I teach a class on Saturdays on building study skills. Earlier today, I had one of my three students refuse to do an assignment. The reason? Because it involved Harry Potter :rolleyes: . He started to explain why, but then I think he kind of realized that if he went too far into it, the other students might make fun of him for being the only kid in class who isn’t supposed to read Harry Potter. Or he was afraid I would get mad at him.
The thing is, I wasn’t making them read Harry Potter. They were asked to read a sample response to an essay question about Harry Potter, and construct an outline of the essay. For all he knew, the essay could have shared the same kinds of attidues he did about the book, but he wasn’t even willing to read it to find out.
This hit a nerve for me. I really hate being in situations like this, because it makes me sad when young people demonstrate ignorance to the point of being unwilling to look into why they should shun a book/music genre/etc. Perhaps I should be more upset at the parents who are putting these influences on kids. However, it isn’t any of my business to pass judgement on my students, and I’d hate to have them feel that I am persecuting them for their beliefs, even if those beliefs perpetuate ignorance. So I tried to be as diplomatic and objective as possible about it, and basically told them that it is a good idea to try to have an open mind about things, even if you do not agree/approve. If anything, you’d have a better understanding of why you don’t approve of it.
After class, I had rather mixed feelings about my reaction, mainly because I didn’t want to overreact to what happened. A part of me considered simply giving him an alternate assignment, but I didn’t really know if that was fair to the other students, especially since the student in question refused to go into any detail on why he didn’t want to do the assignment.
The reality of the situation is that there are many possibilities- perhaps he has crazy fundie parents, or perhaps he simply threw me a curveball and tested my reaction to try to get out of work. I really try to take these matters professionally and follow my former manager’s advice- Don’t allow my own prejudices to get in the way of learning. Still, I have to admit, when something like this comes along, it is pretty hard for me to keep my mouth shut.
You know, I really wish I could react without holding back. What I do worry about, though, is the parents actually being real fundie whackjobs, and twisting that into, “That man forced my son to read Harry Potter!” “That study class teaches sins!” and make big brouhaha about it. Since a lot of our clientele comes through word-of-mouth, its not the kind of attention I want.
“Grammar nazis”!? Shit, man, we’re just trying to improve your essay writing skills!
I have had to give the class an assignment and then take a student out of the room to explain what the problem with Harry Potter is a few times. I find this very annoying, but usually get a better sense of the student’s concern and can come up with a compromise assignment (like seeing if the student is willing to read the essay and then write a response that reflects her/his position but, say, uses a topic sentence and supporting arguments). This is at the college level, though, so allegations that I corrupted someone’s little darling by exposing it to an award-winning book.
Good Lord! You actually have the stones to come off as the aggrieved party in this mess!
Assuming this is not a college class, with all due respect I think it was pretty clueless of you, as a teacher, to assign any kind of a reading analysis that had anything to do with Harry Potter, even once removed in an essay question about Harry Potter. I’m as far from a fundie as you an get and still be in the known universe, but you, of all people, especially as an SDMB member should know that introducing anything to do with Harry Potter is like playing Whack-a-Mole with fundie hot buttons, and now because you wanted to be cute you embarrassed the hell out of an innocent kid who’s caught between his parents and you.
There is literature other than Harry Potter out there that would have served the same purpose re interpretation without being polarizing.
He’s in 8th grade, and talking to him about other (safer) topics, I am fairly sure he is mature enough to understand why. Another factor might be that he’s struggling in school and gets yelled at frequently by his parents over mundane things- It wouldn’t be surprising if he balked at doing anything he feared his parents would flip out over.
I didn’t choose the material. The class is taught with a workbook that we use to go through methods of study, organization and sample questions. I’m guessing the author of the workbook intended the topic to be something pupils might be able to relate to, but you do have a point (if you were being serious and not just yanking my chain). I’ll make it a point to talk to my managers about this matter next Monday.
It might also be that he hasn’t read Harry Potter, misunderstood your assignment, and balked because he doesn’t want to be exposed to the other kids as not having read HP.
Why don’t you just rewrite the sample essay, changing the names to something un-Harry Potterish, and let him do the assignment using that version? Then he’ll get do to the assignment, but won’t have those dreaded Harry Potter words staring him in the face.
The problem is there simply isn’t any time- the class is exactly 90 minutes long and doesn’t really allow for last-minute revisions to adapt to the tastes of each individual student. There’s also the aspect of playing favorites- I work very hard to ensure I give all three of my students equal attention and respect, and that includes being equal about my expectations on following directions.
I think that if a student has a moral objection to reading something, you can provide an alternate assignment. I absolutely don’t think that the material should be expurgated from a general text or curriculum. If you go that way, soon you’re left with bland nothingness in your curriculum and it’s impossible to teach people how to listen to divergent perspectives, construct a rebuttal, or use any rhetorical device other than arguments ad hominem. I’ve had to teach within a curriculum like that, and it wasn’t any fun for anybody, including the students.
I had considered giving him an alternate assignment, but a big part of this class is collaborating and not only being encouraged to ask plenty of questions (I love answering questions) but also to help each other so that nobody feels ‘behind’ or ‘out of place’. I feel that giving him a different assignment will alienate him from the class, and be just as bad as insisting he go through with the assignment. It also sets an example to students that they can weasel out of work if they come up with a creative enough excuse (i.e. “oh, I can’t do this, its offensive to my…uh…race, yeah, this is racist, can’t do it, sorry!”) . Incidentally, the other two students were also trying to talk him into just doing the assignment, and also reassured him he wasn’t being made to read Harry Potter, it was just a sample essay someone else wrote.
You told him to write an analysis of why and how Harry Potter is evil. But every claim about the content, purpose, or inner meaning of the various Harry Potter books must be supported with a citation. Tell the student “You are totally entitled to harboring your own dissenting opinion. But know thine enemy. You have to show me you are familiar with what you say is evil, and document each claim.”
Or would the little Bible-thumper be able to download all that from the internet and avoid touching J K Rowling?
