Seebach: Teaching sensitivity can be a disgraceful exercise

Rocky Mountain News ^ | June 19, 2004 | Linda Seebach

[valkyrieanne]

Sue them. Don't just talk the talk; walk the walk, and pay for the kid's college education with the settlement.

[Arthalion]

Well, I honestly never understood WHAT the point of the lesson was. To teach the other kids what fun it is to pick on people? To get even with the blue eyed devil? I never saw the educational value of the exercise, and don't understand why libbie teachers insist on using it.

I wish I could take credit for the protest idea, but it actually came from one of the other kids. What really depresses me is that several of the blue eyed kids just sat there and refused to protest. They didn't want to make a "scene", and instead wanted to endure it.

The reaction from the teacher was priceless though. The stamping feet, the red face, the shrieking voice, the sheer unadulterated FURY...she just couldn't STAND the fact that we wouldn't submit to her stupid lesson, and accused us of MOCKING the civil rights movement (the principal came to our class because she was so loud that neighboring teachers had called the office to let them know that something was going on). To this day I think we did the right thing, and think that the libbie teacher (I don't even remember her name) was just upset that she couldn't take out her anger on this group of white kids.

I heard the following year that the lesson was banned at my old junior high when the next crop of kids, having heard of our little protest, decided to go the race riot route by throwing their books at the teacher when she tried the lesson again. The school tried to expel a couple of the kids, but the parents were so furious that the district backed off, reduced them to a few days of suspension, and banned the exercise outright.

[Poohbah]

I am living proof that sensitivity training is wasted on Marines.

[Poohbah]

BTW, as a blue-eyed guy who was "required" to participate in a "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes" session, I handled the situation with great tact and diplomacy. I simply quoted Charles Napier's immortal statement to John Belushi in The Blues Brothers.

[ladylib]

I think you're right. A lot of the bullsh!t just goes in one ear and out the other. Do teenagers really believe the nonsense some of their more "enlightened" teachers tell them? It's just another stupid exercise (PC psychobabble -- multiculturism, gay pride days, radical environmentalism, radical feminism) that the kids have to go along with in order to get a state diploma -- go along to get along. They just indulge their teachers and the school administration, letting them think they are making a difference in their lives while laughing at them behind their backs.

With younger kids it's a different story, however.

[Vigilantcitizen]

You vill be sensitive!

[Vigilantcitizen]

Welcome to tolerance camp.(.WAV)

[RobRoy]

>>Yeah that sounds reasonable.<<

Having six kids myself, the youngest of which is 17, I have to ask, "When have you ever met a reasonable ninth grader?"

[RobRoy]

>>I am living proof that sensitivity training is wasted on Marines.<<

And I am living proof that sensitivity training is wasted on real men! I was exposed to that garbage by my employer back in the early nineties. It was done by the ADL. We were not stupid. We all just politely nodded and agreed and had a nice free lunch in the middle.

[walden]

With younger kids it IS a different story. You know that kind of nice-seeming person who really isn't nice at all? I remember several different episodes with both of my kids when they were younger, where they were just stunned and hurt to realize that those people were actually quite cruel. It's sad to see it, but they do learn over time to distinguish truly good people from the fakers.

[ahayes]

Hmm . . . new policy! An exemption from oppression for the bazooka wielders, and cookies. Now you have brought a frightening new idea to my mind--we must rid our midst of the insidious heterozygous brown-eyes, before they produce blue-eyed children!