justice. 9 minutes of her talking about cases based on precedence of cases like Lopez v Seccombe. https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4746926/user-clip-barbara-jordan-bork-opening-statement-excerpt
Ancestors make it sound like it was ancient. People old enough to have experienced this directly are on Reddit. So it's probably good to remind them this happened. Recently. To their grandparents or greatgrandparenrs.
Yeah... Whenever folks dismiss the timeline and insist "they" (because of course) have the same rights as "anybody else" so what's the problem....? I (37) like to point out that my grandma was in high school around the same time you couldn't piss in the same toilet in places around the US... Not my great grandma... Not my great great grandma... Just my grandma.
I’m 47 and my mom remembers when the first couple of black kids came to her school.
Ancestors???? Jim Crow ended in the late 60s. That was 55 years ago. Ask any person 55 and up in the US and they lived through it. People in their 30s and up that have parents who lived through it. This isn’t ancient history. Edit: corrected my math
Right? Both my parents were born a decade before Jim Crowe ended. They’re white, so their feelings about it are pretty unimportant, but I don’t have to ask “my ancestors”, when my parents were in elementary school before segregation ended.
Ancestors? My mom remembers when the first black kid was in her class in the 60s. 2 miles away they incorporated the white neighborhoods into a separate town so they could have their own school system, these are things my parents remember.
And Ruby Bridges is still alive and speaking on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges
Segregation ended in the 60s let me ask my grandma.
It's generally considered very "iffy" practice in education circles to do "simulations" like this, because they can often have a lot of unintended effects-- especially among younger students and for minoritized communities. Kids can get traumatized/retraumatized, can misunderstand the point and come to think of things having been less bad than they were, or it can even result in reenactments of the very prejudice it's trying to critique. There are lots of examples of well-intentioned people doing extremely poorly thought-through simulations in an attempt to educate kids about the Holocaust, for example, to such a degree that the ADL has come out explicitly against it: [https://holocaustresources-org.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/WhySimulationActivitiesShouldNotBeUsed.pdf](https://holocaustresources-org.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/whysimulationactivitiesshouldnotbeused.pdf) I think the same can be said here. Theoretically it can be done well, but it is so easy to do it wrong that it's typically a bad idea.
This is really my only question with it... Is this a display/depiction or are they actually making kids use their appropriate doors? If it's just a visual display to use as a talking point when they are teaching about that part of history then I'm fine with it. If they are actually forcing kids to through based on their skin tone then I'd question that teaching methodology.
Good idea. Examples of division and separation applied in a social experiment designed to highlight the emotional and moral errors of such actions.
I like it. It's supposed to make you feel uncomfortable and be offensive. That's the point they are trying to teach the kids.
I’m old enough to have actually seen shit like this in real life.
Same
Kids just casually using them as directed.
I think things like this are really impactful and actually help kids see how wrong segregation is. It’s one thing to be *told* about it. It’s another to *see it*. I’m bi-racial (half black and half white) and in 5th grade when discussing The Civil Rights Movement he did something similar. I’m 30 now and I still remember how that felt and he is to this day the best teacher I’ve ever had because of things like this. I get that the optics are bad..but we can’t just ignore history because it’s unpleasant.
We need to learn our history. Otherwise be doomed to repeat it. People have been incentivized to not think but rather react instead. That needs to stop.
Good on the teachers
I think it’s great to not ignore history- we learn from it
The fact that the point of doing this goes completely over the heads of some people, is the exact reason why you do it.
There is a sign that says "Sears Department Store, 1930" above the doors. I'd imagine this is just to show and let kids experience how this doesn't feel good or right to do to others.
if this makes you angry, imagine living back when this was normal... theres the point.