I don't often don't share details about myself, but in sharing my story, today, I am "outing" the fact that I am a teacher.
And today for the first time in my career, I faced racism and the idea of political correctness head-on. I admit that I tend to be slow on the uptake and quite gullible sometimes, but even this astounded me.
Let me tell you what happened today that has left me questioning whether our schools should have boundaries and political correctness and what role a teacher has when a student wants to push at those boundaries.
The whole situation arose due to an assignment which I issued to the class for their final project. This final project needed to include statistics, formulas, research on a topic of their choosing; however, they need to integrate their spreadsheet in Excel with their research paper in Word and then they will tie it all together and give a speech on the last day of class.
As you might assume, I usually toss out a few ideas for the students to chose but I always allow them to decide if there is a subject they prefer instead of my suggestions. I do, however, inform the students that they must get teacher approval before starting this project.
I suppose that information is fairly irrelevant to what happened today.
Irrelevant or not, what matters is that I had a 51 year old adult (male) ask me if he could do his project on "The dangers Muslims present to our world." Or his alternative subject was, "The increase in crime illegal aliens cause our country and the danger they represent."
He then went on to try to convince me that those two topics were informative and that people needed to hear these subjects except...
"Everyone has to be politically correct and hide the real facts out there."
I was flabbergasted, folks! To say the least, I was absolutely stunned!!! I was being asked to allow someone to present a divisive, controversial, argumentative, wounding, and yes--even a politically incorrect speech just to show that I was willing to allow free speech and an education in racism to happen in this classroom.
I never thought it would happen, so I had never planned ahead. (In case you can't tell, I'm a person who likes to plan ahead for emergencies.)
Yet, there I was, having to decide how to handle this. "Lou Dobbs-wanna.be" in all his infinite wisdom was saying, "OH..I'm sure you just want speeches about dandelions and won't want any controversy or to be politically incorrect." (insert his snark tag)
If you've never encountered this type of situation yourself, I bet you never imagined what your response would be.
What type of speech is appropriate for the classroom? Is it wrong to ask for subjects to be tolerant of all races or religions in the class? What if a student found it offensive? Heck...I found it offensive! However, just because something offends me, as the teacher, is it wrong to prevent a student from presenting a speech against one race or another?
Those are the questions that ran through my mind as I considered my options.
I'm sure, by now, that you're dying to know what I did. So here's the rest of the story.
At first, I confess, I tried to take the easy way out and told him he needed to research statistics and see if they would fit in with the Excel portion of his speech. I also told him that the other students in the class would possibly argue and confront him if he were to give a speech like that. and I told him it might be difficult to use his ideas for the purpose of this assignment. (Yep. I tried to say no by throwing obstacles instead of by taking a stand against hate speech.)
However, as I drove home, a few additional thoughts entered my head. (Yes. One of those miracles--I know!) One of the thoughts was that I felt coerced into allowing hate speech in the classroom. Two, I felt that it was a time when I needed to draw a boundary for my students.
After all, I do not talk politics during class time; I set an example of respect for all ages and races; and I set an example of tolerance. I felt that free speech wasn't so much the question, or even political correctness was the question.
What I believe is that some students may have walked in that room feeling safe, because that's the environment I try to promote, and some would have left feeling ridiculed, beaten, and abused if I allowed a little intimidation to go against the values I've subtly tried to teach.
So let me ask you... what is the line in the sand between polite racism, the evil Elephant in the room, or Free Speech? And do our educational systems become "liberal" because you teach tolerance instead of hate?
Speak up. (While I'm letting you.)
(hattip to sistermoon for the Lou Dobbs idea)