If you want to instill critical thinking skills and empathy around this issue, maybe you could do an activity to illustrate how ludicrous prejudice is against someone based on the color of their skin (or something else they cannot change).
You could do the whole brown eyed/blue eyed thing. You know the brown eyes are the best kind of people who get to go out to recess first, or be first in line for lunch or don't have to do a certain homework assignment for a night- simply because they have brown eyes while the blue-eyed (or light-eyed) people are the drones who get all the seconds and are never given credit.
That'd be perfect for kids that age. But I wouldn't include verbal or written messages of abuse in any way. And I'd make it clear at the end that this was just a game for them, but for some people it's a way of life. Kids learn more through activities than words anyway.
I just think this was innappropriately abstract for this age child. It would be like someone bringing a painting of PissChrist in and asking them how it made the Christians among them feel to see their God defiled. They don't know at that age- anything other than it makes them feel really, really bad to be set apart in a negative way.
And as a parent, I don't want people I don't know instilling ideas about race and religion in my child. As a teacher, I don't want to be responsible for it either. That's not the job of the school- unless you have a trained diversity educator that has run his or her spiel by the parents and gotten their approval.
I'd rather have my kids have another half-hour of reading or writing or math- than an art lesson around something like this.
I guess it seems obvious to me that you don't let one or two children be isolated as representatives of a hated group - discussion should be both general and make children think of how hate happens for quite stupid reasons, or worse, economic or territorial reasons... and potentially, that it is fed by the results of hate, although that is a more advanced concept.
Ah, well, it worked with one child.
How about this: the event your child faced caused a conversation between you and him.
Ok, ok.....
I do like the blue vs. brown eyed kid thing - I've seen video of it in action.
You're expressing this very well, aidan. In fact, you've convinced me. It's tough making such points when they oppose so many well respected members, isn't it?
Roger, I agree. Aiden, your points are well elucidated, certainly better than mine. Please don't feel that I persist because I think you're wrong. I am really, honestly, thinkign about this because I will become a teacher soon.
I think it varies. My niece was the one bringing all this stuff up to me when she was ten, or nine. I don't think that painting would have been the model for the conversation. It does fit the subject: we would talk about it if we were in a museum. I just don't know about the appreciation age for a class. With my niece, it would be her stories to start with. As in, Aunt Jo............... let me tell you...
Always Ms. Verbal and so observant. As it happens, in most of her days, whites were the fewest.
Not being a teacher, I only know about sitting and talking..
and, huh? Aidan always expresses herself well.
Thanks- nice of you all to say those things...Little K- I think your tenacity in terms of thinking these things through is exactly what will make you a great teacher- you seem to really be into it.
I take your word for it, osso. Just, this time, she really caught my attention.
But see, I can visualize a teen - boy, probably, unusual boy, one who grasped irony - doing a sketch for that painting. Not at ten....
Thing is, I only know individual children/teens, and not classes full.
