Hmmm, I wonder how I can get through to these kids about slavery? Nope, already used the filmstrip, the textbook...hey, I know! Here are two black people! Why don't I dehumanize them and reinforce a humiliating part of their history by tying them together and calling it a groundbreaking, insightful teaching technique?

The nerve of some people.

Do kids really need to be convinced that slavery was bad? It seems like a pretty easy point to make.

This same demonstration was used in my classroom when I was a student. It was only used with classroom volunteers and everyone who wanted to volunteer took a turn. It helped the students to empathize with the conditions they were reading about and sparked some great discussions on slavery and personhood.

I don't think this was done maliciously, but the teacher should never have selected a student who did not volunteer to participate. I don't know if the teacher should be fired for this, but there should be a discussion of what is appropriate in the school system.

In line with this, in another chapter of history we all (boys included) had the opportunity to try on a burkha to get a better understanding of how it can feel and both the oppressive and freeing feelings it can give.

Do they no longer do these kinds of demonstrations in school classrooms?

I agree with mahjani. I don't think there is anything wrong with the project as long as the students volunteer. The fact that that teacher did it without asking for volunteers, just picked two students, is what bothers me about this.

As for convincing the students that slavery was bad, it is easy to tell someone something is bad and they get the general idea....slavery is bad, women had nearly no rights in the country's founding days, mill workers were forced to work in horrible conditions....but after hearing these things over and over, we can become desensitized to what they really mean. Experiencing what they lived through (even a watered-down version) can help to really show what it means when we say these things were 'bad.'

However, that said, I do not think that this experiment should have ever taken place without the students having chosen to be tied up. A school, even when trying to teach a lesson, needs to understand and respect boundries.

If she was going to do it she should have used volunteers, and NOT all black students if any whites or others volunteered. Also, it sounds like a fire hazard and several other kinds of safety concerns. It sounds like a useless and stupid exercise to me, but the killer point is that she picked two black girls. Presumably all of the students were meant to see slavery from the slave's perspective, not from the traders' perspective if they were white.

I believe the teacher's intentions were in the right place but her actions were wrong. Why couldn't she show pictures or movies? That's what my sociology teacher did when he talked about slavery and it was pretty horrifying.

I can definitely see how this would be a useful exercise if the students were consenting, volunteers were used, and it was to help form empathy in students. But this was not a demonstration of empathy. The teacher forced two black girls to be physically restrained and forced to do something emotionally and physically endangering. The teacher was willing to negligently use black bodies (and female aside from that) to demonstrate a point without regard for the wellness of those two human beings. To allow a child to cry in order to reinforce a point, to use humiliation and physical restraint against unwilling participants, and to single out children based on race...none of these are the actions of a teacher who should still be participating in a classroom.

As a former teacher and now teacher educator, I think I would like to quote Horace Mann here: "We have precisely the teachers the market has demanded." Wow, enough said.

If that's the best way a teacher can come up with to get students to understand slavery, they have no business teaching. We have so many books and movies that can explain it perfectly, there's absolutely no call to be traumatizing students. Even with volunteers, that exercise is completely unnecessary.

hmm i sort of feel bad for the teacher as well as the girls.. I mean, It must suck to be so ignorant that you think singling out two minority children and binding them in a classroom is an appropriate lesson...

I agree that the thing that makes this teaching method outrageous is that she picked these girls instead of asking for volunteers.
I do think that hands-on, experiential learning is extremely effective. I still remember the lesson I had on slavery in 5th grade. It could have been very controversial--but the teacher asked for volunteers, which is why no one had a problem with it. And the lesson was great. To show us what it was like on a slave ship, she pulled a table to the front of the class and asked for four volunteers. We were all able to lie comfortably how we wanted to under the table. She continually added more and more VOLUNTEER students until we were all lying on our side, crammed under the table. It was fun in ways, sobering in others, and very effective. She actually had a lot of great demonstrative and interactive lessons on slave trade and was definitely one of my favorite history teachers.

If this teacher in NY had asked, I probably would have volunteered. But the fact that she chose two African American girls is extremely problematic.

I'm a Social Studies teacher myself, and I understand that what this teacher was trying to do was to employ an authentic learning experience. Authentic learning is very valuable, especially (as someone already mentioned) in building empathy. It's meant to give someone the real experience, rather than study it from the outside, as one might do by watching a movie or analyzing something.

With highly sensitive material, however, it is important to be selective about the simulations we choose. Authentic learning can be RECREATED -- and by that, I don't mean re-enacting the original experience. I mean creating a new experience which PARALLELS the original and might create the same feelings, in the context of the audience you are dealing with. For example, you give a bit of history or slavery, and then you do a simulation where perhaps someone in the class is the principal, someone else is the teacher, and others are students. You then give them cue cards that they keep secret, with instructions on how to act. The objective would be for the principal to abuse his/her power, and the students to be taken for granted. From there, it would be critical to have a discussion about the abuse of power, etc. etc. The idea is to parallel the experience in the context of your audience, not to recreate the exact same situation.

This teacher used poor judgment. As teachers, it is our job to create safe spaces in which all students can learn. What she did is akin to recreating a rape scenario so that others understand what the victim goes through.

I taught an interactive science program for several years and would often have my students pretend to be atoms and have them bounce around the room, or various similar activities. This is sooo not the same thing. I get what she was TRYING to do, but seriously? Shackles?

Part of me is shaking my head because I went to college right near that middle school, and I just hope this woman didn't graduate from my alma mater since it has a good program for teaching (my mother graduated with her teaching degree over there too).

Here's her e-mail if anyone's so inclined to tell her to read a friggin book on white privilege:
ebernstein@hms.nrcsd.org

Every so often you hear about teachers doing these type "lessons" and you just have to wonder how idiotic can you be?

"This teacher needs to be fired"...?

Come on, already! Don't make a feminist blog become like Fox News in vengeful sensationalism and personal attacks (and attacks on labor rights). It seems obvious from the news I've read so far that no harm (or bigotry) was actually meant, that it was a mistake, that the person just wasn't "thinking" and that the worker is sorry and have now been told that it was not appropriate.

So I think it is totally uncalled for for this blog to call for firing squads and punishment when it could call for intelligence and wisdom instead. Puhlease! This is not what being progressive is about... seriously!

Being progressive is not just using Bill O'Reilly methods against the opposite targets.

I think most of us are agreed here. The idea of interactive learning is good and certainly more effective than reading textbooks. But NO child should be physically restrained, especially without her/his permission. I think using the tape was too much (she could have instructed them to clasp their hands together and keep them that way) and I think it was wildly inappropriate to use a student who did not want to participate. And yes, the fact that she is Black does make it just that much worse. She could have just as easily have chosen a White & Black child (I'm assuming she must have had at least one other volunteer) or two White students (not that it's better, but just for argument's sake). But the fact that both students were Black & female makes it look like a deliberate selection- that they were chosen because they're Black & female.

Also, aside from the obvious reasons why this is bad (the emotional damage the girl felt) there is another clear problem. If this teacher choses only to use Black students in her interactive lessons about slavery, then there is the possibility that the students who aren't Black will still miss the point. They may just shrug it off as "something that happened to Black people", and gain no sense of wrong, no empathy...I'm NOT saying that all Black people or all descendants of slaves necessarily know what slavery is like. But kids of other ethnicities benefit and develop empathy learning about the horror of slavery- so why not include as many as possible? Many people literally can't grasp it until they can stand in someone else's shoes or at least see it happening to someone else who "looks like them". Many kids are raised to be inherently prejudice in favor of only their own ethnicity. So if you want to make those kids understand, you have to show them how slavery is horrible no matter who it happens to. Does that make sense?

My issue with the "experential learning" argument is that cramming kids under a table, taped up or not, is most likely nothing like the experience of being on a slave ship. When I was in middle school, the entire class was instructed to lie on the floor in rows, very close together, and afterward we wrote a paragraph about how the exercise made us feel. I still have no idea what it was like to be on a slave ship. What did happen in this case is that two Black girls were taped up and shoved under a table in front of a room of their peers. I don't care whether they were volunteers or selected. I don't care whether either of the girls was visibly upset. Two girls (of middle school age, which I would venture to say is a pretty rough time for a lot of kids, anyway) of the same race as people who were slaves in this country, who have experienced the brunt of racism and white privilege in this country every day of their young lives, were bound and made fools of in front of a group of their peers. No one in that classroom has any idea what it was like to be on a slave ship, but a bunch of other (I'm assuming some white) kids got to see Black female bodies abused in front of them for the sake of "learning." That experience will probably stick with them the rest of their lives. And the teacher does need to be fired. That's not a Bill O'Reilly tactic. It is for the protection of the self-esteem and learning environment of two young women who will otherwise have to go to school for the rest of the year and face a woman who bound them with tape and shoved them under a desk.

This is kind of related in the way that it is horrible: I just told my step dad about this post and he informed me that when he was in high school, students could "buy" slaves to carry their books and bring them to class. He said it was a way for some students to make money (in no way was he supporting this idea). To make it worse, the "slaves" wore ropes around their necks. To make it even worse: The school's mascot was (and still is) the rebels, rebel flag included. This took place in the 1980's.

Kim - I agree with VHS that your call for the teacher to be fired is a bit excessive. I totally agree that forcing black kids to do this was way insensitive, but the reality is, she used poor judgement in one instance, albeit with good intentions. Obviously, the administration should give her a warning, but fire her? Do we really want to fire an underpaid, overworked public school teacher who is making an effort to move beyond textbooks and tests, just because she made one (granted very insensitive) mistake? Correct her and get over it.

This is totally unbelievable. Just knowing that a teacher did this to provide a simulation for the class is disturbing. I am sure that the teacher had good intentions in mind, however the execution of the demonstration is obviously flawed. For one prior knowledge of the activity should have been provided. A letter home to parents explaining the activity that would occur in class is always a good way to begin experiential or simulation learning for any thing. Secondly the teacher should have used volunteers and not hand selecting students to come up and participate. This was bad judgment on their part.
When I was learning about slavery, during my schooling, we discussed the topic, and watched a movie. That's all that I can remember at least. But there was never any simulation for the topic.
Teachers today should not be simulating things such as slavery, or anything to do with racism, unless it is a positive experience for all. Equality should be promoted in the classroom, not to "simulate" a racist act of history.

This whole idea totally creeps me out and if it had been my children, even if they'd volunteered, I'd be up to the roof screaming at administrators.

This may just reiterate the fact that I'm a freak, but -

They were in FIFTH grade for crying out loud. I don't believe there should EVER, FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER be a learning experience for grade-schoolers that would require a "safe word."

Does anyone remember the classroom experiment that a teacher in 60s did with blue-eyed vs. brown-eyed children in an all-white town?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/

That experiential learning technique seemed like it was very intense for the children, and that experiment is still viewed as ground-breaking.

Now I do think the teacher in the slavery lesson example showed poor judgment. But I do think that invoking empathy and emotion can be a valuable teaching tool.

But to be honest, if I was a teacher today, I would be afraid to use these methods for fear of getting sued or dismissed. Again, this particular teacher showed poor judgment, but I feel like people (parents, administrators) could get upset with ANY exercise meant to invoke these vicarious feelings for oppressed groups.