# Student refused to write an outline about an essay on Harry Potter **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 16, 2006, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012 "2006-09-16T23:40:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/21 "2006-09-17T07:08:44Z")
Incubus writes: \> 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 doesn’t make _any_ sense to me. What was the essay question, what was the sample response, and what were they supposed to be outlining? Please, be specific about this. I can’t understand how this was set up so that they didn’t have to have read Harry Potter to construct the outline of the essay. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/22 "2006-09-17T08:10:24Z")
My understanding is that they had an essay, in proper form, given to them, and they had to extract the outline from the essay, right? It could have been about anything. That sounds like a great assignment to me. It helps them critically read the essays they write, to see if they correspond to the right format. I can understand the kid not wanting to read Harry Potter, but not wanting to read anything about Harry Potter goes too far. Do the parents cut out the parts of the paper that mention things offensive to Christians? No wonder he’s struggling in school - his parents have probably constricted his education. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/23 "2006-09-17T08:35:42Z")
They were supposed to look at an essay that was already written. The task was to determine the essay’s outline. That’s a mighty good skill to have as the student will be expected to, in the not so distant future, write coherent essays under time pressure. Having an outline works wonders for getting that done before the buzzer sounds. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/24 "2006-09-17T08:55:35Z")
[QUOTE=Incubus] 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. [/QUOTE] You have nothing to fear here. Only witches make brou (haha!). ---
**Author:** ![bobkitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobkitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobkitty)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/25 "2006-09-17T15:41:48Z")
I’m afraid I have to agree with Astro here. You’re coming across as extremely condescending, with phrases like > [@](#): > > 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. > **{snip}** > 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. > **{snip}** > especially since the student in question refused to go into any detail on why he didn’t want to do the assignment. > **{snip}** > perhaps he has crazy fundie parents, Let me share something with you that perhaps you haven’t picked up yet: you are always going to come across people with views different from your own, _especially_ if you are working with kids. It is NOT your place as a teacher to question these beliefs, expect them to explain themselves, or overtly/covertly tell them they need to have a more open mind. Certainly that last one, because one may point out that you are being very closed-minded regarding this child and his beliefs, which he really didn’t have to share with you- he sees you once a week for 90 minutes, and it’s none of your business why he hates Harry Potter, or why he refuses to do an assignment even one-step-removed related to the books. Funny how we support kids who refuse to dissect animals based on personal convictions, but when someone refuses to read a book all of a sudden they’re crazy fundie offspring. Also this > [@](#): > > 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. is no excuse. As a teacher, you should be familiar with the material you’re teaching. This comment makes it sound like you come in, flip the book open, and give assignments regardless of content, which makes it sound like you’re the type of teacher who doesn’t put any effort into their classes, but rather flies by the seat of their pants. While that’s nice, perhaps, in a college-level lecture setting, it’s not so nice for 8th graders. I’d suggest learning all your teaching materials backwards and forwards before assigning them, so you can avoid this sort of thing in the future. Finally, I would like to slightly correct your former manager’s comment, from > [@](#): > > Don’t allow my own prejudices to get in the way of learning. to “Don’t allow my own prejudices to get in the way of _teaching_.” As a displaced Yankee in the heart of the Bible Belt, I have most certainly had to meet my students half way- their backgrounds are entirely different from my own. Neither is _right_, they just _are_, and it’s not right of me to take advantage of my role as teacher to try to change them. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/26 "2006-09-17T15:53:17Z")
[QUOTE=astro] 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. You knew better. Shame on you. [/QUOTE] So the parents of one child who objects to this material hve the right to change the curriculum for all of the children in the course? Literature will always offend someone. I can see the need for alternatives in case parents object, but you can’t go the route of automtatically deleting something based on one objection. ---
**Author:** ![Caridwen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c89c15/32.png) [@Caridwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caridwen)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/27 "2006-09-17T16:07:36Z")
Why assume his objection has anything to do with his beliefs unless he specifically stated this? Maybe take him aside and ask him if it’s something his parents object to in a discrete way. Or call his parents and ask? I know adults read HP, myself included but I have a nephew who wouldn’t touch HP with a ten foot pole because he considers it a kids book. Apparently none of the cool kids where goes to school like HP. Who can figure out kids. > [@](#): > > Let me share something with you that perhaps you haven’t picked up yet: you are always going to come across people with views different from your own, _especially_ if you are working with kids. It is NOT your place as a teacher to question these beliefs, expect them to explain themselves, or overtly/covertly tell them they need to have a more open mind. Certainly that last one, because one may point out that you are being very closed-minded regarding this child and his beliefs, which he really didn’t have to share with you- he sees you once a week for 90 minutes, and it’s none of your business why he hates Harry Potter, or why he refuses to do an assignment even one-step-removed related to the books. I totally disagree with this one. If a teacher has to tip toe through every subject trying to figure out whether or not something is going to offend someone like this case, you’d go nuts. How is he questioning someones beliefs? > [@](#): > > Funny how we support kids who refuse to dissect animals based on personal convictions, but when someone refuses to read a book all of a sudden they’re crazy fundie offspring. In the case of dissection, in most schools a student has to let the teacher know before hand that they object and they are given an alternate assignment like a computer generated dissection. Maybe this kid or the parents should have let the school or instructor know that they’re offended by HP. This just seems so ludicrous to me that I can’t even believe it’s being discussed. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/28 "2006-09-17T16:13:34Z")
[QUOTE=Northern Piper] So the parents of one child who objects to this material have the right to change the curriculum for all of the children in the course? Literature will always offend someone. I can see the need for alternatives in case parents object, but you can’t go the route of automatically deleting something based on one objection. [/QUOTE] Quite so, and if it was some out of left field objection I’d be a lot more sympathetic to Incubus’ frustration, but it’s part of the current cultural landscape of the US that a healthy cohort of conservative Christians view the Harry Potter series as glorifying and making magic look attractive, which in fact it does. The “magic” in Harry Potter is simply crypto-witchcraft in their opinion, and they object to it. These are the facts on the ground. As a foxhole atheist I find this drama kind of amusing, but if I was a secondary school teacher I would not encourage a literature discussion where Harry Potter was directly or tangentially an object for analysis. It’s pointlessly polarizing, and puts kids in the middle of a cultural conflict they have no business being in. For a teacher to be introducing Harry Potter, directly or tangentially, as an object of literature analysis into a graded assignment is irresponsible and needlessly provocative. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/29 "2006-09-17T16:15:52Z")
O.K., I think I understand this now. There are a couple of possibilities here. The first is that you can construct several sample essay questions and several sample essays which are replies to them before the class and then ask the students to pick one of them and outline the answer. That doesn’t strike me as being that hard. For the second possibility, let me understand this right. You are teaching a private class on Saturdays, right? This has no relationship to any school, public or private, right? You’re just privately teaching study skills which these students can use in school. You don’t have to answer to anyone, right? If a student refuses to do an assignment you give, you can simply say, “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to do this assigment or I can’t teach you.” If the student refuses, toss him out of the class and tell him to have his parents call you. When then do, tell them that you don’t have time to make up special assignments just for him. Give them back their money if they want and tell them that there are other people doing Saturday tutoring like you do and they can go to them if they want to, but they aren’t going to dictate the contents of your classes (which, again, aren’t determined by anyone except you, right?). I understand your reluctance to embarrass this student, but you don’t seem to have any choice here. You’re not required to have everyone like you. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/30 "2006-09-17T16:23:28Z")
[QUOTE=Caridwen] Maybe this kid or the parents should have let the school or instructor know that they’re offended by HP. This just seems so ludicrous to me that I can’t even believe it’s being discussed. [/QUOTE] This is kind of the main point. For any teacher, or any literate individual who can read a newspaper or magazine to profess “Gosh! I didn’t know Harry Potter was so controversial!” is disengenous and nonsensical. It is well within the realm of real world expectations that there will be at least one child (and possibly more) in a given class who lives in a conservative Christian home that considers Harry Potter literature an undesirable influence. It’s not great sacrifice to choose other, less polarizing, objects for discussion and analysis. ---
**Author:** ![bobkitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobkitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobkitty)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/31 "2006-09-17T16:29:28Z")
[QUOTE=Caridwen] Why assume his objection has anything to do with his beliefs unless he specifically stated this? Maybe take him aside and ask him if it’s something his parents object to in a discrete way. Or call his parents and ask? [/QUOTE] The OP stated > [@](#): > > 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. We don’t know why he refused, just that he did, and it had something to do with his beliefs. I merely pointed out that it doesn’t matter _why_, and it’s none of a teacher’s business. Do we take JW kids aside and have them explain chapter and verse why they can’t participate in certain classroom activities? Of course not- they state “I can’t, it’s against my beliefs” and the topic is done. It’s CERTAINLY not the place of a _less-than-part-time teacher_ (going by the OP, he only sees this child once a week for an hour and a half) to call a child’s parents and ask for clarification on why little Johnny can’t read something. I’d be royally ripped if someone did that to me- it smacks of “DEFEND YOURSELF, CRAZY FUNDIE!!” even if that’s not the intention. [QUOTE=Caridwen] I totally disagree with this one. If a teacher has to tip toe through every subject trying to figure out whether or not something is going to offend someone like this case, you’d go nuts. How is he questioning someones beliefs? [/QUOTE] You’re misunderstanding my point. As a teacher, I certainly don’t tiptoe through subjects- we had a rollicking debate on homosexuality last semester that I was the lone defender on. My point isn’t that we need to be afraid to bring something controversial up- it’s that we need to recognize that people are going to have different opinions, they’re going to pass them on to their kids, and it’s **not our place to question or challenge those beliefs.** It’s the difference between the following hypothetical exchange: Teacher: Today we’re going to debate abortion. Student: I don’t feel comfortable discussing this topic. Teacher: Can you share why? Student: Because I personally believe it’s wrong, and I don’t want to get into an argument about it or push my ideas onto someone else. Teacher: Okay, then would you like to observe or leave the room? and this one.. Teacher: Today we’re going to debate abortion. Student: I don’t feel comfortable discussing this topic. Teacher: Can you share why? Student: Because I personally believe it’s wrong, and I don’t want to get into an argument about it or push my ideas onto someone else. Teacher: Why do you think it’s wrong? Have you read the literature? The legislation? Where are your cites that it’s wrong? Who told you it’s wrong? etc., etc. The teacher in the second hypothetical is overstepping their bounds (especially if we’re talking about minors). A teacher _teaches_, they don’t push an agenda. Each side is just as valid, even if we consider it unenlightened. This student had the right to refuse to read anything to do with Harry Potter; the OP did not have the right to ask him, directly or indirectly, to explain himself. [QUOTE=Caridwen] In the case of dissection, in most schools a student has to let the teacher know before hand that they object and they are given an alternate assignment like a computer generated dissection. [/QUOTE] And in this case, the child expressed their objection as soon as they were made aware of the assignment, yet not only was he not given an alternate assignment (whatever the OP’s reason for that), but he gets accused of having crazed fundie parents. Where’s the respect here? ---
**Author:** ![Caridwen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c89c15/32.png) [@Caridwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caridwen)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/32 "2006-09-17T16:51:22Z")
I don’t see where the OP was challenging the students beliefs. > [@](#): > > This is kind of the main point. For any teacher, or any literate individual who can read a newspaper or magazine to profess “Gosh! I didn’t know Harry Potter was so controversial!” is disengenous and nonsensical. I’m a literate, educated person and I think I’ve read a magazine in my lifetime and no, I actually didn’t know it was all **that** controversial. Granted, I’m not a teacher and don’t have a kid that age so I might not be up on any HP drama. Come on, he was asked to write an outline. The subject matter was sort of beside the point. > [@](#): > > It is well within the realm of real world expectations that there will be at least one child (and possibly more) in a given class who lives in a conservative Christian home that considers Harry Potter literature an undesirable influence. It’s not great sacrifice to choose other, less polarizing, objects for discussion and analysis. You might be, and are probably right. I can’t say that it doesn’t make me sad and a little worried about what kind of education children are getting when even a children’s novel causes this much controversy. No one is asking the kid to read the novel or learn a secret handshake or anything, just write an outline. I’m wondering why this kid is in a study skills class. Does it have to do with beliefs? I know several people stated that but I don’t get that 100% from the OP. Or does he just not want to do it? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/33 "2006-09-17T17:12:40Z")
[QUOTE=bobkitty] Let me share something with you that perhaps you haven’t picked up yet: you are always going to come across people with views different from your own, _especially_ if you are working with kids. It is NOT your place as a teacher to question these beliefs, expect them to explain themselves, or overtly/covertly tell them they need to have a more open mind. Certainly that last one, because one may point out that you are being very closed-minded regarding this child and his beliefs, which he really didn’t have to share with you- he sees you once a week for 90 minutes, and it’s none of your business why he hates Harry Potter, or why he refuses to do an assignment even one-step-removed related to the books. Funny how we support kids who refuse to dissect animals based on personal convictions, but when someone refuses to read a book all of a sudden they’re crazy fundie offspring. [/quote] What a load of horse pish. Firstly, reading a book is quite different from cutting up an animal. Second, we all sometimes read things we don’t agree with. Hell, i often intentionally track down books that i know i won’t agree with simply to find out what they say. It does children no service at all to shelter them from reading controversial material. By all means, encourage them to criticize the material, and to express their difference of opinion, but when teachers cave in to a prejudice against knowledge itself, they abrogate their responsibilities as teachers. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/34 "2006-09-17T17:14:45Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] Give them back their money if they want and tell them that there are other people doing Saturday tutoring like you do and they can go to them if they want to, but they aren’t going to dictate the contents of your classes (which, again, aren’t determined by anyone except you, right?). I understand your reluctance to embarrass this student, but you don’t seem to have any choice here. You’re not required to have everyone like you. [/QUOTE] Which part of “I didn’t choose the material” and “I’ll make it a point to talk to my managers” (post #10) isn’t clear? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/35 "2006-09-17T17:23:43Z")
[QUOTE=mhendo] What a load of horse pish. Firstly, reading a book is quite different from cutting up an animal. Second, we all sometimes read things we don’t agree with. Hell, i often intentionally track down books that i know i won’t agree with simply to find out what they say. It does children no service at all to shelter them from reading controversial material. By all means, encourage them to criticize the material, and to express their difference of opinion, but when teachers cave in to a prejudice against knowledge itself, they abrogate their responsibilities as teachers. [/QUOTE] There’s tons of “controversial material” that middle and high school students are not challenged with, because to engage in these debates at a secondary school level would yield nothing but an angry scrum with the parents. Once kids are in college or on their own all bets are off, but while they are public school some degree of practical circumspection needs to be observed. ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/36 "2006-09-17T17:25:57Z")
I disagree completely with **astro**. If you, and all teachers like you, shun Harry Potter today, it’ll be “Catcher in the Rye” next week and “Tom Sawyer” the week after that and pretty soon you’ll be down to two pieces of literature, one of which a group of ignorant people in America takes to be the literal word of their god. You were absolutely right to press the kid on why. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how far to press, assuming your training and experience give you control of the situation. But press him, because there are consequences to airing one’s beliefs – primary among them is that people will disagree. Again, your experience and training are key to making this a good lesson and not a bad one. It’s perfectly understandable that the kid caught you by surprise. We’re never prepared for these one-to-one confrontations, and our initial impulse (despite training to the contrary) is to simply escape alive. But if you still can, take the kid aside, explain to him exactly what you explained in your original post. If it’s a take-home assignment, call Mom or Dad, explain the situation, thus offering them an opportunity to influence Junior’s thinking. In the end, you’ll be seen as sensitive and caring, the fundies will be allowed to air their beliefs (thus exposing their ridiculous conclusions) and the kid will learn how to do an outline of somebody else’s essay. Of course, the whole thing could blow up in your face and you’d be burned at the stake as a godless witch. It’s your call. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/37 "2006-09-17T17:26:03Z")
O.K., I missed that post. (Was it really necessary to insult me because of that?) If the material is chosen by someone else, Incubus should go to the people who run this tutoring service and ask them what they want him to do in a situation like this. And he should do it, whatever they ask him to do. Toss the kid out if they say so. Do extra options for the class if they say so. They run the class and they are the ones that have to deal with the parents if the parents object to the way the class is run. If Incubus doesn’t make up the policy for the class, he shouldn’t have to defend that policy to the parents. The people who run the course should be the only ones who have to talk to the parents to defend policies that they made up, not Incubus. If Incubus doesn’t like the policies that he’s working under, he should quit. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/38 "2006-09-17T17:26:38Z")
[QUOTE=astro] 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. You knew better. Shame on you. [/QUOTE] Except that we don’t know that it’s a fundie issue here, even though it might be. Maybe his parents bought him every Harry Potter book at the store, but the discussion of magic freaked him out. Maybe he loves Harry Potter, but has an older sibling who taunts him mercilessly all the time, and about that in particular, and rifles through his school stuff seeking ammunition. Maybe Harry Potter is considered horrifically uncool at his school, and his classmates will never let him live it down if they were ever to see that essay in his possession. In the absence of specific knowledge, any of these scenarios are possible. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/39 "2006-09-17T17:35:04Z")
[QUOTE=scotandrsn] Except that we don’t know that it’s a fundie issue here, even though it might be. Maybe his parents bought him every Harry Potter book at the store, but the discussion of magic freaked him out. Maybe he loves Harry Potter, but has an older sibling who taunts him mercilessly all the time, and about that in particular, and rifles through his school stuff seeking ammunition. Maybe Harry Potter is considered horrifically uncool at his school, and his classmates will never let him live it down if they were ever to see that essay in his possession. In the absence of specific knowledge, any of these scenarios are possible. [/QUOTE] Ummm… yeah. Possible but not probable. 99.99% of Harry Potter tabooism is based on religious objections. It would be fun though to tell the teacher you refuse to do an essay because the author just isn’t up to the literary standard you require for serious analysis. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012/40 "2006-09-17T17:40:29Z")
> [@](#): > > It is NOT your place as a teacher to question these beliefs, expect them to explain themselves, or overtly/covertly tell them they need to have a more open mind. Then _what_ is the role of a teacher, then? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/student-refused-to-write-an-outline-about-an-essay-on-harry-potter/373012.md?page=3)