Going back to my previous thread on the Covington students. How would you as an adult sponsor or chaperone prepare students for the following?
Scenario 1: Field Trip. Lets just say its an ordinary field trip to see the US capital, white house, and other landmarks. However it is almost a certainty that some group or person will be protesting and holding some sort of demonstration at that time.
Scenario 2: You are taking the students to Washington DC to be part of a political protest. This could be a march, demonstration, etc… Very good chance there will be counter protesters there are otherwise persons who will not only disagree but downright HATE YOU.
In both scenarios how would you teach students to react? What should they do if confronted? Taunted?
Make sure your kids are not wearing symbols that represent powerful people that ignore concerns of the minorities that will be in the protest.
Really, it is really clumsy and crummy to wear stuff that can make natural allies upset for no reason when they are very likely supporters of what you are protesting for.
No, in fact, I’m not. At least, not unless the trip was the students’ idea in the first place. In which case it’s their responsibility to know that others will disagree with them, and to decide how to respond.
octopus, this whole situation came up because of the faculty of Covington Catholic indoctrinating students. It’s liberals like me who are saying they shouldn’t be doing that.
I would try to teach them about Jonathan Haidt’s work and the work on authoritarianism as it relates to politics.
The issue is that liberals and tea party conservatives are totally divided on morality at this point and what is moral for one side is immoral for the other because our values are very divergent. So explain what is happening to the kids in an unbiased way so they can at least understand it.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you.” Don’t make any face expressions, don’t initiate anything, don’t talk, just hold up signs if must be, don’t do anything that can be misconstrued in the media.
I don’t think children should be used as props in someone else’s political rally/fundraiser photo. I am always hearing from right wing conspiracy theorists that progressive protesters: are paid by someone to protest, are organized by someone to protest, don’t know why they are protesting. It reminds me of how Christian Homophobes are always saying that gay adults try to recruit/convert children, and are pedophiles, while in reality, Christians try to recruit and convert children, and there are hundreds of case of clergy (especially youth clergy) sexually assaulting children.
I’m from DC, though I don’t live or work there now, and the annual Roe v Wade protest march is disgusting, and one of the things that makes it disgusting is that almost all the attendees are children being exploited by religious private schools. If any of the kids that attend cared about abortion, then the demographics of the march would change, the crowd would age, it doesn’t.
Well now wait a second. Lets say you teach a class like current events or sociology to high school students and part of your curriulum would be to teach them how to organize and what being being part of say a march is all about? Wouldnt it be good if you took them to an event? Some high schools have clubs (ex. Young Democrats) where they do get involved in issues.
I mean last year many if not most schools had this thing where all the students walked out because of school shootings.
I’d go along with this. I imagine the teen at Covington wishes the day had never happened now. All he thought he was doing was standing there and now he has the attention of millions.
Thing is their are cameras everywhere now people are chomping at the bit looking for the next thing to put in their internet feed. I think the smart thing like you say, is if somebody approaches them or something seems off, just walk away.
And that was the students idea, and they ran it. The adults just stood there and admired these young people for standing up for something they believe in. I know because I work at a high school and I was there.
Also conservatives then were against teenagers getting involved in politics, but strangely are now for it? Wonder what changed.
Which gets back to what I said about it has to be the students’ idea. When students decided to do the walk-out last year, that was their decision, and it would have been wholly inappropriate for their teachers to get involved, either approving or disapproving.
I suppose that it’s conceivable that, in a current events class, a teacher might bring a class to observe a demonstration. But there’s a world of difference between observing a demonstration and being part of it.
In either scenario, you teach your kids to not react, but just keep on going on their way, if strangers want to ridicule or confront them.
In scenario 1, no clothing with words of any sort, and no political or cause-related symbols. That’s the sort of thing that would give some rando something to hang an unpleasant interaction on, so don’t do it.
In scenario 2, shirts and hats and banners with slogans related to the specific cause they’re marching in support of, but (a) nothing unrelated, and (b) it’s got to be outer layers only so they can be taken off and put away once the march is over.
While you’re marching, you only have to ignore any hecklers for a minute or two, and then you’ve marched on by and the hecklers are the problem of the people behind you. (Not to mention, you’ve got the safety of numbers.) But afterwards, if you’ve got some time to grab a bite or see the sights, pack your slogans out of sight, so nobody will interact with you because of them.
And in either scenario, don’t seek out interactions or confrontations with demonstrators for whatever cause. And if things do get heated, look to your chaperones for guidance. (And they’d better be there. If not, pull out your phone and call them.)
Agreed, but it would still be useful for the teacher or faculty to give them some idea of what they may encounter, and how to react to that.
And this. These kids were not on a field trip. They were there to make a political statement. Or, they were there as a political statement, I’d be surprised if half the kids could fully articulate their reasons for being there.
Anyway, to answer the OP, if it is a school trip, where they are just there to visit stuff and learn some things, you simply tell them not to engage. You tell them that Washington is full of protestors and activists and that there will probably be some who attempt to get attention by trolling. This would definitely be a case where “Do not feed the Troll” should be enforced.
If you are going to use your students as political pawns, where they are out there for the purpose of being seen and engaging in political speech, then you should probably coach them to not make your cause look worse. But, as they were there to bring attention to their cause, and they made the decision to wear garb that they chose to wear, they got people judging them based on the decisions that they made.
Now, say you are sending your students to an event, not a protest or demonstration. Say you are a Catholic school, and the Pope is coming to town, and that is why your school trip is there. You will likely encounter some trolls there as well, as the Catholic church does have its share of haters. If you meet trolls there, if you hear shouts of “The Pope kicks puppies!”, or “Catholics will spend an eternity at the DMV!”, or other inflammatory rhetoric, you do not meet that sort of hate with hate of your own. If you are a religious school, following the teachings of Christ, you meet hate with love, sing some Hymns or Gospels like “This Little Light of Mine”, or “Amazing Grace”, rather than fight songs and tribal chants.
Imagine how things would have played out differently had the Covington Catholics broke out into “How Great Thou Art”, in response to the Black Israelites trolling? How can you keep up a hateful screed towards a group singing “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry?”
That coulda gone just as viral, leaving the CC kids looking like saints, and only the Black Israelites looking the fool, leaving Philips to only have to observe a de-escalation, rather than feeling the need to get involved to prevent violence.
I’d be curious to know what sort of adult guidance and accompaniment the Parkland teens had for the March For Our Lives last spring. I’m sure there was a bit of reporting on it at the time, but that’s a more complicated search than I’m up to this morning.
(Was that really less than a year ago? There needs to be a unit of time called Trump years. Each Trump year takes up as much brain space as N regular years. Solve for N.)