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Wish the teachers would have learned from Jane Elliot.
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As I’ve mentioned before, we had to participate in an “apartheid day” where the kids where split into two groups, with one set to privilege (could use more convenient utilities, stairs, etc…), and with others being a bit too gleeful enforcers.
That’s where I learned that refusal to play the game, and an adequate threat of force magically changes your status.
(yes, and in a real-life scenario, there would have been no limitation on the force they were allowed to use, and my and my friends’ little rebellion wouldn’t have worked, but I believe that it taught a few different lessons, some of which they didn’t intend to teach)
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That certainly would have been better. Also, the Museum itself might have (or know of) some kind of more suitable outreach.
I was thinking that, on top of everything else, this felt like a pretty dark exercise to subject 3rd graders to. However, when I was around this age at the height of the cold war we had some pretty disturbing school exercises, including some post-apocalyptic stuff just after the Cuban Missile Crisis (eg working in small groups to decide, from a list of people, who should be allowed into the shelter to survive).
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presumably unilateral disarmament was off the table as a viable tactic.
hey teacher, you setup this artificial scarcity scenario - the rest is on you. which people do you want to kill? 
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I think the corollary to that is “any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”
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I don’t think that exercise was really about war; I think it was about socialization, acceptance, and racism. For example – I still remember this half a century later – if you optimized on “skills needed after emergence” criteria and also coupled-up the survivors (I think this was part of the exercise) then you couldn’t avoid having mixed-race couples. Mixed marriage was still illegal in neighboring Indiana, and a hot topic of discussion at the time. (In my neighborhood there had also been some recent racist shooting incidents over housing projects.) It forced the kids to confront some of our (our parents) prejudices. I suspect in retrospect that some of the progressive elements in my school district had decided that they could hide such teaching in a curricular element that would be welcome on the surface to the reactionaries in town.
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As the person who originally brought up Jane Elliot, please allow me to clarify…
My mind went to a place where some racist decided they could counter CRT or whatever put a bee in their bonnet…by using Elliot’s tactics for more nefarious purposes.
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Have you seen the article in the NYTimes about this? People have been removing my posts for sharing the information there, but if you follow the link, it seems clear that the librarian is a person of colour. I’m not sure that supports the nefarious theory.
What difference does that make?
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B-b-b-but the books and documentaries are wrong. They don’t mention Christmas.
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Well, I hadn’t heard of Black Nazi being a thing. But maybe I just need to get out a bit more.
The actions, not the race of the actor, speak for themselves.
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When done well, experiential learning can be more instructive than just putting a book or movie in front of a kid and telling them to shut up, as kids learn with their whole body and their whole sensory apparatus, rather than just the linguistic bit of their brain.
Obviously this was NOT DONE WELL. Teaching students about traumatic histories by having them perpetuate and experience trauma is likely going to cause harm and teach nothing.
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Yes. Fascists come in every conceivable shape, size and colour, and then some.
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What a horrible idea. Those poor kids.
And aside from the evil (intended or not, though I find it hard to think this came from a warm and loving heart), it seems utterly inept.
her son had to pretend to be on a train to a concentration camp and then act as if he were dying in a gas chamber. This student, the parent said, also had to act as if he were shooting his peers.
What? Which historically accurate scenario was that reflecting???
Also, @Gyrofrog - yes, the DC Holocaust museum is amazing. I hope these kids get a chance to go. Very compelling.
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That is just leaving so many unspoken assumptions out there. Let’s start with “in any group of sufficient size, there will be a surplus of assholes.” The idea that a POC cannot be anti-Semitic is indefensible, and the idea that somehow being an oppressed minority somehow makes you not-nefarious by definition (?) is equally not a thing. Too many examples to mention, simply “it is known.”
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There’s a thread for griping about moderation. Outside that thread, such whinging is badly off-topic.
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Aside from being off-topic…
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