“The foundation of every state is the education of its youth,” Diogenes said. It would seem to follow logically that the dissolution of a state is the miseducation of its youth.
Robby Soave of The Daily Caller reports:
In the wake of the verdict in the Trayvon Martin shooting, several teachers said they would invoke mob justice, vigilantism and the idea that Florida law allows people to hunt and kill black kids when discussing the case with their students.
The source of these dubious lesson plans is the liberal women’s blog The Hairpin. Several teachers there explain what they would tell their young charges about the life and death of Trayvon Martin and about the fate of the man who killed him. One, who writes anonymously, admits that she would be reluctant to “teach” the subject formally but adds:
The thing is, I see Trayvon Martins everyday. I worry about young black men and their prospects in a world where a man is able to kill one without being convicted of something. Even if it isn’t as simple as that, kids will see it that way. Rednecks are holding their heads a little higher and tapping the guns on their holsters eager for a stand your ground moment.
Another asserts that the verdict is evidence “that Florida law allows people to hunt and kill black youth,” and said she thinks it is important to talk about this reality with students.
Some teachers published their names. One of them, Imani Perry, teaches at Princeton Universtiy. She wrote:
My two sons, bright, creative and kind African American boys, aged 7 and 9, both wept when they heard that George Zimmerman had been acquitted. They were afraid he, or others like him, might come for them next.
I did not anticipate that their young lives would be as much defined by the tragedies of the murder and execution of Trayvon Martin … as by the historic era of the first African American president. They already know the brutal truth of racial inequality, and that they are called to wage the battle against it, just as their forefathers and mothers.
I believe that if children are guided honestly through the reality of the world in which they live, it will help them build resilience.
I am training my sons to develop resilience in the face of the racial injustice.
One has to wonder if Perry’s children’s “young lives” were “as much defined by the tragedies of the murder and execution of Trayvon Martin” as they were to people like their mother referring to the shooting as an “execution.” One wonders, too, if the protests and marches in the spring of 2012, long before the trial and the facts of the case were even widely known, negatively impacted these “bright, creative” children.
At least one teacher said she would approach the subject calmly and rationally. Lindsey Hunter Lopez, who teaches high school English, said, “I’d welcome discussing Trayvon, and I’d do my best to facilitate in a neutral way.”
That’s comforting to hear but it’s not the Lindsey Lopezes that any of us need to be worried about.
Related Articles
- How will history textbooks treat the death of Trayvon Martin? Here’s a sneak preview
- Zimmerman Derangement Syndrome and its leftist enablers
- Disgusting: Family rescued by Zimmerman fears hate mobs
- NY man who threatened to ‘kill all whites’ after Zimmerman verdict arrested
- The cold-blooded murder involving a black 17-year-old that hasn’t received wire-to-wire media coverage
- Martin supporters claim accident staged to improve George Zimmerman’s public image
- Dem Rep: Economic boycott of FL over Zimmerman verdict could backfire
- The lynching of George Zimmerman
- Obama’s double standard on race challenged by the 2009 shooting death of a white teen by a black adult