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Parent objects Parent objects to Holocaust® role-playing By JENNIFER CALHOUN Raeford, NC — A parent of an eighth-grader at East Hoke Middle School is protesting a class exercise in which students role-play as Nazis and Jews during the Holocaust. The exercise has been practiced for the past two years in Lynda Smallwood’s English class and coincides with the reading of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” According to a permission slip sent home by Smallwood, the exercise is meant to help students “understand the depth of persecution and suffering the Jews went through” and to “show the students the dangers of ignorance, silence and prejudices.” During the exercise, part of the students in the class play Jews and are not allowed to talk or engage in class activities without permission from the students playing Nazis, the permission slip said. The groups switch the next week, and the roles reverse. The exercise is not mandatory. The students who do not participate will not be punished, and their grades will not be jeopardized, the permission slip reads. Outraged Angela Greene, a mother of one of the students, said she is outraged by the project and wants an apology from the teacher. Greene met with Smallwood and the school’s principal, Dr. Althea Taylor, on Tuesday morning. Later that afternoon, she met with Hoke County Superintendent Freddie Williamson. Greene says the project is too intense an experience for 12- and 13-year-olds and could be harmful. “This is a project for high school or college students,” she said. Greene, who is active in the school’s parent-teacher organization, said eighth-graders don’t have the mental and emotional capacity to grasp the concepts Smallwood is trying to get across. 'Nazi' stereotypes introduced Instead, the real lessons students will learn are bullying, power and harassment, she said. Greene added that bullying and harassment are violations of school policy. Anthony Lowery, Greene’s father, also said the project would have repercussions. “How do you suspend reality for a week or so and not have a lasting impression?” Lowery asked. “How do you say to a kid, ‘Oh you can’t do that this week.’ I don’t think they thought this through at all.” Williamson said
he stands behind Smallwood and the exercise. Williamson said the exercise is based on the brown eyes/blue eyes experiment of the late 1960s. The experiment was first performed by an Iowa teacher in an all-white classroom after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Students were divided into two groups based on eye color and told that one group was superior. The next day, the roles were reversed, with the goal of helping the class understand prejudice and oppression. Williamson said the experiment is a traditional and accepted way to teach lessons of tolerance and diversity. He also said the
exercise has been used for two years with successful results, and
that no parents had complained until now. “‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ is in the North Carolina course of study,” Williamson said, “and the exercise is a way to bring relativity to what kids read and see.” Williamson added: “That’s just history. We can’t hide from history, or we’ll make the same mistakes over and over and over.” In the meantime, the school has arranged for Greene’s daughter to attend another class while the experiment is going on — something Greene feels will further ostracize the child. But Greene said she is not through fighting for the project’s demise. “It’s state-funded, state-taught lessons in how to be a racist,” Greene said. “We’re in essence teaching our kids how to be a racist. I would not want a child, the most pure thing in the world, to be called a Nazi.” http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=282505 *What can one say about a purported document,
half of which has been shown by forensic examination to have been
written with a ballpoint pen — something unavailable during
the Second World War? |
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