So some of the teachers at Anthony Aguirre Junior High decided to hand out mock awards to kids in the honor classes. One of those awards was to a 13 year old girl which declared her to “most likely to become a terrorist”. This on the heels of the recent terrorist attack in England.
The school administration posted this on their Facebook page:
How incredibly stupid and insensitive. She’s obviously the most likely to become a hotel cleaning lady, and I’m surprised these teachers overlooked that fact.
If by “She” you meant the person who created the award, then I hope you’re correct. That would seem to be a more appropriate vocation for her than teaching.
I’m trying to picture the guffaws at any awards program that featured a “Most Likely To Become A Serial Killer” award, or the “Seems Like A Rapist Who Hasn’t Been Caught Yet” award, or maybe one for “Quietest Pile of Festering Hate For Humanity”… oh yeah, those are side-splitters & knee-slappers, for sure.
Female Hispanic, not exactly the prime terrorist demographic. Would’ve been fun to see the reaction if they awarded it to some white boy who collectives knives and dresses in camo.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Personally, I think the awards are funny. The problem was in misjudging the maturity of the audience, not the jokes themselves.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think that this is automatically awful. My high school sort of did this with the yearbook prizes - the committee running the yearbook would give out silly and moderately offensive yearbook statuses, which would appear under your name in the official yearbook. They did a pretty good job of making them sort of appropriate without cutting too close to the bone. A popular but fickle student might get “Most likely to be divorced”. A politically strident student like myself could easily have gotten “Most likely to become a terrorist”, and taken it as a compliment. The challenge was to create a prize that reflected some real aspect of a student’s personality, but was obviously ridiculous or over the top.
When done in a close knit group, with understanding on both sides, this can be fun and a bonding experience. When you mistake your audience, it is hurtful and an abuse of power. The article does make it sound like the teacher didn’t care what her audience thought, which is grossly hurtful.
Elucidator wrote: “Why does it always have to be Texas? There are plenty of assholes in Iowa, I’ve been there, there’s bunches of them! (grumble, grouse, bitch…)”
Some places encourage people to conceal their assholery, others to flaunt it.
