Re: Talk in the Classroom & on Campus

Hi Glenn,
I just wanted to say I appreciated your earlier remarks to Rachel, and I
told
her I agreed with you in urging her not to leave the list.

What I did this week was to show the Primetime program on True Colors,
showing
insidious racism when a black man and a white man went to St. Louis and
tried to
get jobs, cars, apartments and so on.  The upshot was that the treatment
the two
received were very different.  This was a low-key way to talk about
discrimination with my students.  I then asked them to form small groups
and
tell stories about times when they themselves felt discriminated
against.  After
a few minutes, I then asked them on what bases were the
discriminations.  I got
the usual race, gender, age, looks, clothes, music, disabilities, class,
etc.
Then, I said to sum up, you know how it feels when someone unfairly
judges you.
Do not think that every Arab-American shares in the terrorism we saw on
Tuesday,
etc.  And then I asked them, how can we get past our stereotyping
people?  What
can we do on a daily basis to prevent the bashing and bias against
people?  They
came up several good answers in terms of behavior and attitudes--like
standing
firm when friends and family bash a group, looking at individuals
instead of
their group characteristics, etc.

All in all, I think the key to the way this discussion unfolded was
getting
students to identify first with their own feelings when they are
discriminated
against, and then getting them to empathize with others who have also
felt that
meanness and hatred.

Since we were in the middle of writing narrative essays, many of my
students
then switched their topics to the terrorist attacks.  This will complete
their
reflection, and probably solidify their resolve to not return evil for
evil.

Hope this helps,
Jeanne McDonald
English Instructor
Waubonsee Community College
Sugar Grove, IL.

"Glenn C. Hutchinson" wrote:

> How have class discussions gone this week?  Do you think it's important to
> talk about what's going on?
>
> When you encourage students to say what they think, sometimes they say what
> they think--and that can be difficult to handle at times.
>
> In a class discussion, two or three American students began stereotyping
> international students and people of a certain ethnicity.  I stepped in,
> engaged these students in a dialogue, challenging their assumptions, but
> some remarks made were quite upsetting.  Even though many American students
> in my class disagreed with the stereotyping and voiced their outrage too,
> there are several international students in my class, and some remarks were
> hurtful in the process.
>
> My hope was to try to help stop the harassment many international students
> on my campus are experiencing, and the potential violence that could erupt
> on campus.  However, I feel like I've failed.  Can people really listen to
> one another when emotions are so high?
>
> In some ways, this problem seems tame to the suffering and death in New York
> City and D.C.  However, this is what is happening in my community, and I
> feel like I should try to do something where I live--to try to stop further
> hate and violence here.  It saddens me to see young people harassed and
> hated because they look different from others in some way.
>
> But what should a teacher do to respond to this?  And also, what can a
> campus do about the backlash against certain ethnic groups after this
> tragedy? Should faculty be planning certain programs for our students?
> Any ideas would be appreciated.
>
> Glenn Hutchinson
> UNC Charlotte