Do you consider the Trail of Tears to be genocide? (Poll)

[KathyBC]

Mmm, yes the idea that the logic stage is when children are precisely in gr. 5-8 and the rhetoric stage precisely in gr. 9-12, while convenient for publisher's specifications, does not always hold up when applied across a broad spectrum of children. Many posters here advocating that middle school (gr. 6-8?) might be good time to begin introducing and discussing difficult concepts but perhaps not everyone is ready for debate likely reflects their real-life experience rather than any sort of judgement on the neo-classical trivium, particularly in the context of this thread, which is not a classical school, I don't think. I *do* agree that our education systems could use a really strong dose of said skills in gr. 10-12, but the system is leaking in so many areas it's easy to see why potentially troublesome topics might be avoided or watered down... though in the OP's case, clearly not.

[Joker]

So, today in dd's class they were broken into groups depending on which position they are supposed to argue. Her side, that it was not a genocide, were told one reason they can give is that the removal and moves were done peacefully. It doesn't sound like they are just debating the meaning of the word and if it fits the situation. 

 

Now it's not just about dd choosing to not actually argue in the debate but it is about what the teachers are telling these students. 

[zoobie]

No, I think you are missing the point of the exercise. Why were they considered sub-human? What moral and ethical philosophy made people consider non-whites sub human? What moral and ethical claims were made?

 

 

There are many cultures today where victor-takes-all is considered viable moral philosophy. Many cultures today believe might makes right. If you conquer someone else, you can have their stuff and they can be treated however you want. It's not like this has disappeared from the face of the earth.

 

 

There are many people living now that would defend this philosophy. There are many people living in the world today, entire countries, that operate on systematic abuse of those they feel are "less than".

 

 

You say it's not viable, but that's the whole point: it was viable then to a ton of people; people who were just like us. They had reasoned that it was okay to do all of that stuff. They had a moral framework, many of them were educated people, not ignorant. And yet, it happened because they thought it was viable. It happens today because people think it is viable. In order to argue against it you have to have something more than "it's bad and we know better now". And in order to argue why it is bad, you have to understand why people thought it was good or at least justified.

How would middle school kids debate that? You want one side to support the position that Cherokee were subhuman? I don't understand how that would work.

[zoobie]

So, today in dd's class they were broken into groups depending on which position they are supposed to argue. Her side, that it was not a genocide, were told one reason they can give is that the removal and moves were done peacefully. It doesn't sound like they are just debating the meaning of the word and if it fits the situation.

 

Now it's not just about dd choosing to not actually argue in the debate but it is about what the teachers are telling these students.

So Jews leaving peacefully would... Oh my. That's some argument against it being genocide.

[LucyStoner]

Do we expect every middle school student to parse the legal definition of genocide set out by the UN (and heavily influenced by nations with a history of brutal colonization) and the dictionary definition?  12 year olds?  I dunno if that is reasonable.

 

The dictionary definition of genocide is (paraphrasing) the destruction of one large group of people by another.  It doesn't touch on intent.  Literally geno (race) cide (combining form meaning kill).  As few people who commit genocide set out calling it such, I'm not convinced that a super narrow definition of intent matters outside of The International Criminal Court.  These are middleschoolers, not first year law students.  I wholly agree that students need to learn to argue both sides and argue the positions they reject but I would assume that such young kids would be learning it rather than mastering it.  

 

Learning to do something can start with smaller and more palatable issues...school uniforms/no school uniforms, co-ed vs. single sex sports, requiring pets to be micro chipped or not, child filters on the internet or not.  You start small and work your way up IME.  At least that is what I have been doing for my son. I've had him right both sides of some big issues were he's passionate about one side or the other but bluntly, imma not going to make him defend, say, Boko Haram, you know?  and I didn't start with the hardest topics, I think we started with the co-ed sports thing.  For people on the Trail of Tears it was every bit as traumatic as what current victims of terrorism are going through.  I do recall writing both sides of the policy of manifest destiny at some point around 12 but that wasn't defending it in the modern day but rather taking on the perspectives and voices of historical figures.  

Edited March 14, 2016 by LucyStoner

[Matryoshka]

Some have questioned "intent".  Here's some info:

 

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called “Indian removal.†As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers. As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the “Indian colonization zone†that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. (This “Indian territory†was located in present-day Oklahoma.)

The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their land. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations. In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian territory on foot (some “bound in chains and marched double file,†one historian writes) and without any food, supplies or other help from the government. Thousands of people died along the way. citation

 

As to "they were removed peacefully" (???!!!)

 

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while whites looted their homes and belongings. Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way, and historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey. citation

[EmseB]

So, today in dd's class they were broken into groups depending on which position they are supposed to argue. Her side, that it was not a genocide, were told one reason they can give is that the removal and moves were done peacefully. It doesn't sound like they are just debating the meaning of the word and if it fits the situation.

 

Now it's not just about dd choosing to not actually argue in the debate but it is about what the teachers are telling these students.

What? They are being told what reasons they can use? Wouldn't the whole point be that they are supposed to research what reasons were used at the time to justify the removal? This sounds really bizarre.

 

Although that particular point would be very easy for the other side to refute, logically speaking, so maybe that's what they are going for? I would imagine people who have committed such atrocities may have actually claimed that if it was "peaceful" that it was not murder or some such, but I haven't researched enough to know for this specific case.

 

ETA: In other words, are they teaching the kids it was peaceful (which would be objectively not even factually correct), or are they teaching them that was a claim made by the people who committed the act? There's a HUGE difference.

Edited March 11, 2016 by JodiSue

[Daria]

Are they being asked to reenact or analyze what the people at the time thought, to understand what the people at the time thought, or to debate from a contemporary perspective?  To me those are two different things.  

I can understand the purpose for the former.  I've lead class discussions about slavery or the civil rights movement where we discussed the beliefs of slave owners or segregationists, and read and analyzed their writings.  We might even have done some role playing.  I role played the ambassador to the U.N. from Iran, during the hostage crisis when I was a kid.  This was a role that hit particularly close to home, as my father was an American diplomat and friends with some of the men who were being held.  I had friends who played the role of nazis in the school play. I think those can be important parts of studying and understanding the tragedies that were slavery and Jim Crow, and studying and understanding are what leads to prevention. 

 

But to me, a debate is different.  A debate asks the students to defend an idea in modern terms.  It implies that it both sides are defensible in the context of modern thinking.  In my opinion, debating should be reserved for things about which there is reasonable disagreement.

 

 

[Matryoshka]

When they were trying to describe the Nazi attitude to those they persecuted, the feeling was this was something different than the norm.  Not just utilitarian, even when that as so often is the case becomes identified with hatred of the other.  I think there is some real truth to that - the point for them doesn't really seem to have been about stealing people's goods, or even whipping up some populist support, but a kind of desire for real racial purity.

 

I think in the case of the Indian wars, the Trail of Tears, it is a lot less clear.

 

 

Oh, boy.  If you're trying to argue that the Nazi Jewish holocaust was 'obviously' genocide, while what the US did to the Native Americans is somehow 'less clear', let's remember that Hitler's idea of rounding up the Jews and sending them to concentration camps was inspired by what the US did to the Native Americans:

 

...the genocidal mentality and actions of the U.S. policy makers would find similar expression years later when the Nazis, under Hitler, studied the plans of Bosque Redondo to design the concentration camps for Jews.

             

As Pulitzer Prize-winning author, John Toland, notes in his book Adolf Hitler (pg. 202):

Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.

He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government's forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination.   source

 

 

Edited March 11, 2016 by Matryoshka

[Murphy101]

The Supreme Court ruled that the removal was illegal. The 'suggestions' were not taken because the President and the local people wanted the land for themselves. Although, it wasn't just a suggestion. They flat-out went against a Supreme Court ruling.

 

The displacement of native people was not wanting for eloquent opposition.

I didn't ask about eloquent opposition. I asked what alternatives were suggested. Opposition is not enough.

 

 

There would have been another sovereign country in the southern United States. The Cherokee Nation already had written their own Constitution.

 

The ones who stayed did not fare well because the local people were emboldened by the President's agreement with them that the people living on (and farming and working the land) did not have any right to it because they weren't white. If the law had been upheld, things could have been different.

I see no evidence they would have been able to sustain their own nation. Having a constitution isn't enough.

 

A country that cannot fight for its sovereignty to be respected, either on its own or with sufficient allies, cannot stand. If they expect the laws of other countries to keep them safe, they are screwed.

 

The Native Americans were on land that the United States wanted to expand into for many sound reasons at the time, however we might feel now about how it was done. If Native American nations could not fight to prevent that or bring other tremendous incentive or allies to the bargaining table, I don't care what the laws were for either side, they would lose. This is basic historical expectation for just about every nation that has ever existed.

[Murphy101]

So, today in dd's class they were broken into groups depending on which position they are supposed to argue. Her side, that it was not a genocide, were told one reason they can give is that the removal and moves were done peacefully. It doesn't sound like they are just debating the meaning of the word and if it fits the situation.

 

Now it's not just about dd choosing to not actually argue in the debate but it is about what the teachers are telling these students.

Ugh. Bat guano history is part of why I hated school as a kid. I'd be demanding a meeting with the teacher and she better figure out a way to convince me that's not how she intended it. Which is probably why the schools are glad I stay home schooling.

[LucyStoner]

I didn't ask about eloquent opposition. I asked what alternatives were suggested. Opposition is not enough.

 

 

 

I see no evidence they would have been able to sustain their own nation. Having a constitution isn't enough.

 

A country that cannot fight for its sovereignty to be respected, either on its own or with sufficient allies, cannot stand. If they expect the laws of other countries to keep them safe, they are screwed.

 

The Native Americans were on land that the United States wanted to expand into for many sound reasons at the time, however we might feel now about how it was done. If Native American nations could not fight to prevent that or bring other tremendous incentive or allies to the bargaining table, I don't care what the laws were for either side, they would lose. This is basic historical expectation for just about every nation that has ever existed.

 

This comes across as "might makes right", the morality of stealing, kidnapping and killing be damned.  The ten commandments which reflect and inform many of the laws and norms of so many cultures and countries and at the core of a religion many claim this country was founded on make it clear that stealing, covetous behavior and killing people are all wrong.  

 

I have "sound reasons" for wanting that house over there.  If I can take it by force because the little old lady who lives there is unable to defend herself and has no one else to defend her, it doesn't become rightfully mine if I do so.   

[Murphy101]

This comes across as "might makes right", the morality of stealing, kidnapping and killing be damned. The ten commandments which reflect and inform many of the laws and norms of so many cultures and countries and at the core of a religion many claim this country was founded on make it clear that stealing, covetous behavior and killing people are all wrong.

 

I have "sound reasons" for wanting that house over there. If I can take it by force because the little old lady who lives there is unable to defend herself and has no one else to defend her, it doesn't become rightfully mine if I do so.

I certainly don't agree with it (especially as I have very little "might", but also the whole RC thing too) but who are we kidding here?

 

Yes, when it comes to nations being built and nations falling - the mighty win and the victor sets the rules the conquered must endure. Every time. This is history 101.

 

The United States of America exists for one reason:

 

It has had the might to hold its ground, quite literally.

 

And when it does not and some other group decides it has better plans and uses for it, the United States of America will fall and this land will be some new entity. Maybe even multiple. It might be a bloodbath or it might be a slow shift over time until only 3 states or whatever remain of the original. But if the United States cannot hold its ground, it will lose its ground.

 

It's a prime example of what applies on the micro level does not tend to apply to the macro level.

 

A guy kills 10 people, he gets the death penalty. Because basic Christian tenets and all that. And because over all, he still has no might. Sure he did over those ten people, but on a large scale he couldn't maintain his force. So he lost to the greater force, in this case the law of the land.

 

A nation leader commits genocide and we have to be handle things diplomaticly. Maybe some sanctions that will hurt his people but very likely not do anything to him or his military? If there is something we really want from his country, then that sure makes it a sticky wicket. Is he only killing his own people? Well gee, that's sad, but well as long as he stays in his borders? Really the reaction time is slow and usually too little too late and usually the reaction has little to do with the genocide crime than other factors of political interest to the outside nations. Also, it often tends to beg the question of civil war too. If the losing party is losing because they simply don't have a chance in hell of winning against the overwhelming might of the other party but are desperate enough to try anyways - is it genocide for that party to crush them for the sake of attaining political rest or is it suicide for them to persist? Does it matter if their cause is deemed a good one? What about drones? We don't lose any lives and they do, sounds like a win for us right?

 

These are common problems we can see in the news right now. And you can bet they are not deciding it on the micro scale of it's wrong for a next door neighbor to do it.

 

Don't confuse what I think is right and just, with my simply acknowledging that reality, history, and politics are rarely either one.

Edited March 12, 2016 by Murphy101

[Joker]

What? They are being told what reasons they can use? Wouldn't the whole point be that they are supposed to research what reasons were used at the time to justify the removal? This sounds really bizarre.

 

Although that particular point would be very easy for the other side to refute, logically speaking, so maybe that's what they are going for? I would imagine people who have committed such atrocities may have actually claimed that if it was "peaceful" that it was not murder or some such, but I haven't researched enough to know for this specific case.

 

ETA: In other words, are they teaching the kids it was peaceful (which would be objectively not even factually correct), or are they teaching them that was a claim made by the people who committed the act? There's a HUGE difference.

 

They were brainstorming as a group and the teacher started helping with examples. I'm willing to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt and assume it was meant as what people who committed the act would think. The issue for me is that's now how it was taken by dd or her group. Many of them are upset about what's being discussed and what their role in the debate is supposed to be. I'm honestly not sure how the teacher meant it though as I wasn't there.

 

I still say this is a topic not suited for a debate by middle schoolers. Dd had to write a paper from the perspective of the North and the South during the Civil War. Then, there was an open discussion about all the different points of view. That was ok. This is something different.

 

I'm going to reach out to a few people this weekend, including a local American Indian Center. I'm just very uncomfortable with what I'm hearing and seeing in regards to what dd is bringing home. I hope this debate can be followed up with something more meaningful and factual. The North and South perspective papers were written after a D.C. and Gettysburg trip as well as a lot of study on the Civil War. Dd says she feels this debate is supposed to take the place of actual teaching of the subject as it's all they have done so far. Their debate will end this grading period and I feel they will just move on and I'm not really okay with that. 

Edited March 12, 2016 by Joker

[Joker]

Joker, I'm curious to know why you feel the Civil War assignment was okay, but this one isn't? Many more people died in the Civil War (over a million) than in the Trail of Tears (around 4000), not to mention the whole slavery issue being front and center. I would think a student able to handle that assignment would be able to handle this one. Why the difference?

It wasn't a debate. The Civil War assignment was researching both sides and writing two papers; one on each perspective. Then, there was just open discussion. None of the students had to pick one side and defend it. They just discussed the differing view points. I, and dd, would be fine with a class discussion of the differing views regarding Trail of Tears.

[Ravin]

I think it was part of a larger genocide. In and of itself, it could have been "merely" an atrocity. In the context of the Indian Wars and the decades of oppression (linguistic, economic, physical and otherwise), I believe it is part of a genocide.

 

I think that the fact that the US government claimed to have the natives' best interests in mind does not change the fact that almost every single action appeared to be a motion towards eliminating the entire racial and ethnic presence of indigenous people on the continent, as evidenced in the present day by an absolutely minuscule indigenous population.

 

I regularly do statistics on race in the US. There is absolutely no way that the population of natives got to be this small without someone trying. Even accepting huge reductions in population by disease, look at some of our neighbors in Latin America. Even in Mexico which eliminated slavery before us (they have about three times the percentage of indigenous people, as usually excluding anyone who does not speak an indigenous language--this process is known as statistical suicide, such as the classification of the Mestizos of the US Southwest, genetically known to be about half Indian, as "Hispanics" every one).

 

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/aihmcensus1.html

 

 

I would not support my children arguing in favor of genocide, nor of their arguing that the Holocaust of WWII, or the Trail of Tears, or the Armenian genocide, nor the genocide / femalocides under the Taliban, were not genocides. To me, that would be like me supporting their participating in a debate as to whether or not slavery is justified. I feel that it is so incredibly clear that to present it as a "debate" with pros and cons is incredibly misleading and most certainly unnecessary.

 

It would be like asking one student to attempt to prove that 2+2=5. Nothing good can come of it at that age--they aren't there.

 

The fact that many people disagree with me is not to me a sign that this is a matter of opinion. It is a sign that we live in a very sick society indeed, one that accepts that history written by the victors is indeed the truth, and not a story we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better.

 

Joker, I'm glad you're standing up for your daughter. I think it's right. There are some things that are presented as moral questions which are not at all. Honestly, I think as an adult I could manage but I wouldn't have my kid do it.

 

And I think the abortion question here is the most analogous. Would you consider having a middle-school child, who believed that embryos are human persons or human beings with all the sanctity and rights that entails, debate the contrary, pro-abortion? You might ask them to understand the other side, but I wouldn't ask a middle-school child to make the argument that killing babies is okay.

 

I agree that lawyers must sometimes do that, but I don't think that it's a middle-school level debate. Maybe high school for students with an interest in debating (future lawyers :) ).

I actually thought of abortion as a prime topic where reasonable minds differ and both sides have strong moral arguments (pro-life on one side, pro-choice on the other) for whether abortion should be legal or not.

 

Unlike the topic given by the teacher to the OP's DD, which asks her really to parse technical legal terminology over a topic to which for good reason she has strong, viceral, emotional reasons to find such analysis unacceptable. Unlike a topic like abortion, where understanding the other side's viewpoint has benefits, expecting a child, especially a child whose ancestors were affected by the atrocities done to them, to analyze whether said atrocity was genocide or more properly labeled something else, is not going to be beneficial. Maybe for older students, but not in middle school.

[Daria]

Joker, I'm curious to know why you feel the Civil War assignment was okay, but this one isn't? Many more people died in the Civil War (over a million) than in the Trail of Tears (around 4000), not to mention the whole slavery issue being front and center. I would think a student able to handle that assignment would be able to handle this one. Why the difference?

The Civil War assignment wasn't a debate.

 

As the parent of an African American child, I would be fine with an assignment that asked my son to write a paper outlining the reasons given for slavery, or to role play Jefferson Davis. By if he was asked to debate whether or not slavery was an acceptable institution, I would object. He doesn't deserve to be in a classroom where the idea that he isn't full human and deserving of the same liberties as his classmates is given credence.

[EmseB]

The Civil War assignment wasn't a debate.

 

As the parent of an African American child, I would be fine with an assignment that asked my son to write a paper outlining the reasons given for slavery, or to role play Jefferson Davis. By if he was asked to debate whether or not slavery was an acceptable institution, I would object. He doesn't deserve to be in a classroom where the idea that he isn't full human and deserving of the same liberties as his classmates is given credence.

 

I am wondering about the distinction.  If one is writing a paper outlining the reasons for slavery, wouldn't the very idea that blacks were not fully human (and why people thought/think this), deserving the same liberties be a crux of that paper?  Wouldn't an academic debate on the topic bring up the exact same reasoning?  I don't understand how, because it is in debate format, that somehow the ideas are suddenly given credibility, any more than they would if someone had to speak them or write them as part of a paper or role play.

 

In the case of a debate, you have a bunch of people researching and articulating their moral framework as to why it is absolutely immoral to treat people that way, no?

 

ETA: I will say that that sort of debate would be more appropriate for a philosophy class, probably at the rhetoric/college level.  BUT having middle schoolers think through it would not be out of bounds.

Edited March 13, 2016 by JodiSue

[Daria]

I am wondering about the distinction.  If one is writing a paper outlining the reasons for slavery, wouldn't the very idea that blacks were not fully human (and why people thought/think this), deserving the same liberties be a crux of that paper?  Wouldn't an academic debate on the topic bring up the exact same reasoning?  I don't understand how, because it is in debate format, that somehow the ideas are suddenly given credibility, any more than they would if someone had to speak them or write them as part of a paper or role play.

 

In the case of a debate, you have a bunch of people researching and articulating their moral framework as to why it is absolutely immoral to treat people that way, no?

 

ETA: I will say that that sort of debate would be more appropriate for a philosophy class, probably at the rhetoric/college level.  BUT having middle schoolers think through it would not be out of bounds.

 

From my perspective, a debate is an activity in which you try and change people's mind.  It's based on the assumption that there's the possibility of doing so, that reasonable people can take either side.  It's not just understanding the argument on both sides, but being open to the idea that both sides may have some partial truth, or that someone might change their mind altogether.   

 

In this case, the debate clearly isn't about understanding what the people believed at the time, because they're asking the students to evaluate the Trail of Tears using a modern concept.  No on in the time of the Trail of Tears believed it was genocide, or wasn't genocide because the word and concept hadn't been invented yet.  Even people who felt adamantly that it was wrong wouldn't have said "it's wrong because it's genocide", and the perpetrators wouldn't have said "this isn't genocide". So, the debate seems to be answering the question of "How do we, as modern people, through our modern lens of genocide, judge the Trail of Tears?"  

 

I think that there is lots of room for debate and discussion in the classroom.  I think it's an important activity.  But, I also expect that certain things should be presented as arguments that took place in the past, and that are now decided, not as things that continue to be up for debate.

 

An less emotionally laden example would be Galileo. You can't understand the history of science, or the history of the Catholic Church without understanding why his ideas were as threatening as they were, or what the church was thinking when it reacted the way it did.   These are very important things for scholars of that era to understand.  But I would not expect a theology teacher to ask the kids to debate whether or not the Earth revolves the sun.  Pretend to be Pope Urban VIII and give a speech? Sure.  But heliocentrism is no longer debatable.  There is no way, from a modern perspective, that someone can defend the opposite.  

 

I also think that it's important to understand the power that middle school teachers have, and how that gives them certain responsibilities.   Middle school children have no choice but to be with their teachers, and are dependent on their teachers for many things.  They rely on their teachers to build an environment where they are physically and emotionally safe.  The idea that the person who is responsible for keeping you safe might not believe you deserve to be safe, or might believe you are less deserving of safety than some of your peers, is a really scary one.  

[Murphy101]

Hmm.

 

I think the notion that only unreasonable people were/are responsible for genocide and slavery is unfounded.

 

Reason and morality do not necessarily go hand in hand.

 

Ideally and usually they do, but at some point, no matter how effective, efficient, and enlightened some idea might be - we have things where we say it is still wrong bc it just IS.

 

This is a separate topic possibly.

[Farrar]

From my perspective, a debate is an activity in which you try and change people's mind.  It's based on the assumption that there's the possibility of doing so, that reasonable people can take either side.  It's not just understanding the argument on both sides, but being open to the idea that both sides may have some partial truth, or that someone might change their mind altogether.   

 

In this case, the debate clearly isn't about understanding what the people believed at the time, because they're asking the students to evaluate the Trail of Tears using a modern concept.  No on in the time of the Trail of Tears believed it was genocide, or wasn't genocide because the word and concept hadn't been invented yet.  Even people who felt adamantly that it was wrong wouldn't have said "it's wrong because it's genocide", and the perpetrators wouldn't have said "this isn't genocide". So, the debate seems to be answering the question of "How do we, as modern people, through our modern lens of genocide, judge the Trail of Tears?"  

 

I think that there is lots of room for debate and discussion in the classroom.  I think it's an important activity.  But, I also expect that certain things should be presented as arguments that took place in the past, and that are now decided, not as things that continue to be up for debate.

 

An less emotionally laden example would be Galileo. You can't understand the history of science, or the history of the Catholic Church without understanding why his ideas were as threatening as they were, or what the church was thinking when it reacted the way it did.   These are very important things for scholars of that era to understand.  But I would not expect a theology teacher to ask the kids to debate whether or not the Earth revolves the sun.  Pretend to be Pope Urban VIII and give a speech? Sure.  But heliocentrism is no longer debatable.  There is no way, from a modern perspective, that someone can defend the opposite.  

 

I also think that it's important to understand the power that middle school teachers have, and how that gives them certain responsibilities.   Middle school children have no choice but to be with their teachers, and are dependent on their teachers for many things.  They rely on their teachers to build an environment where they are physically and emotionally safe.  The idea that the person who is responsible for keeping you safe might not believe you deserve to be safe, or might believe you are less deserving of safety than some of your peers, is a really scary one.  

 

:iagree: All this.

 

I think it's good to have debates about some really controversial things that I have strong positions on - abortion, health care, socialism, zero tolerance policies, three strikes laws, the death penalty, etc. I agree with the sentiment that not learning to argue the position you don't agree with is academically cowardly and immature. But to actively give credence to the idea that some people deserve to be placed in concentration camps, enslaved, murdered, etc. on the basis of their race? Not to look at the historic reasons why this occurred but to actively argue that it's right? It creates a false equivalence by presenting to students that these are potentially both legitimate points of view. It's not teaching critical thinking skills, it's making a hostile environment and encouraging moral relativism of the worst sort. I like the way you put this, Daria - that some issues - hopefully! - have been decided. We can agree that it was wrong and not worth a debate in a modern context.

[EmseB]

It's not giving credence to the idea to speak it out loud. Stating what someone else believes doesn't necessarily do that, I don't think. Especially when everyone involved knows it's an academic exercise.

 

Slavery is acceptable right now to a lot of people in the world. Their moral framework doesn't dictate that it is wrong. So the ideas already have credence somewhere. I think we need to be able to refute these ideas ably and interact with them. In that case someone has to say them out loud and ask for engagement on the subject.

[Bluegoat]

Probably not sociopaths, but there are some pretty good modern examples of that mindset where we make others sub-human to justify policies. Sub-religion, sub-race, sub-class, sub-whatever. 

 

Oh yes, people do this all the time.  However there are other ways of thinking that allow people to think of others as human but also allow them to justify in some way things like genocide or torture. 

 

In many cases as well, I believe groups aren't so much interested in common humanity as they are in whether or not people are part of their particular group of humans. 

[EmseB]

I also think the way humans treat others is much more nuanced than scientific facts about the earth orbiting the sun.

 

For example, we can say of course slavery is wrong, but yet we rationalize buying goods made in conditions that are not much better than outright slavery. We use iphones, drink Folgers, eat chocolate, etc. So I don't think it's as black and white as we give lip service to.

[Murphy101]

Every day I'm astounded by how much these questions are NOT decided at all in our modern society.

Oh polite society has gotten better and prettier propaganda.

But it's not hard at all to see how much these questions are seriously still considered in various forms today.

I sure do wish it was a done deal agreed upon decision though.

ðŸ™

[Murphy101]

I also think the way humans treat others is much more nuanced than scientific facts about the earth orbiting the sun.

 

For example, we can say of course slavery is wrong, but yet we rationalize buying goods made in conditions that are not much better than outright slavery. We use iphones, drink Folgers, eat chocolate, etc. So I don't think it's as black and white as we give lip service to.

It's a fine step from everyone agreeing all slavery is wrong to well slavery is wrong, but those people aren't slaves, as long as they are willing to starve without a master to feed them, they can leave anytime they want.

 

Or claim it's okay to kill persons in certain situations bc if they knew what was best for themselves, they'd want to be killed anyways.

[Bluegoat]

Oh, boy.  If you're trying to argue that the Nazi Jewish holocaust was 'obviously' genocide, while what the US did to the Native Americans is somehow 'less clear', let's remember that Hitler's idea of rounding up the Jews and sending them to concentration camps was inspired by what the US did to the Native Americans:

 

...the genocidal mentality and actions of the U.S. policy makers would find similar expression years later when the Nazis, under Hitler, studied the plans of Bosque Redondo to design the concentration camps for Jews.

             

As Pulitzer Prize-winning author, John Toland, notes in his book Adolf Hitler (pg. 202):

Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.

He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government's forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination.   source

 

 

That doesn't mean, or even say, that what the Americans intended was what Hitler intended.  Ways of killing people can be adapted for all kinds of purposes.

 

There is plenty of rock solid evidence that the whole point of the Nazis rounding up various undesirables was racial purity.  They described in baldly in those terms.  Any benefit of this to the political regime was very much tangential.

 

As for the whole of the American interaction with First Nations peoples, while there were many individuals who had a concept of racial purity, it is much less clear that government actions were primarily about that.  That doesn't mean, definitively, that it might not be the case, though other elements seem to have been equally as important.  Were they the main focus and the destruction of the people a result rather than the primary goal?  That seems to be a possibility here where not so much in the other example.  And the attitude of government also seems to have been less unified (probably because they were a different, less centralized kind of organization.)

 

It also seems to have been the case that some in government thought that the loss of Native American culture and language was inevitable, and the policy views of those people reflected that rather than being intended to cause it, though that was the actual effect.

 

We might make an argument that the concept of manifest destiny was in some way equivalent to some of the eugenic ideas of the Nazis, in terms of racial purity, but it would be an argument to make, it isn't obvious.

 

So yes, I would say that really does qualify as "less clear."

 

I'm not sure why "less clear" is such an issue, lots of events in history are less clear than others.  Events even in the present are muddy in many cases.

 

I'm not even sure why it is considered that if it was in fact not intended as an extermination, that is somehow saying it was less serious or evil.  Evil takes plenty of forms, and caring less about others than about land or wealth or power is a pretty potent form of it.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Bluegoat

[Bluegoat]

I didn't ask about eloquent opposition. I asked what alternatives were suggested. Opposition is not enough.

 

 

 

I see no evidence they would have been able to sustain their own nation. Having a constitution isn't enough.

 

A country that cannot fight for its sovereignty to be respected, either on its own or with sufficient allies, cannot stand. If they expect the laws of other countries to keep them safe, they are screwed.

 

The Native Americans were on land that the United States wanted to expand into for many sound reasons at the time, however we might feel now about how it was done. If Native American nations could not fight to prevent that or bring other tremendous incentive or allies to the bargaining table, I don't care what the laws were for either side, they would lose. This is basic historical expectation for just about every nation that has ever existed.

 

Well, I don't know about that.  The model we use in Canada considers many Native groups as independent nations within Canada.  This hasn't always gone smoothly, but it's based on treaty obligations for the most part, which seems like a reasonable legal structure to me.

[KathyBC]

The only way I can see another side of Trail of Tears as doable is to juxtapose modern concepts with older issues. One popular idea right now with local English teachers is to have the kids draw a Facebook page for a literary character, for example. So if you had students act as defense lawyers at a Nuremberg-type war crimes trial? Then maybe. Still not middle school, though.

[Bluegoat]

From my perspective, a debate is an activity in which you try and change people's mind.  It's based on the assumption that there's the possibility of doing so, that reasonable people can take either side.  It's not just understanding the argument on both sides, but being open to the idea that both sides may have some partial truth, or that someone might change their mind altogether.   

 

In this case, the debate clearly isn't about understanding what the people believed at the time, because they're asking the students to evaluate the Trail of Tears using a modern concept.  No on in the time of the Trail of Tears believed it was genocide, or wasn't genocide because the word and concept hadn't been invented yet.  Even people who felt adamantly that it was wrong wouldn't have said "it's wrong because it's genocide", and the perpetrators wouldn't have said "this isn't genocide". So, the debate seems to be answering the question of "How do we, as modern people, through our modern lens of genocide, judge the Trail of Tears?"  

 

I think that there is lots of room for debate and discussion in the classroom.  I think it's an important activity.  But, I also expect that certain things should be presented as arguments that took place in the past, and that are now decided, not as things that continue to be up for debate.

 

An less emotionally laden example would be Galileo. You can't understand the history of science, or the history of the Catholic Church without understanding why his ideas were as threatening as they were, or what the church was thinking when it reacted the way it did.   These are very important things for scholars of that era to understand.  But I would not expect a theology teacher to ask the kids to debate whether or not the Earth revolves the sun.  Pretend to be Pope Urban VIII and give a speech? Sure.  But heliocentrism is no longer debatable.  There is no way, from a modern perspective, that someone can defend the opposite.  

 

I also think that it's important to understand the power that middle school teachers have, and how that gives them certain responsibilities.   Middle school children have no choice but to be with their teachers, and are dependent on their teachers for many things.  They rely on their teachers to build an environment where they are physically and emotionally safe.  The idea that the person who is responsible for keeping you safe might not believe you deserve to be safe, or might believe you are less deserving of safety than some of your peers, is a really scary one.  

 

I don't think of formal debates as looking to change people's minds.  Pretty commonly they are about quite silly subjects and people have to argue positions that no one would believe.  The debaters in those cases have to find another way into the subject. 

 

I don't know how we could present anything in the past as no longer up for debate.  If we took that seriously, what would we be saying today about the treatments of Native Americans or other minorities?  The assumption seems to be that the view we have right now is the definitive one.  In any case, that isn't at all how history as a discipline works.

 

Galileo would be a pretty good debate topic too, though the position of the Catholics was actually pretty defensible - if he had created a scientific consensus they were prepared to allow him to teach his theory to students. 

[Daria]

For those of you who don't see debate as being about convincing people, I'm curious about how you'd respond to this,  I teach math, among other subjects.  Often times, I have students who believe that if you have 2 numbers, you subtract the smaller number from the larger number.  So, for example, given the following problem

 

 34

-17

______

 

They start by subtracting 7 minus 4, and writing 3 in the 1's place.

 

It is very important to me that students understand why they do this, and also, of course, why it's wrong.  I give them an opportunity to explain their thinking, we spend time discussing their thinking, and then we examine that argument, and hopefully I lead them to the conclusion that their way is wrong, and my way is right.

 

If you believe that debate is a tool for understanding the other side, would you use debate to teach this?  Would you divide your class into 2 groups, and have one group defend the idea that 34 - 17 is 23, and the other group defend the idea that 34 - 17 is 17?  I, personally, wouldn't, because my goal for that lesson would be for all the students to end up agreeing that 17 is the right answer.

 

[Murphy101]

Well, I don't know about that. The model we use in Canada considers many Native groups as independent nations within Canada. This hasn't always gone smoothly, but it's based on treaty obligations for the most part, which seems like a reasonable legal structure to me.

We have similiar Native American nation treaties here.

 

To say it hasn't always gone smoothly is a very mild statement.

 

And just about a year ago I think?, this very board had a serious and heated debate over whether those Native American nations had any claim on their own children still today and whether they actually have any sovereignty as seperate nations. It was hotly debated that they didn't have either one.

 

eta: For clarity, I was in the minority opinion that they had both.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Murphy101

[EmseB]

For those of you who don't see debate as being about convincing people, I'm curious about how you'd respond to this,  I teach math, among other subjects.  Often times, I have students who believe that if you have 2 numbers, you subtract the smaller number from the larger number.  So, for example, given the following problem

 

 34

-17

______

 

They start by subtracting 7 minus 4, and writing 3 in the 1's place.

 

It is very important to me that students understand why they do this, and also, of course, why it's wrong.  I give them an opportunity to explain their thinking, we spend time discussing their thinking, and then we examine that argument, and hopefully I lead them to the conclusion that their way is wrong, and my way is right.

 

If you believe that debate is a tool for understanding the other side, would you use debate to teach this?  Would you divide your class into 2 groups, and have one group defend the idea that 34 - 17 is 23, and the other group defend the idea that 34 - 17 is 17?  I, personally, wouldn't, because my goal for that lesson would be for all the students to end up agreeing that 17 is the right answer.

 

Again, sociology, history, and philosophy are different animals from hard sciences such as physics and mathematics.

 

Even reasons for opposing slavery differ between those who do actually oppose it.  There are theological, practical, and philosophical reasons to oppose it.  But if I give the reasons I oppose slavery, I bet there are people out there who oppose slavery but would disagree with my reasoning.  Just as there are people out there who disagree with my reasoning and don't oppose slavery.

 

You're assuming there is one concrete answer to the question, but even in 21st century America there's debate on the subject as it pertains to our own current creature comforts.  And that doesn't even get into countries and people groups who think slavery is justified still, even now.  So you keep saying it's as simple as a basic math problem or a simple fact as the earth goes 'round the sun, but reality says otherwise.  You can't do subtraction the way you describe, as it is impossible.  It is possible, however, to have and use slaves and believe one is totally justified in doing so (for utilitarian, philosophical or other reasons).

 

If you encounter someone that believes slavery is okay, and you were to tell them it is wrong, and you give them your reasons, and they say, "well, I don't believe that, I believe this"...to him his position holds as much credence as yours does.  And there are people who exist right now who believe it is okay to use slave labor for various reasons.  Just as you see it in black and white as wrong, they see exactly the opposite in the same black and white, or at least they haven't found compelling reasons to stop the practice.  So to say it's irrelevant to discuss because everyone just knows it's wrong is not true and really hampers work to end it.

 

I also think you are misunderstanding the purpose of an academic debate, as evidenced by your example above.  But, to your example, in order to get someone to understand why you are correct, you must first get them to see they are wrong.  And in order to do that, you must listen to them or at least have some way of figuring out what exactly their reasoning is, no?  You have to give them time to explain what they are doing and why.

 

But, in mathematics where we can visualize and see the concreteness (at least in subtraction) of why the student is wrong, history and sociology are going to be much, much messier.  So just because one believes debate is a useful tool in some areas (philosophy and morality being big areas where debate is useful) does not mean that it needs to be applied universally.  That seems to be a bit of a logical fallacy.

 

Edited March 14, 2016 by JodiSue

[Spy Car]

For those of you who don't see debate as being about convincing people, I'm curious about how you'd respond to this, I teach math, among other subjects. Often times, I have students who believe that if you have 2 numbers, you subtract the smaller number from the larger number. So, for example, given the following problem

 

34

-17

______

 

They start by subtracting 7 minus 4, and writing 3 in the 1's place.

 

It is very important to me that students understand why they do this, and also, of course, why it's wrong. I give them an opportunity to explain their thinking, we spend time discussing their thinking, and then we examine that argument, and hopefully I lead them to the conclusion that their way is wrong, and my way is right.

 

If you believe that debate is a tool for understanding the other side, would you use debate to teach this? Would you divide your class into 2 groups, and have one group defend the idea that 34 - 17 is 23, and the other group defend the idea that 34 - 17 is 17? I, personally, wouldn't, because my goal for that lesson would be for all the students to end up agreeing that 17 is the right answer.

Sure, I'd have a debate about this.

 

One can subtract the smaller number in the Units place, in this example 7-4, to find the difference. And one can write 3 in the Units place (if one includes the negation sign).

 

So -3 in the Units place 3-Tens minus 1-Ten is 2-Tens. 2-Tens and -3 is 17.

 

17 is the right answer. Affirmative side wins!!!

 

Bill

[Bluegoat]

I think there is probably a good reason you don't often see math topics in "be it resolved" type debates.

[Joker]

Well, they spent the last two days having the debate. Dd stood with her group but didn't contribute. At the end, the teacher declared her side, that it wasn't a genocide, the winner. Dd says many students said they had also changed their minds and didn't believe it was one. She is glad she didn't take part in it and is disturbed by how it played out. I'm hoping I hear tomorrow that they have a class discussion. We're waiting to hear about any follow up before dh and I speak to someone.

[bolt.]

Well, they spent the last two days having the debate. Dd stood with her group but didn't contribute. At the end, the teacher declared her side, that it wasn't a genocide, the winner. Dd says many students said they had also changed their minds and didn't believe it was one. She is glad she didn't take part in it and is disturbed by how it played out. I'm hoping I hear tomorrow that they have a class discussion. We're waiting to hear about any follow up before dh and I speak to someone.

Well *that's* some awful news! Sounds like your/her instincts were on to something real from the get-go. Congrats on being patient: it's by far the best course to give it another day 'just in case' (it might be some great multi-day moral drama, with a twist ending)... But it must be hard to keep on giving the maximum benefit of the doubt to this (most likely) ill-motivated idiocy.

[eternalsummer]

It would be kind of pointless to have a debate where the answer was pre-ordained so that the kids having to argue for a difficult side would automatically be the losers.

 

If the "not genocide" side were argued more effectively than the "genocide" side, I don't see why they wouldn't win the debate?  I also think it makes sense that they'd be able to convince some students that the Trail of Tears wasn't a genocide, if they were able to argue their (assigned) position more effectively.  

 

What I would advocate for (if the teacher had one more day to devote to this, which is fairly unlikely but oh well) would be for the students to do one more day of debate, but this time to get to choose their sides.  This way your daughter could argue for her beliefs (that it was a genocide).

Edited March 16, 2016 by ananemone

[Joker]

It would be kind of pointless to have a debate where the answer was pre-ordained, so the kids having to argue for a difficult side were automatically the losers.

 

If the "not genocide" side were argued more effectively than the "genocide" side, I don't see why they wouldn't win the debate?  I also think it makes sense that they'd be able to convince some students that the Trail of Tears wasn't a genocide, if they were able to argue their (assigned) position more effectively.  

 

What I would advocate for (if the teacher had one more day to devote to this, which is fairly unlikely but oh well) would be for the students to do one more day of debate, but this time to get to choose their sides.  This way your daughter could argue for her beliefs (that it was a genocide).

 

 

My problem is the reasons given for it not being a genocide, such as it was done peacefully. No one was corrected if giving information that wasn't all that factual. I'm concerned that a large group of middle school students have an opinion based on not entirely correct information they received from their peers in a debate. I'm concerned that many students are walking away from this thinking the Trail of Tears wasn't all that bad. I hope these things are cleared up this week by actual teaching of the events that took place. 

[eternalsummer]

Yes, I'd think they would have pretaught things that were pertinent to the debate, like the straight facts of what happened, some legal definitions of genocide, and maybe some instruction about the development of the idea of genocide and different ideas of what the qualifications are to call something genocide.  If I were teaching this kind of thing, it would be a great opportunity to teach the kids about researching background information for a debate (and they should be encouraged, as part of debating, to present evidence of their claims.  for instance, if someone argued that it wasn't genocide because it was peaceful, the teacher might have said (in the preparation phase) - "interesting idea!  what evidence can you find that A. It was peaceful and B. a peaceful action is by definition not genocide"

 

When I was in 9th (granted, a couple of years later) we held a mock Nuremburg trials, with lawyers for the Nazis and prosecutors and etc.  It was a useful historical education (because we had to do some research to find out what arguments might have been effective or acceptable then, and what the evidence was on both sides) and the outcome wasn't pre-ordained (although of course afterward we read about what actually did happen at the trials, etc.)

[eternalsummer]

Did they not learn about the Trail of Tears before debating, or do some research?  If someone on the "not genocide" side had said it was done peacefully, you'd think the "yes genocide" team would have had some evidence to point to the fact that it wasn't entirely peaceful.

[Matryoshka]

Did they not learn about the Trail of Tears before debating, or do some research? If someone on the "not genocide" side had said it was done peacefully, you'd think the "yes genocide" team would have had some evidence to point to the fact that it wasn't entirely peaceful.

It was not remotely peaceful.  :angry:

 

How was it peaceful?  The unarmed civilians didn't fight the armed soldiers that took them away from their land and homes to a prison camp?  Well, by that argument, the Nazi holocaust against the Jews was also peaceful.  I mean, they just walked into those gas chambers. :cursing:

Edited March 16, 2016 by Matryoshka

[Bluegoat]

Yes, I think after a debate like that you would want to sit down and deconstruct the arguments.  A good question might be - how do you decide what historical evidence is reliable, when you receive different accounts?  What do people mean in that context when they say something was done "peacefully?"  But I can't see having a pre-determined outcome as desirable.

[FaithManor]

My son, the current college freshman, took a class on genocide last semester. His professor was a survivor of genocide in Africa. Interestingly, the Trail of Tears is considered by many historians as the first catalyst in the genocide of Native Americans due to many governmental memos by Andrew Jackson and his supporters that indicate the administration was not just out to steal the land, but did hope for a tremendous loss of Native American life as a first step in wiping them out. (ie. think of the pogroms against the Jews in Germany prior to "The Final Solution".) The land "given" to the tribes as reservations was carefully chosen for the fact that they would not be able to survive on it and many would die in the first year. Opposition noted that many would starve, die of exposure, exhaustion, disease, etc. There was no concern for this from those eager to rid the country of Native American blood.

 

Sickening. Really sickening. It wasn't just a land grab. It was made out to look like that was merely all it was in order to appear slightly more palatable to opposing politicians. But at the heart of it was a deliberate first step in a plan to eliminate native peoples. Whether or not the Trail of Tears itself is a stand alone moment of genocide is rather beside the point. We refer to the Holocaust as a whole, a whole event that began with the restrictions placed on Jews and undesirables in order to slowly acclimate the public to the idea of eventual mass murder in much the way one turns up the heat under a pot to "boil a frog". The Indian Removal Act was simply the first step in that genocide, the trial run for the American white public to get them used to the idea that Native Americans deserved what they got. Most genocides do not begin with a single act of mass murder. There is a phase in which people become accustomed to the notion that a certain group deserves to be deprived of basic human rights, deserves to be persecuted, deserves to suffer, and then deserves to die.

 

Ds wrote extensively on the subject which was eye opening for me in a very, very evil way and worse than I'd ever imagined.

 

I think there is a LOT of value in a debate on the topic, and it shouldn't be off limits at say the high school level. I consider the topic inappropriate at the middle school level due to lack of maturity, and well, the general zaniness of kids in this phase of life.

 

At the college level, it was amazing to see what ds and his class were learning through their research, discussions, and debates! I am so glad ds was living at home that semester and commuting because we were privileged to get in on discussions with him and by extension, learn from his professor, a profoundly talented educator whose survival story leaves one weeping.

[eternalsummer]

It was not remotely peaceful.  :angry:

 

How was it peaceful?  The unarmed civilians didn't fight the armed soldiers that took them away from their land and homes to a prison camp?  Well, by that argument, the Nazi holocaust against the Jews was also peaceful.  I mean, they just walked into those gas chambers. :cursing:

 

Yes, these are some good counter arguments (1. What does "peaceful" mean?  Can anything be peaceful if done under the threat of force? and 2. obviously a similarly "peaceful" operation in Nazi Germany *is* commonly accepted as a genocide, so maybe "peaceful" isn't a good qualifier) and should have been presented by the opposition, right?  Perhaps another solution (in an ideal world) would be for a session after the debate in which the whole class (led by the teacher) brainstorms responses to some of the unanswered arguments during the debate.  This way arguments that were successful just because the opposition didn't counter them well would not be allowed to stand forever in the minds of the kids as true.