01/10/2020
My old friend N, who teaches in Chicago, has a story about one day in school this week:
A fellow teacher (who happens to be a white settler) decided that in her history class (where N works as a support teacher), she wanted to do a unit on Latin American history (which N focus on in her Spanish class).
N's co-teacher decided to show a video ('Germs, Guns & Steel') to teach students about Hernan Cortez and the Incas. The video’s main points are how the Spanish were very advanced thanks to their geographic location; having steel and germs also helped them in the conquest. There is not one point expressing positive things about the Incas.
The video went on and on and then N asked her teacher to pause after the narration that “Cortes was a great warrior”.
N asked the students “Was Cortes a great warrior? What did he do?”
And the students answered “He killed people. He killed the Incas”
Then N asked the students “So what is he?”
The kids answered “He is a killer” and N left it there. The video then continued with a glorification of Cortez and the conquest of the Incas.
After class in the teachers' office, N's co-teacher said that N was “putting things in the children’s heads!!!”
N was “not allowing them to arrive to their own conclusions”.
How is this NOT racist??
N then met with the principal, who said that same things the co-teacher told her.
How is it that neither of them see the contradiction here? Why is it acceptable to tell students, show them videos, and give them texts that are glorifying these colonists and calling them “great warriors”, but it is unacceptable to ask the kids what they actually did, support their out-loud answers that “he killed people” and “he is a killer” and claim that this is “putting ideas in children’s heads”!!?!?!?!?
How different is this situation from having a white-settler teacher tell the Latina teacher (who is a Latin American history specialist) that she can’t tell or solicit information from her Latino students about the well-known fact of conquest in Latin America?
What is this if it isn’t this racism?
How is this different from a history teacher (who happens to be a white-settler) who shows a video explaining the K*K using expressions that can be understood as neutral or glorifying slavery and white supremacy...
and when a Black teacher who is a Civil Rights history specialist asks the students “what did the K*K do?” and Black kids answer, “kill people”, for the settler teacher to tell the racialized teacher that “the kids should arrive at that conclusion on their own” and that asking them so early on is “putting ideas in their heads”.
Aren’t these situations deeply wrong and racist?
Is there a difference?
Is it ok for a White-settler teacher to say this?
Should the teacher of colour just stay quiet during and after the video and and just “let the kids arrive at that conclusion on their own”.
Is that our role as teachers????
N can’t be that “neutral” type of teacher who maintains the whitewashing of history.
This is sooooo fecked up!!! 😡
