Emma wrote:
> And students don't have purely accademic curiousity about this? Reading
> those sites really blow your mind to what humans are capable, in a bad
way.
> These people exist. And if we understand how they go wrong and what's up
> with their methods of thought, we can better understand humans and thus,
> ourselves.
I'm all for a knowledgeable teacher showing the reality of these groups to
the students. Teaching about the Klan, the Holocaust, all of that should be
required in schools.
> They have to stand on the ohter side of the street or just the boardering
> sidewalk, depending on HOW psychotic the cops deem them. And the cops stay
> there to make sure students don't hurt the people. Like how an anti-gay
guy
> got threatened by this baseball player with his bat. But they're legally
> allowed to be near the property. It's within their rights. .
I understand more clearly now - I thought you were indicating in your
previous post that the school allows them on the campus itself.
> But they still need to learn how to read though the code. So they don't
get
> tricked by something much less well known in the future. To have a well
> develped moral compass, one should be able to see the killer as a killer,
> rather hear about him and judge from stories. And most would be repulsed
by
> it, when they read it, if you do teach them well.
I guess what I don't get is this "reading through the code" - it can be
proven beyond any doubt quite quickly what these groups are about, so why
would one have to read through their code to understand it any clearer? All
I had to see at 13 was one photograph of a lynching and that about summed it
up for me. The white hooded thing is also scary enough on it's own, too.
Maybe teaching methods were more simpler in my time.
> I don't think that censoring is teaching well. If they're taught well
they'll have to stop
> looking soon because they'll be repulsed. If they're drawn to the Klan's
> ideals, I HARDLY THINK this was a fault of the librarian for showing it to
> them. Those ideas are preplanted to become enticing. And if they're there,
> there're no way to get them out. What's his name, that guy who killed
Ricky
> Birdsong a few years back traced his hatred for non-whites back to 8th
grade
> (at my Junior High) studying the Holocaust. Instead of seeing the horrors
> (and this was the same teacher as i had, it did not glorify nazis AT ALL.)
> he got to hate the Jews. In a 45% jewish school or something like that. So
> he learned it in junior high without websites (also pre public internet)
and
> without anyone exposing him to anything but facts about tragedies. He was
an
> easy target to begin with, for some reason. What's my point? Well, I don't
> think showing a website to kids encourages anything, and if it does, then
> there's something wrong with the kids wiring already, and you didn't do
> anything that wouldn't have happened anyhow.
I agree with what you are saying. But if there is something wrong with a
kid's wiring to begin with, all the decoding in the world isn't going to
reform him. The parents should also be involved in teaching their children
(unless the parents are part of the problem to begin with, and then you have
a bigger issue). I guess my point is that it wouldn't seem right for a
school or librarian or whoever to just say to a kid "here's all these web
sites for you to freely peruse, and come to your own intellectual
conclusion." Rather, it should be tied in with the teacher laying a
foundation first and making a lesson out of it.
I can understand where Lonely Painter is coming from, too - it often seems
today that some people go overboard in their vigilance for free speech and
think that any kind of discernment is automatically "censorship."
Kakki
