Tag: Sources

“Just a Few Thousand” – the Moral Questions Facing New Teachers

“Just a Few Thousand”—the Moral Questions Facing New Teachers

Mark Pearcy

I taught for nineteen years in public schools before joining higher education, and I can honestly say that I was never more shocked than I was in my second year, during a class in U.S. history. That year, I had a student named Chris. Likable, athletic (a pitcher on the baseball team), Chris wasn’t particularly gifted or hardworking, content with regular C’s and the occasional B. He didn’t talk much in class, except to girls; rarely participating in class discussions. This changed when we started our unit on the Holocaust.

            All the students knew the basic history of the topic, some more informed than others—but all students were thoroughly engaged when we talked about the death camps, the experiments, and the usual round of questions: “Why didn’t more fight back?” “Did they ever catch the ones who did it?” “How many died?”

            It was the last question that brought Chris into the discussion. A student had called out the question, and another had spontaneously answered: “Millions.” Chris raised his hand; surprised, I called on him.

            “Actually, I heard it was different than that,” he said.

            “Well, that’s true,” I responded. Privately, I was delighted he was taking part—while the Holocaust is a grim subject, it usually serves the pedagogical purpose of getting quiet students off the sideline and into the argument. “The total number killed in the Holocaust was around eleven million. Jewish victims made up six million of those.”

“No, actually I heard it was less.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah, I heard it was just a few thousand.” He nodded in response to my surprised look. “I heard they got the number ‘six million’ by adding up all the generations of kids that would have been born to the actual victims.”

I was stunned. This was not only patently, demonstrably absurd—it was also directly from the rhetoric of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Trying hard to maintain composure, I asked him: “Where did you hear that?”

            He shrugged again.  “My father.”

The question facing a new teacher like me was difficult—should I have corrected Chris? Should I have told him his father was flatly wrong? Or worse, should I have told him that his father was repeating nauseating rhetoric that had been zoned off for the worst, vilest purveyors of bigotry? Incidentally, to make matters more complicated, I knew Chris’ father—like his son, an amiable, likeable man, who certainly didn’t seem to me the type of person who would repeat wildly inaccurate beliefs about the Holocaust. But what should be done?

I corrected Chris. Quickly, and bluntly, in front of the class. “That’s wrong,” I told him, and proceeded to drill him with the facts and evidence in my corner. I’m certain there are many teachers that would dispute my decision, and say that dealing with Chris’ error in that manner was too direct; or, even more likely, that dealing with it at all, especially in the second year of my career, was skirting the possibility of professional suicide, especially today, when the pressure and scrutiny aimed at teachers is worse than ever before.

All this would be reasonable criticism. Certainly, I make no grand claims to courage, seeing as I how I was teaching in an era of educator independence which, nowadays, we can seemingly only remember through the misty lens of nostalgia. My reaction was instantaneous precisely because I didn’t think about professional consequences. In fact, I had only one thought about Chris at the moment—“I can’t let him go on believing that.”

The lesson of Chris, and “just a few thousand,” is one of which new teachers are aware. There is a moral component to what we do in the classroom, one that applies to all subject areas. When we teach, we not only want to foster academic skills and achievement, we want to help children develop into good people. This is a concept of which many teachers are leery, and it’s hard to blame them—since for many, both in the classroom and out, it can sound quite a lot like indoctrination. But when we, through our schools, produce adults who are incapable of critically analyzing the issues of the world and their own lives—that would be the product of indoctrination. Instead, our goal, as Nel Noddings puts it, is invested in “a commitment to building a world in which it is both possible and desirable for children to be good—a world in which children are happy” (Noddings, 2003, p. 2).

Certainly, helping students find a worthwhile and lucrative career is important, as is helping them to acquire the habits of mind that accompany any field of study. But all teachers, in all disciplines, will sooner or later face situations where students believe an idea, or adopt a behavior, which endangers the successful achievement of the goal we seek, a world in which children can be “good.”

But how do we know what that means, to be “good?” Isn’t this is a matter of debate, and isn’t it dangerous for teachers to put themselves in the midst of such debate?

Of course. But that’s part of the job, as much as helping students learn to multiply and divide, or write clear sentences, or construct a logical argument. As teachers, we are representatives of a broader culture, one committed to a series of values that, as a community, we’ve deemed worth promoting and defending. Yes, there are gray areas, but far more often, the answers we have are clearer than we might want to accept.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in the 1964 case Jacobellis v. Ohio, offered a succinct definition of obscenity—“I know it when I see it.” When confronting with morally impermissible views, teachers are a bulwark of civilization and morality—and though very often there may be debate about whether or not we should intervene, often (perhaps too often) there is no debate at all. We know it when we see it, and we should have the courage of our own convictions, and faith in the goals of our profession, to act.

References

Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. United States Supreme Court. (1964). Jacobellis v. Ohio. Retrieved from http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0378_0184_ZC1.html

Observations of an Honors History Course Post-Pandemic

Observations of an Honors History Course Post-Pandemic

Melanie Gallo

The author is a rising senior at Rider University who has participated in both remote and in-person field placements during her time as an undergraduate. This article is derived from those experiences.

Throughout my experience in an honors high school United States history level two class I have learned that students are behind specifically in their research techniques. It is presented very clearly as I had the opportunity to move around the classroom while students were researching their civil rights unit. At the same time of these observations I had been developing my capstone project which is heavy research and found myself using my prior research knowledge to work with each student to ensure that their research skills grow.

 Research skills are key to becoming informed about many aspects of history. Students need the skills to become a well-rounded citizen. In order for students to become strong advocates for themselves when it comes to their education as well as their rights to become strong civic advocates, they need to be provided with the proper skills to research. Many of the students I had worked with lacked the vocabulary that would typically be expected for an honors eleventh grade student. Their research and vocabulary deficits were similar to those of a ninth grader.

When observing this group of eleventh grade honors students there were notable deficiencies in regards to what was expected of students of this year and level of education.  This group lacked vocabulary expected of an honors class and seemed to be more on par with that of a 9th to 10th grade level in my opinion.  I also noted, during multiple sessions and assignments, that their ability to research, utilize and format information in a scholarly way less than what would be expected of an honors class of this level.  During multiple assignments the students had trouble finding viable information to support admittedly simple topics and apply said information in a way that makes sense. Their ability to validate their points during the course of their assignments also lacked the strength that would be typical of an honors level.

 Students were observed using social media, sources that are purely opinionated, and other sources generally regarded as being unscholarly.  These students simply struggled to find relevant sources and the ability to put it together into a competent, cohesive piece of work. 

When I had the opportunity, I would work with students one on one to teach them how to use sites like historical archives and focus on sites that were not commercial based or opinionated. I had been developing my own research project during this timeframe which prompted me to locate some amazing resources therefore my ability to research grew which further helped me to guide these students to grow as their own sources to further their knowledge.

            My goal in drawing attention to this particular topic is that as educators we need to ensure no matter the circumstances that our students are aware of how to properly research. It is difficult for students to move on in higher levels of education without the basis of how to successfully research in order to providing credible evidence to support a claim. It is a disservice to our students when we as educators assume students are able to complete a task like this in full capacity. The state of these students suggests that there are many others throughout the country in the same situation. These students I worked with were very engaged in the classroom and only wished to succeed but when they are not provided with all the tools they need to complete their tasks they are left struggling. It can be hard to backtrack in what students need when they should have already been assessed for competency in research skills regarding the reliability of sources r. In some cases (like pandemic students are experiencing) they truly need that extra support especially now that these past two years have been virtual. Students had been left to figure out many of their assignments on their own due to virtual learning. This is something that is seen in a college setting. Therefore these students were left struggling in their formative years that would have needed hands-on guidance from an instructor. It is unfortunate that these students have been placed in such a situation.

            Another reason this issue is so detrimental to these students is that they are closer to being a college student than a high school student which is where the requirements are higher and the pressure becomes heavier to be able to properly research and not plagiarize. Since these students are at a disadvantage not knowing how to successfully use sources to back up their views they are more likely to inadvertently plagiarize. This becomes a heavier issue when college is involved as many colleges will take strong measures to remove a student from their scholarships, credit, or dismissal if they discover they have plagiarized. Which all stems back to educating students as to how to cite, how to find credible sources and present an argument that is sound. These students are hurting without even realizing it since they have been done a disservice as a result of their pandemic learning experience.            

My hope for this piece is to establish a call to action for educators to hone in on these skills even if we start younger than we would traditionally with research-based skills. Let’s band together and guide our students through their process of developing strong points with strong sources for evidence. They need to be able to locate sources that are credible on their own which is something that needs to be taught first and then expected later on in their education. Let’s ensure our students are confident in their research skills so that they do not face consequences later in life.