[mcvey]

Dear Freepers:

Associate Professor Chris Erickson, Indiana University, is asking for help with this malcontent and not-politically-correct student. He/she put this on H-Teach, which is the central discussion list for teachers of History.

Now, I think that Dr. Erickson is probably getting his/her advice from far too small a pool of discussants. I do believe he/she should have input from a more diverse set of authorities. So, in my attempt to be helpful to her, I am suggesting that Freepers send him/her advice. You will see that I left her e-mail address on the post. I have noticed that a lot of my colleagues are giving him/her help also and you might want to help them. The address for H-Teach is http://www.h-net.org/~teach/. I think in the spirit of collegiality, well, we have a duty to try to help.

Thank you for your willingness to participate. McVey

[Windcatcher]

I found this response disturbing...

This is a case where role-play discussions can be very useful. Example: In my 101 survey (Western Civ to 1500), I have them read about early Islam and early Christianity. I divide them into three groups, one Christian, one Islamic, and one group of pagans who have decided to convert. I set a year, let them form strategies for a few minutes as a group (with the pagans deciding what questions to ask), then split them into groups of three students, with one Christian and one Muslim trying to convert the pagan. There are rules, of course. They can't "sell sins" -- argue for drinking in Christianity, multiple marriage in Islam, and the pagans *must* decide based purely on the arguments they hear and not on any pre-held bias (which, of course, they often do anyway -- but that's grounds for discussion). They then have to stand in front of the room and explain why they chose what they did. Undergraduates tend to be pretty competitive, and this "2-on-1" game generally works well.

Where I can figure out which of my students are particularly strong Christians, I *always* make them Muslims (and, with the rare exchange student, vice versa). Forcing a student to take a role s/he might ordinarily attack is a good way to begin the process of cracking open a particularly closed mind. In your case, you could hold a similar discussion on the voting rights act and make your student a representative of the NAACP.

Making students intellectually uncomfortable is one of our most solemn duties. We just have to find ways to do it that do not represent direct attacks. Subversion is an old revolutionary technique!

Greg Monahan
Eastern Oregon University
gmonahan@eou.edu

[Windcatcher]

After several responses the original professor posted the following. It appears that she should be teaching Sociology rather than History, as in my mind it is not her place to engender "regard" for a movement, but understanding of it:

From christinerickson@comcast.net
Sent Thursday, April 12, 2007 3:42 pm
Subject Re: Difficult situation in survey query

Hello all, thank you very much for all of your responses. I want to make it clear that I was not grading this student for his political opinions. That, as folks have pointed out, is certainly not within my purview as a history professor. The first two sections dealt with the book itself – the last section, as I made clear to the class, was subjective – I wanted them to try, as best as they could, to put themselves in that time frame and really think about whether or not they would have been involved. No right or wrong answer. I was simply looking for an intelligent, thoughtful, well-written response. (Students are graded down if 1) they don’t answer the question, and 2) if they make silly grammatical/punctuation kinds of mistakes).

So, I didn’t need any help in grading this. I did not base his grade on the content of what he said in that last section. I guess all I was saying, was that I was having a tough time dealing someone who has absolutely no regard at all for the civil rights movement, no sense, still, after all of the reading, videos (I show the PBS’s the Murder of Emmett Till), what civil rights activists (and other blacks in the south) were going through.

Perhaps this was not the correct forum to express my sense of frustration.

Chris Erickson

Maybe this is just my cold, un-regarding, un-empathic, hard-science self talking, but methinks this person just might be FrontPage Magazine material.