South Carolina high school English teacher Mary Wood was reprimanded last school year for teaching a lesson on race. She began teaching it again this year.
Mary Wood walked between the desks in her AP English Language and Composition classroom, handing out copies of the book she was already punished once for teaching.
Twenty-six students, all but two of them White, looked down at Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” a memoir that dissects what it means to be Black in America — and which drew calls for Wood’s firing when she tried to teach it last year in her mostly White, conservative town. Wood crossed to a lectern and placed her hands on either side of a turquoise notebook, open to two pages of bullet points explaining why she wanted to teach Coates’s work.
“That book that you guys have, it deals with racism,” she said on a recent Tuesday. “It’s going to be something with which you’re unfamiliar. That you need to spend time to research to fully understand.”
Wood stared at her class. She tried to make eye contact with every teenager. Anyone, she reminded herself, might be secretly recording her — or planning to report her.
…
Plus, both teachers believed the book, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is superbly written: a master class in the deployment of rhetorical devices. There was no better way to teach children how to formulate their own arguments, they thought.
“It teaches kids a different perspective, [it] teaches kids how to write well,” Wood said in an interview. And “it’s the right thing to do.”
I will be in minority here, but she is a teacher of English, and this topic should be taught in social studies. It is unprofessional to do what she is doing.
You cannot hope to teach any kind of literature without teaching important context around it. You are wrong.
Unless the book is literally recognized achievement, it should not be in the class. I say this without arguing with your statement that context is important.
It is, though. You just don’t know it – probably because your dumbass teachers avoided non-white authors in your classes.
The book was written in 2015. It did not even had time to be recognized as literally important, only as socially important.
So you’re saying an English class shouldn’t study modern usages of the language and only read older pieces that are considered “important” by an unspecified metric? Sounds totally reasonable
Homie got real quiet when everyone pointed out how wrong they were, but conveniently never admitted it.
They “admitted it” by way of blaming the post for not being a verbatim transcription of the article they failed to read
https://lemmy.world/comment/7244683
It won the National Book Award and Toni Morrison praised it. The Guardian ranked it 7th on their list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. So uh…
Yes, for “depiction of America’s race problem”. And it is a good book for that. There are good books for popular science, that also takes awards for good depiction of, say, physics. But you do not study those in Literature classes, do you?
Science books don’t tend to employ rhetorical devices, something that IS taught in English classes and what this book is being used for.
If a science book were ever to be an excellent example of rhetoric? Yes, it should be used in an English class.
Hey, I changed my mind. It turns out the teachers also thought that the book is superbly written and being excellent material for rhetoric. This information was missing in the original post, that created impression that she gave the book only because it is about racism.
“literally”
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
However, the book DOES have “literary importance,” as determined by it winning the National Book Award, winning the Kirkus Prize, and being a Pulitzer finalist.
Though I notice elsewhere in the thread you refer to those as “literature prices” multiple times, and would like to point out that they are, in fact, “prizes”. Prices are the cost of things you buy at the store. Prizes are awarded for achievement in a given field.
As such, I do not believe you are fit to be the arbiter of what gets to be taught in English class. It is clear you could use a few lessons on the subject yourself, and besides, before espousing that a book should only be taught in one type of classroom (Social Studies) and not another (English), a person should probably read said book. You clearly haven’t.
Hey, I changed my mind. It turns out the teachers also thought that the book is superbly written and being excellent material for rhetoric. This information was missing in the original post, that created impression that she gave the book only because it is about racism.
Good for you for admitting you changed your mind. Most people don’t have the courage to do that.
It won the National Book Award.
I doubt most used math books received awards
Did you read the article? The teacher gave pretty good reasons why:
A large part of English classes are about influential literature, not learning how to read. The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, Animal Farm, etc. They all have a message, and that’s part of English literature classes. If a book doesn’t have anything to say it isn’t worth reading. What books should be allowed to assign, in your enlightened opinion?
Is this book influential? I doubt so.
You probably should have taken an English class, then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_the_World_and_Me#Reception
Yes, it is a good social study book. It is not taking those prices for literature achievement.
Yeah, it was only a finalist for a pulitzer prize. It’s probably not worth considering.
However, your comment wasn’t about it being influential. It was about whether topics, such as this, should be examined in an english course. Again, what books do you deem appropriate for such a course?
Yes, it is socially important book. I do not see it is getting any literature prices. As I said, it should be a read in social study classes.
Dude, it was a finalist for a Pulitzer prize! What more do you need?
Also, again, what books are acceptable! You say not this one, but you can’t answer what is OK.
Hey, I changed my mind. It turns out the teachers also thought that the book is superbly written and being excellent material for rhetoric. This information was missing in the original post, that created impression that she gave the book only because it is about racism.
… But the fact that it won awards didn’t convince you? Bullshit.
Good on you. Thank you.
Teacher here. IMHO the job of any pre-university teacher goes beyond the strict subject matter of their class. Nothing wrong with a math teacher doing a bit of computer science, or a language teacher talking about history, or a history teacher doing ethics. Helps students develop their critical thinking skills, judging by themselves the worth of someone else’s opinions. Some people think that teachers must be controlled so that they don’t indoctrinate kids or whatever but this completely ignores the fact that kids are smarter than what most adults think. School is the place where they can exposed to a diversity of opinions, new ways to think about stuff, learn to live in a society. If you think of school as a service and education as just another product, you’re wrong.
I couldn’t even imagine an English teacher refusing to teach any books that involve history. I would get my daughter transferred to a different class because that is not a good learning environment.
My daughter is in middle school. They were given three book options to study. One of them is an award-winning autobiographical graphic novel about two child refugees in Africa. I suppose the person we’re talking to would say that would only belong in social studies too. I mean it involves Africa and war and it’s a true story. Does any of that belong in English? (Yes.)
Teachers absolutely have to be controlled. The shit people believe nowadays should stay away from educational system. I do not want intelligent design to be part of biology class only because a teacher decided “to expand views of the students”. But it works in both ways. Progressives topics should be avoided too if they are not part of the program. I do not want CRT, for example, to be thought to 8 graders either, especially in literature classes, unless it is part of the curriculum. There is acceptable program, and teachers should go alone with it.
Are you getting dizzy? You’re changing your arguments so frequently I figure you must, maybe you should sit down. Being progressive is not equivalent to denying science. Teaching an award nominated book should not be banned simply because it broaches the topic of race. And no, teachers should not go along with what’s always been taught, because the world hasn’t stopped evolving in the 1960s.
Never said it is, except in particular context - when it is outside curriculum.
I never said it should not be taught “because of the topic of race”. In fact, I said it should be thought but in social studies class.
And this is how intelligent design will be in the school.
We are democracy and democracy is build on rules. Following the rules is essential to the democracy, otherwise it becomes anarchy. You can’t have “let’s break the rules, but only when I like it” and have flourishing country.
A social studies teacher is not the right person to be analyzing and teaching modern persuasive writing styles. That material belongs in an English class and if you teach it in social studies you have philological fucked up.
And if the teacher said “This book is about persuasive writing style” we would not have this conversation. She specifically gave the book because it describes racism, she did not even mentioned the style (at least per article).
I want my child to learn about racism from the teacher who is trained to talk about this topic, who has specific class for that, and bring it as a part of complex social problems that exist, not from activist in literature class, who suppose to teach literature.
You’re just wrong about what kinds of works a good AP Lang class should be teaching. You’re wrong about what the class is, how it works, and what it intends. You’re wrong about the science of education going into this. You’re wrong about the cross-disciplinary nature of the lessons. You’re wrong about the purpose of this book being assigned. And in that wrongness you are advocating for a world where education does a worse job teaching kinds how to navigate and be resilient in a world full of people that are going to constantly be trying to convince them to believe certain things and act certain ways.
OK, I admit, this changes my view. I read only what was posted - did not read the whole article. Well, it teaches me.
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Is CRT in the room with us right now??
I do not understand your question. Are you still talking about Critical Race Theory, or switched to Cathode Ray Tube?
Well that’s good, because it’s usually only studied in a graduate-level law school course. Good job buying into that Republican rhetoric.
If my kid comes back from biology telling me about intelligent design because his teacher mentioned it in class I admit I’d be pissed off, but I don’t think I’d call for the teacher to be fired or try to censor them. Instead I might tell them about the scientific explanation and why I think what the teacher says is bullshit. As a parent I try to participate in my kids education. Problem is, some parents don’t, and then they go crazy when teachers different ideas than theirs.
That’s bs. I was taught of mice and men for my gcse literature exam and one topic that can come up is race. To kill a mockingbird is also taught at a level English and only a fucking moron would deny that the books about injustice towards a black man.
I feel like a solid half of the books I was assigned in k-12 had to do with the holocaust, slavery, or the cold war. To kill a mockingbird, number the stars, boy in striped pajamas, Anne Frank,
number the stars, night, the hiding place, animal farm, the giver etc. This definitely doesn’t seem out of the ordinary or inappropriate to me. I’m more skeptical of teaching books like Lolita (though I personally feel even young kids can read reasonably critically, especially with the guidance of a teacher).Sometimes a book is made to be read to class to train certain understanding of words and topics. This is an appropriate English lesson.
You know, sometimes literature exposes us to the perspectives and life experiences of other people who are not like ourselves. And thus, through literature, we broaden our perspectives and better empathize with others instead of being ignorant hateful shitbags.
And by sometimes I mean most of the time.
You need to talk about something in English class. Why not two-birds-one-stone this?
No, it shouldn’t. Literature doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Between the World and Me is a book-long letter to Coates’ son about his own experiences with racism. Why would that be taught in social studies? I read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in English class. It dealt with racism just as much as Between the World and Me. It wasn’t taught in social studies because it’s literature. So is Between the World and Me. You don’t read literature in social studies, you read it in English. In fact, I don’t remember ever reading a book in high school social studies that wasn’t the textbook. What did you read?
Is it true Americans bend onto one knee whenever a black person passes?
The fuck?
I see it in video.
What on Earth are you talking about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlPM37eCge8
Got it. You’re just an extremely tedious troll. Not interested. Goodbye.
That’s a bit unnecessarily mean
Siloing is harmful, classes should actually coordinate with each other to teach holistically.
Yeah so science teachers shouldn’t teach math. gtfo
I don’t think encouraging students to cultivate a POV outside their normal lens is necessarily bad. Frankly it points to the power of composition. AP students should be dealing with harder work in their respective subjects.
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They’re two pretty different subjects. One teaches about grammar, rhetoric, vocabulary, how to express ideas in words and how to understand others’ expressions. The other is about our interactions with the humans around us, whether in written form or not, whether in English or not. A big part of my social studies courses was about people who didn’t even know English.
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Sounds like you didn’t have a combined class, you just didn’t have a social studies class. Naturally learning about literature introduces you to broader topics about social systems, but if you didn’t study society specifically, then you didn’t have a social studies class.
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Interesting. I wonder why Sweden doesn’t (or didn’t) break it out into its own thing.
Agreed, I thought it was a history class or something until your comment.
Totally missed the first sentence apparently