Teacher assigns persuasive essay on why "Jews are evil"
Jeanwah
Posts: 6,363
Are there really still Nazis around? And why do they live in my area?
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article ... 431448.php
The Albany school district has placed on leave a teacher whose persuasive writing assignment was for students to argue that Jews are evil in order to convince a Nazi official of their loyalty.
The teacher was not in class at Albany High School on Friday and Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard said the district will take some form of disciplinary action. She said it was too early to say exactly what that would be, but it could range from a letter of reprimand to termination. She did not say when the district would allow the teacher back in the classroom and suggested it may not happen before the end of the year. The district will also bring in sensitivity trainers from the Anti-Defamation League to work with teachers and students before the end of the school year.
At a news conference on Friday with members of the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federation of New York, Vanden Wyngaard apologized to the community for the assignment and said diversity is valued deeply in the district. She said she was shocked at the insensitive lesson and the awful leap it asked students to make. "You asked a child to support the notion that the Holocaust was justified, that's my struggle," she said. "It's an illogical leap for a student to make."
Students in three sophomore English classes received the assignment earlier this week in preparation for reading Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's acclaimed memoir "Night," said Emily Karandy, 16. She said a lot of her classmates in honors English were upset at the assignment and felt terrible while working on it. She said she eventually wrote the five paragraph essay because she didn't want to hurt her grade.
"I was putting it off because I didn't want to think about it and I didn't want to say anything bad about Jewish people," she said. "We thought it would make more sense if we were Jews arguing against Nazis." Karandy said she felt "horrible" when she turned in her essay.
Karandy also said her teacher — whom the Times Union is not naming — liked to challenge the class and she had never heard any racially charged remarks from the teacher.
The Times Union first reported on the assignment on Friday. Shelly Shapiro, director of the Jewish Federation of New York, said she was satisfied with the district's response because administrators are treating the mistake as a learning experience, for teachers and students.
"It's not how you teach about how prejudice has led to genocide," she said. "There are ways to do it. This way was not the proper pedagogical way to do it."
As part of the 10th grade English persuasive writing assignment, the Albany High students were asked to pretend their teacher is a Nazi government official who must be convinced they believe Jews are the source of Germany's problems: "You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!"
Vanden Wyngaard said a parent notified her of the assignment Wednesday night and she asked Albany High School Principal Cecily Wilson to speak with the teacher on Thursday morning.
One of the three classes given the assignment refused to complete it.
The assignment sparked an intense debate online Friday, with some commentators arguing that the assignment was so clearly misguided it amounted to educator malfeasance. Others argued that it offered a good lesson in debate by forcing students to think in a way with which they were uncomfortable.
District phones rang off the hook with angry callers from around the country as national media picked up the story and Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings condemned the assignment on his weekly radio show. Many, including New York City Councilman David Greenfield, called for the resignation of the teacher, who was not named by the district.
"The teacher responsible for coming up with and assigning students with this task must be held accountable for attempting to indoctrinate children with anti-Semitic beliefs," Greenfield said in a statement. "Quite obviously, this teacher lacks the judgment and common sense necessary to have a position of such great responsibility and is clearly not fit to return to the classroom."
As the controversy flared on Friday, Holocaust survivor Hedi McKinley of Altamont, who lost her parents to the Nazis in Austria, was speaking to students in the nearby Mayfield and Johnstown school districts. When she told her story to 50 students in Fulton County, she tried to convey that it was never acceptable to judge people by religion or skin color.
"I hope they walk away with seeing to it that (the Holocaust) won't happen here, that they can't let it happen here," she said.
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article ... 431448.php
The Albany school district has placed on leave a teacher whose persuasive writing assignment was for students to argue that Jews are evil in order to convince a Nazi official of their loyalty.
The teacher was not in class at Albany High School on Friday and Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard said the district will take some form of disciplinary action. She said it was too early to say exactly what that would be, but it could range from a letter of reprimand to termination. She did not say when the district would allow the teacher back in the classroom and suggested it may not happen before the end of the year. The district will also bring in sensitivity trainers from the Anti-Defamation League to work with teachers and students before the end of the school year.
At a news conference on Friday with members of the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federation of New York, Vanden Wyngaard apologized to the community for the assignment and said diversity is valued deeply in the district. She said she was shocked at the insensitive lesson and the awful leap it asked students to make. "You asked a child to support the notion that the Holocaust was justified, that's my struggle," she said. "It's an illogical leap for a student to make."
Students in three sophomore English classes received the assignment earlier this week in preparation for reading Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's acclaimed memoir "Night," said Emily Karandy, 16. She said a lot of her classmates in honors English were upset at the assignment and felt terrible while working on it. She said she eventually wrote the five paragraph essay because she didn't want to hurt her grade.
"I was putting it off because I didn't want to think about it and I didn't want to say anything bad about Jewish people," she said. "We thought it would make more sense if we were Jews arguing against Nazis." Karandy said she felt "horrible" when she turned in her essay.
Karandy also said her teacher — whom the Times Union is not naming — liked to challenge the class and she had never heard any racially charged remarks from the teacher.
The Times Union first reported on the assignment on Friday. Shelly Shapiro, director of the Jewish Federation of New York, said she was satisfied with the district's response because administrators are treating the mistake as a learning experience, for teachers and students.
"It's not how you teach about how prejudice has led to genocide," she said. "There are ways to do it. This way was not the proper pedagogical way to do it."
As part of the 10th grade English persuasive writing assignment, the Albany High students were asked to pretend their teacher is a Nazi government official who must be convinced they believe Jews are the source of Germany's problems: "You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!"
Vanden Wyngaard said a parent notified her of the assignment Wednesday night and she asked Albany High School Principal Cecily Wilson to speak with the teacher on Thursday morning.
One of the three classes given the assignment refused to complete it.
The assignment sparked an intense debate online Friday, with some commentators arguing that the assignment was so clearly misguided it amounted to educator malfeasance. Others argued that it offered a good lesson in debate by forcing students to think in a way with which they were uncomfortable.
District phones rang off the hook with angry callers from around the country as national media picked up the story and Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings condemned the assignment on his weekly radio show. Many, including New York City Councilman David Greenfield, called for the resignation of the teacher, who was not named by the district.
"The teacher responsible for coming up with and assigning students with this task must be held accountable for attempting to indoctrinate children with anti-Semitic beliefs," Greenfield said in a statement. "Quite obviously, this teacher lacks the judgment and common sense necessary to have a position of such great responsibility and is clearly not fit to return to the classroom."
As the controversy flared on Friday, Holocaust survivor Hedi McKinley of Altamont, who lost her parents to the Nazis in Austria, was speaking to students in the nearby Mayfield and Johnstown school districts. When she told her story to 50 students in Fulton County, she tried to convey that it was never acceptable to judge people by religion or skin color.
"I hope they walk away with seeing to it that (the Holocaust) won't happen here, that they can't let it happen here," she said.
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Comments
I say, termination.
I very much understand how offensive this is, especially if there are Jewish students in the class. But challenging students to try to understand why Nazis hated Jews doesn't sound like she was trying to be offensive.
I could see a suspension for poor.judgement. Based on the article, it seems this teacher doesn't have prior issues or write ups.
Sidenote: In no way do I agree with anything the Nazis did. I'm simply trying to look outside the box on this.
Exactly. Propaganda in 1930's Germany was a fact. So what's wrong with trying to understand how propaganda worked during that period of time? Or maybe we shouldn't try to understand why Nazi's hated Jews, and just ignore it instead? Who said 'He who forgets the past is destined to repeat it'?
Are we supposed to believe that propaganda doesn't exist anymore, and that it was simply a part of history?
If the teacher had created an assignment on propaganda and indoctrination in China instead, and had asked the students to explain why the Cultural Revolution was a good thing, and why intellectuals and landowners should be beaten, and/or shot, would there have been the same outpouring of shock and indignation?
And as for the Anti-Defamation league, they're a sham.
I don't think it shows bad judgement at all. If the teachers aim was to educate the children on the power of indoctrination, then what better way than to get them to place themselves in the mind-set of Germans living in 1930's Nazi Germany, and get them to examine the types of racist propaganda prevalent at the time? The article states that the following week they were going to read Ellie Weisel's book 'Night'. Hardly something a person who 'supports the holocaust' would do.
People are just jumping all over this because it involves Jews. I think it's perfectly obvious what the teacher was trying to achieve with this assignment, but the fact that it involved trying to understand racism and indoctrination from the point of view of Nazi's means that it gives everyone the opportunity to misinterpret his motivations, and to engage in some self-righteous chest-thumping.
I get it. I agree with you. I understand the purpose and intent. Hell, I would have loved that assigent myself in high school. But that does not change the fact that it was stupid as fuck because she's a high school teacher in this day and age. Unless she was trying to get in shit, she's foolish.
Why? You think we should all have to censor ourselves anytime the subject is about Jews?
Maybe the teacher simply thought the assignment would be educational and challenging, and underestimated the level of knee-jerk hysteria in America whenever a Jewish person decides to be offended.
Why should it matter if it is this day and age or 1985?
Why do you think I don't grasp the meaning of what you're saying? What point in anything I posted in response to your comments gave you that impression?
You're saying that teacher is dumb and a moron, and she possibly wanted to get fired. Why's that? Because she assigned the students a task that involved trying to understand the mindset of Nazi's in WWII so as to better understand the power and influence of propaganda and indoctrination? As far as I can tell, the assignment was perfectly acceptable, and would have forced the students to examine the prevailing currents of the day vis-a-vis media and government racism and ideology. If I was the parent of any of those students I'd have been pleased to learn that their teacher was trying to teach them something relevant and important in today's World.
I understand what you're saying: that in today's World everyone should be extra careful not to offend anybody. You say that 'Parents and administration react like crazy people to this kind of thing in this day and age'. Though just what 'kind of thing' do you mean exactly? Critical thinking in general, or just anything to do with Jewish history that seeks to explain why the majority of Germans acted as they did, and that doesn't just lazily cast them all as evil?
I also try to get the kids to understand various controversial acts in american history i.e. defend bull connor and his actions against african americans during the civil rights movement in birmingham, alabama.
while I applaud this teacher for challenging her students to think outside the box, I believe there was better ways to do accomplish her objective. Do I think she should be fired? No. I think this teacher will learn from her mistake.
First of all I don't believe the assignment should get a teacher fired. I think the teacher was attempting to come up with a creative and new way for the students to learn about a very important historical topic.
I remember back in high school AP history class where we had some of the class assigned to be the North and others assigned to be the South. We then had to formulate our discussion points and hold a townhall debate in regards to all of the issues at hand, including slavery. It was a very constructive debate and certainly opened many eyes towards the south's points of view in some areas. Yet, we were all old enough to understand that slavery was wrong at it's basic core anyhow.
I think perhaps the only flaw in this assignment was not just lumping it all together into 1 debate/assignment. I dont think people would have been so upset if all points of view were discussed at the same time rather than one at a time.
Why do we always have to disregard the original topic of discussion and go on a witch hunt to fire people? We keep doing it and we never learn. All it does is stifle discussion. I think for sensitive subjects such as this, it might be wise to set the stage for the school, students, and parents by making sure everyone knows what is coming and why long in advance though. Might take away the shock value.
I've seen a few people mention this. Why is that?
(and if the ADL is a sham - curious why you think so - aren't other similar organizations as well?)
Personally, and although I knew much about the Holocaust from the time I was a child, I think I'd have a tough time with the assignment regardless of the teacher's intent. It's like being arguing the side of a debate in which you don't believe...though it can certainly help to *get* the other side. Not necessarily accept it but try to grasp that mindset.
So should we not teach about slavery because it is not PC? Political correctness should not get in the way of education. The last time I looked, the parents aren't involved in helping the teacher plan the yearly syllabus. This was an honors English class. Not a freshman technical math class.
As a proud American Jew who lost half his family in the holocaust I was not offended by the assignment that the teacher gave her students. When I read about it I just shook my head in disbelief.
What offended me is your extremely high level of ignorance and anti-semitism. :fp:
And I am NOT saying that in today's world everyone should be extra careful not to offend anyone. Way too many people are too easily offended for that to be acceptable. What I'm saying is that teachers who want to keep their jobs have to be extra careful not to offend idiot parents (which is the majority of them).
I didn't say I agree with PC issues being covered and non PC issues being kept out of the status quo. It's just typical that an assignment like this, as controversial as it is, will get attention from the parents, as well as the students refusing to do the assignment (many did).
Oh I don't know. Perhaps because typical 10th graders are a lot more immature nowadays than they have ever been. And of course the parents are going to raise a ruckus because that's what they do when their kids are in high school (or younger) vs. college.
Should students be allowed not to do assignments because they get offended by the topic? As long as the teacher isn't pushing an agenda or is a racist, why shouldn't they complete the assignment? It sounds to me like the teacher is trying to get tje student to think differently. I know they are 14-16 year old kids, but they are in an honors class that is supposed to prep them for college.
you know, you always say you are in no way anti-Semitic, but man, this statement comes incredibly close. please explain your last statement.
it's not about Jewish people. It's about general acceptance in a public school of all peoples, and you know it.
Jean has already said it, but I was going to say the same thing: this might be a good assignment for college-age political science class, but not 10th grade english.
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
a friend of mine is a teacher of grade 5ers. parent teacher stresses her the fuck out, because she's been told by her superintendent that she is NOT ALLOWED to say anything bad to the parents about the students lack of progress. so what is exactly is the point of education if those who aren't learning aren't helped to do so?
even when she has tried to say "(this) is an area Joey can improve in, and this is how I'd like to help him", she generally gets screamed at by the parents that she must be talking about some other kid, "our Joey is just fine". it's disgusting.
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014