[ProgressiveEd] Fwd: [rsct] teaching about Iraq -- NYT article and resource
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I think this is an interesting article and might be useful for some of us.
Carol
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Subject: [rsct] teaching about Iraq -- NYT article and resource
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Dear friends,
In today's New York Times there is an article that looks at teaching
about Iraq. It is the first time I heard about the web site
www.choices.edu from Brown University that has lots of teaching
ideas/resources about public policy issues, including the "Crisis with
Iraq." There are lots of interesting links with articles on Iraq and a
few lesson plans oriented towards high school students. I have not
carefully examined the quality of the lesson plans, but they appear to be
worth checking out.
Below is the NYT's article.
Sincerely,
Bob Peterson
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/07/education/07SCHO.html
March 7, 2003
Schools Seek Balance as Students Join War Debate
By SAM DILLON
NORMAL, Ill. -- Alex Oswald, a high school freshman here, recently argued
the hard line.
"It's our duty to attack Iraq and eliminate their weapons of mass
destruction," he said.
Another freshman, Anthony Hamer, went further, saying, "We should just go
in and assassinate Saddam."
But those arguments did not sit well with other freshmen, including
14-year-old Morgan Farrington.
"There are lots of dangerous dictators out there," she said. "Are you
going to remove them all?"
The debate at Normal Community High School was one of thousands that have
played out in schools from Connecticut to California in recent weeks.
Many of them, as in Kelly Keogh's World Studies class here, have been
organized by teachers. Others have been spontaneous, sometimes
threatening to turn into brawls.
In classroom after classroom, teachers are confronting the possibility of
war with Iraq, struggling to maintain academic decorum while encouraging
students to discuss events that they know from experience are dividing
adults. Some teachers are grappling with students eager to stage an
antiwar play. Others are weighing whether grisly battlefield images on
live television should have a place in the classroom.
"Everywhere I've been over the past months, the key question for
educators has been, How do we teach the controversy?" said Charles C.
Haynes, of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.
The answer has varied widely, and the political stances have, too.
In Maine, for instance, Gov. John Baldacci, a Democrat, admonished
teachers to maintain neutrality recently after the National Guard
complained that teachers, in their classrooms, were calling the military
"unethical." In an Omaha district, students said in interviews that a
teacher had been playing Rush Limbaugh tapes in class.
But in San Francisco, the Board of Education voted to oppose war in Iraq,
and superintendents in Los Angeles and Chicago urged principals to give
students time to air their views, even if critical, of the government.
"During the Vietnam War, students across the country fed the call for
withdrawal and forced the government to rethink its plans," Arne Duncan,
the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, told students on Feb.
21, opening a day of discussion on Iraq in the city's 600 public schools.
"I urge you to find your voice."
On the other hand, some educators have done their best to keep the
subject out of their classrooms, horrified by the injection of current
events even before the war starts.
"The purpose of schools is not to turn our 10-year-olds into policy
wonks," said Chester E. Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of
education. "Students should be learning the multiplication tables and the
Declaration of Independence."
Mr. Finn said it might be more appropriate for schools to address the
Iraqi crisis if war started.
But high demand for ways to teach about the conflict has already created
a cottage industry in Iraq-related curriculums. One of the most popular
is "Teaching with the News: Crisis with Iraq," an Internet outline
(www.choices.edu) of policy choices on Iraq that has framed debates in
some 4,000 American schools in recent weeks, said Susan Graseck, a senior
fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute whose staff wrote the
curriculum last fall as the conflict built momentum.
"We try to provide tools that can help students analyze current history,"
Dr. Graseck said. "That can bring it alive."
Teachers at the Metropolitan Learning Center, a public school in
Bloomfield, Conn., tried to bring the Iraqi crisis alive for students
through a satellite television linkup, which recently allowed the
students to discuss rock music, adolescence and fears of war with
English-speaking Iraqi students at an elite high school in Baghdad.
"Our hearts are with you in everything you're going through," Alex
Stegmaier, a Connecticut student, told the Iraqi teenagers at the
beginning of the videoconference.
Amar, an Iraqi student. replied, "We're all excited to meet you guys."
The Iraqi students asked questions about Hollywood and Disneyland, and
when an American student asked what the Iraqis would do if they could
visit the United States, an Iraqi boy referred to a rap musician. "The
first thing I'd do is go to a Dr. Dre concert," he said, to whoops of
approval from American students.
Were the Iraqis frightened of an impending war, an American student asked.
An Iraqi student replied: "When you wake up in the morning and hear that
5,000 people will be killed in a day, you don't wonder about your future.
You worry if you will be one of those killed people."
In Michigan, Superintendent Jim Ryan of the Plymouth-Canton district
announced to parents that students would watch no live television
broadcasts at school if war broke out, partly because he said he had
decided that after Sept. 11, 2001, students had seen too many horrific
televised images.
The teachers union said that Mr. Ryan's decision violated academic
freedom and that it might file a grievance.
"Live television is a teaching tool, and a national emergency is a
teaching moment," said Charles Portelli, president of the Plymouth-Canton
Education Association.
Educators in Chicago said they recognized a teaching moment recently when
students asked to perform "Lysistrata," Aristophanes's antiwar play in
which women vow to abstain from sex until men abstain from war, at Walter
Payton High School. The principal, Gail Ward, consented, but insisted
that the performance be followed by a panel discussion involving people
with other viewpoints, including a staff member who is a military
reservist.
"We wanted to give kids this theatrical experience, but we had to provide
balance," Ms. Ward said.
Gabriela Acevedo, an 11th grader who was among those who organized and
participated in the Lysistrata production, said she learned the
importance of hearing various opinions.
"I feel very strongly against the war," she said. "But when antiwar
people say, `The military is terrible,' I say, `Give them a break --
their job is to defend us.' "
Maintaining balance has been a priority for Sarah Roeske, who teaches
Global Issues at Stafford High School in Falmouth, Va., where many
students' parents work at the Quantico Marine base and hold other
government positions. Ms. Roeske recently organized a debate in which
four high school boys defended a policy toward Iraq they called ruthless
aggression, while three girls urged peaceful diplomacy. Ms. Roeske
refereed, often by playing devil's advocate.
"I push them to make their own decisions," Ms. Roeske said. "If my kids
ever know my views, then I've failed as a teacher."
In California, after hundreds of students walked out of classes at three
Los Angeles high schools in Febuary in spontaneous, unrelated protests of
a war with Iraq, the school district urged the city's 900 principals to
offer students opportunities to speak out about Iraq during school time.
"If students don't have the opportunity to express their views, they'll
just walk out," said Willie Crittendon, district administrator of
operations and safety. "Our policy is to defuse that situation."
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