To the best of my knowledge, Steven King hasn’t murdered anyone. Given how many horror novels he has written “thru the lens of a serial killer”, how can this be possible? Maybe because it is possible to understand a view point, even thoroughly, without embracing the values of it.
For the life of me I can’t understand why this would bother anybody. Seems like a fine idea, and certainly within the right sof a private institution. No one is forced to attend Depaul. I didn’t apply to colleges that required a foreign language. I don’t rail against those that do.
My class meets that description. Other, classes that might be terrible classes meet that description as well. That’s an incredibly vague description. You’re pretty quick to fill in the blanks about what you think must be happening.
I will also say that if someone comes into my class determined to take everything I say as some sort of jab at “white people”, they could feel pretty alienated. After 15 years, I’ve gotten pretty good at framing the discussion in a way that avoids that problem, but it took 15 years of practice, of having the freedom to talk about things, of having honest conversations with students, of seeing the impact of my words. But I don’t sugar coat American history, I don’t pretend racism and classism are over, I don’t deny white privilege. So I dunno. You might think that’s “all about the oppression”.
Leaving aside your gross misrepresentation of what the class is about, I have to ask: Are you saying that oppression doesn’t have lasting effects, or are you saying it’s more convenient if the general public doesn’t think about those lasting effects?
You don’t get it. Oppression of minorities and social injustice is over. It ended with {freeing the slaves/Brown v. Board of Education/the 60s/a black president/some sign of progress far enough back that it doesn’t impact my ego}. Haven’t you been paying attention? And of course, there were no lasting effects, everything after that point is has been perfectly equal and just in all ways and everything I have and/or accomplished was on a perfectly level playing field.
You are aware that these books have been challenged for decades – this is nothing new.
No, if you teach in the Duluth school district, you aren’t going to teach Huck Finn. Thus it seems to be the Duluth school district who is afraid of talking about real issues.
Regards,
Shodan
Huck Finn is the only book ever written that deals with issues?
BTW, While Huck Finn and 'Mockingbird will still be available in the library, and can still be optionally chosen by students to use for classwork, they are just being removed from the required reading list. This is not censorship, this is just a change in the curiculum.
OTOH, we have conservative lawmakers that want to actually ban books from schools, to prevent any chance that student’s may come into contact with the information contained within.
Now, that’s actually trying to avoid dealing with issues.
Right-wingers have more projection than a googolplex cinema…
I’m saying neither . Obviously there are lasting effects from history. But it’s possible to study history without declaring that the purpose of the seminar is all about oppression.(and yes, I read the details, and realize that the students can meet the requirement by choosing from a wide range of classes.)
But the university doesn’t say that all students must take a seminar of their choosing from a wide range of classes on American history and culture.
It says all students must learn about oppression.
Oh, yeah, and if you happen to learn about how this country was founded as a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.–well, don’t pay attention—that part isn’t worth mentioning. It’s not politically correct.
I’m not saying that we should teach the whitewashed version of history, with founding fathers who were perfect and pure. So the university should tell the students to take a seminar on sociology, on culture, or on history in its full context…not just on oppression.
I like the way Manda Jo says she does it:
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Please quit misrepresenting what that class is about-it’s a total waste of space in this thread because we have actually seen the full description, and we know that your description is painfully inaccurate.
There is a significant issue with both Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird as material to address racial issues - they were written by white people. There are tons of books written by African American authors that give a different perspective.
Now, I LOVE TKAM, its one of my favorite books. And I think one thing it does very well is tell a racially charged story from the point of view of a sympathetic white person - its a very approachable book on race for white ninth and tenth graders (which is when its read in our district). (I think Huck is much less approachable, the dialect makes it a difficult book for a lot of students to get through). But you could read Their Eyes Were Watching God, or Go Tell it On the Mountain or The Bluest Eye or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings or Native Son or Invisible Man or…written by actual black authors
You can’t read everything in a high school Literature class, you need to pick and choose a wide variety of representative works. For a high school class that should include some dead white guys, and it should include some authors of color, and it should include some women.
I am willing to bet that Duluth took books off their curriculum to make room for a more diverse set of authors. Or maybe they’ll just teach Steinbeck and Hemingway like my high school did - and the students may eventually stumble onto Sherman Alexie or Jane Austen or Toni Morrison or Gabriel Garcia Marquez all on their own.
You know, even if the class was exactly as you described it, you are making it sound as if this one seminar is all the history they will be taught. Does focusing on symbiosis for a couple of days in Biology turn it into a Symbiosis class?
DePaul would be a poor choice of a school for someone who thinks they can get a four year liberal arts degree without learning about oppression. But they are a private four year liberal arts college.
Colleges for years have had a non-Western culture requirement. I have a History minor and never took a U.S. History course - but I was required to take one non-Western course to fulfill my requirement. Many colleges sort of figure you got U.S. History in high school - and it was probably taught primarily through the lens of white men, since most U.S. college students graduated from U.S. High Schools, and U.S. History is - AFAIK - a requirement in every state in this country for graduation. So it really isn’t that necessary to make you learn in college who George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were.
However not every high school requires a cultural perspectives sort of course - a non-Western history. A sociology course on race. A women and gender studies course. Liberal arts colleges have by and large determined that filling that gap is necessary for graduation.
The school my daughter is going to next year makes everyone take a two hour seminar on “microagressions” - I roll my eyes over microaggressions. But it is a school that is very liberal and has historically had a hard time attracting and retaining the students of color they would really like to have to provide a diverse environment - and if two hours of “hey, try not to stick your foot too far down your mouth as you exchange ideas” helps to do that, that’s fine with me.
I have to admit, I have a real problem with this, as I think both books are definitely worth teaching to students. It doesn’t make it censorship, but I still think they should be taught.
But it’s not a new issue.
There is a ton of stuff that SHOULD be taught in schools, but limited time to teach it all. IMHO, as long as what they are teaching can be justified as having similar literary merit, its just a matter of having too many choices. You should work to give students a representative sampling - i.e. not all dead white men, not all Western authors (unless you are teaching American Literature). Not all novels - there should be some plays, short stories, essays and poetry in there too. If they remove TKAM in favor of Kathleen Woodiwiss romance novels or the collected works of Jean Auel and Tom Clancy, I’d have a problem.
There is an element in teaching Literature that is left to the parents, like teaching values. If its really important to you that your kids read Pride and Prejudice or The Hobbit or Howard’s End or East of Eden or Midnight’s Children or Night or Les Miserables - its up to you to see it gets read. There is simply too much really good and worthy literature for a school to cover.
Some responses were awesome. Some were just leftist yahoos hurling insults.
So far you’ve ignored the most thoughtful responses.
I talked to my son about this issue and he says in his 10th grade english class the teacher will have them read a story or poem, then the kids are told to write what message the writer is trying to get across, what the writer is feeling, etc… Then the kids are told to write about say a similar experience in their lives and talk about how they can relate to what the author is saying. Something along those lines.
Unfortunately most of the kids have trouble even writing a basic paragraph. Also most of the kids are having a tough time with this because so few read anymore and communication for this generation is mostly being done thru email and text. OMG, ROFL, IKR, and others. Plus they dont feel comfortable sharing their true inner feelings.
Now why the teacher would not just work on basic writing concepts without pushing “ok lets relate this to marxism and feminism” to me seems crazy ( and some of you have mentioned this also). I mean get the kids to just write a good paragraph and decipher an authors meaning first before applying some advanced college level thinking.