Thinkin’bout Stuff

There aren’t too many things in this world that are black and white.

• In World War II, was the United States right or wrong to drop the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? How about the internment of US citizens of Japanese descent during the war?
• Were the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan justified?
• Was the Civil War really about slavery? Was the death of 365,000 soldiers?
• When is killing right and when is it wrong?
• Is a two dad or two mom family normal, acceptable, tolerable, unnatural, sinful and who decides what is normal in the first place?
• And the news item that was the catalyst for our topic today: Is Thanksgiving a day to give thanks or a day to remember how the white man stole this land?

Shades of grey. As adults, we often struggle with differentiating right and wrong. What is right for one person or group of people can be very wrong for the other. Sure, we can justify our positions, but an absolute “right” is not easy to find.

• Thou shalt not kill… unless in self defense? Or in time of war?
• Thou shalt not steal… but is it stealing to farm and hunt the same lands as those who came before? Does anyone own the land?
• Were we right to drop the A-Bomb to save American lives? Is one life more valuable than another because it is the life of a friend?
• Is it right to kill an unborn child.. for any reason? It’s convenient to dismiss the baby-to-be as being something less than human so that no rights will be assigned, but then why is it not OK for someone else to kill that unborn child, why is that then considered murder?

The point is, adults can debate these issues and make compelling arguments on either side. Adults. Not children. Certainly not 3rd Graders (from AP):

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he “discovered” them.

The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.

He has replaced it with a more realistic look at the complex relationship between Indians and white settlers.

Let’s start off with the assumption being made:

• The White Settlers stole from the “Indians”. 

That’s what the children will take from this black & white description of a “complex relationship”. This is not an in depth discussion of the relationship between the settlers and the “Indians”; this is quite simply an attempt to convince children to “change sides”. In this lesson, the settlers are the bad guys, pure and simple, and every one of us is here because we stole from the “Indians”.

Morgan said he still wants his pupils at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving. But “what I am trying to portray is a different point of view.”

Who’s point of view? His? Is that what teachers are supposed to be teaching to 3rd graders? And is expressing a point of view teaching or promoting a personal agenda? And why on earth does an adult, a teacher, feel the need to “teach” 3rd graders that the land they are living on was stolen?

“I think that is very sad,” said Janice Shaw Crouse, a former college dean and public high school teacher and now a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization. “He is teaching his students to hate their country. That is a very distorted view of history, a distorted view of Thanksgiving.”

Chuck Narcho, a member of the Maricopa and Tohono O’odham tribes who works as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, said younger children should not be burdened with all the gory details of American history.

“If you are going to teach, you need to keep it positive,” he said. “They can learn about the truths when they grow up. Caring, sharing and giving — that is what was originally intended.”

Exactly! There is time for discussion and debate when you have the emotional maturity, the confidence (and opportunity) to express your own views, and the intellectual agility to engage in such debates.  3rd grade? When you are 8 years old? Uh… no.

The lesson of Thanksgiving is “caring, sharing, giving”. What’s wrong with that?

Becky Wyatt, a teacher at Kettering Elementary School in Long Beach, decided to alter the costumes for the annual Thanksgiving play a few years ago after local Indians spoke out against students wearing feathers, which are sacred in their culture. Now children wear simple headbands.

“We have many mixed cultures in Long Beach, so we try to be sensitive,” Wyatt said. “What you teach little children is important.”

That’s fine. This is not about offending people. I hope they keep that in mind the next time an “artist” wants to display an upside down cross in a bucket of urine.

Instead of teaching about stealing, instead of banning feathers, why not teach about Native American culture, their view of the land, how they hunted, how they lived. Compare that to the struggles of the Pilgrims and tie it all together with a positive, 3rd grade level message.

Laverne Villalobos, a member of the Omaha tribe in Nebraska who now lives in the coastal town of Pacifica near San Francisco, considers Thanksgiving a day of mourning.

She went before the school board last week and asked for a ban on Thanksgiving re-enactments and students dressing up as Indians. She also complained about November’s lunch menu that pictured a caricature of an Indian boy.

The mother of four said the traditional Thanksgiving celebrations in schools instill “a false sense of what really happened before and after the feast. It wasn’t all warm and fuzzy.”

Sheesh.. maybe we shouldn’t celebrate anything anymore.

• Celebrate Independence Day? Sure to offend some of our British friends.
• Celebrate Martin Luther Kings birthday? Must be a racist somewhere that offends.
• Celebrate Halloween? Already hear about real live witches being upset over this one.
• Celebrate New Years Eve? Don’t you think the Chinese might find that annoying. Might upset some Jewish folks too since the year is all wrong.
• Celebrate Labor Day? Kind of insensitive to unemployed folks, no?

Thanksgiving has become a day to “give thanks” for all that we have, here and now. Because someone has decided it is a day of mourning, we need to keep it under wraps? Do the Thanksgiving celebrations depict violent acts? Or do they try to show an idealized view of the world where people come together in peace and share their harvests? Is that such a bad thing? Are we so sensitive to peoples feelings about events that occurred hundreds of years ago that we are now banning the teaching of a simple concept: Love Thy Neighbor?

James Loewen, a former history professor at the University of Vermont and author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong,” said that during the first Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag Indians and the pilgrims had been living in relative peace, even though the tribe suspected the settlers of robbing Indian graves to steal food buried with the dead.

“Relations were strained, but yet the holiday worked. Folks got along. After that, bad things happened,” Loewen said, referring to the bloody warfare that broke out later during the 17th century.

Morgan, a teacher for more than 35 years, said that after conducting his own research, he changed his approach to teaching about Thanksgiving. He tells teachers at his school this is a good way to nurture critical thinking, but he acknowledged not all are receptive: “It’s kind of an uphill struggle.”

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with exploring these issues more critically and in depth with HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. Hiding from the historical truth is not healthy. Both sides need to be presented as fairly as possible. What did each side do right? What did each side do wrong? In retrospect, what could have prevented the wars? This topic can be explored and debated by teenagers who are ready to grow into adults where they will be well served to have developed the skills necessary to adopt and defend an educated position on any topic.

3rd graders? Uh… no.

Update:  Sister Toldjah and Michelle Malkin are also discussing