hope is the thing with feathers

I had a long post about my adventures in classroom observation to post, but then I had to fill out paperwork about Meg (since she's going to a new neurologist next month) and ended up down a rabbit hole of reports about her from years back. So many doctors and specialists and psychiatrists!

Ugh, on an unrelated note? My back is killing me.

Anyway.

On to ADVENTURES IN TWELFTH GRADE ENGLISH!

The students are reading Katherine Mansfield's "The Garden Party". It's a short story about class privilege.

I took notes on the class, so the following is notes mixed with some commentary.

Many (white) students expressed views that can only be called eugenics. It was appalling. The views ran from 'poor people should not have children' to 'poor people should have abortions'.

More students were saying 'a woman should have an abortion' than seemed to understand choice. The teacher brought up reproductive choice, but her emphasis on free will seemed to go over their heads.

There was also a thread of blaming women for being sexually active -- I actually heard one (female) student say 'poor women should keep their legs closed'. As if this ignorant teenager has the right to tell another woman what to do with her body! The teacher at this point tried to say something like 'the privileged have no right to say...' but she was cut off and no one was listening.

The students who disagreed mostly remained silent. One student (female) kept expressing that what the others were saying was wrong, but couldn't back up her views with anything substantial.

One student (male) was nodding his head at the 'it's wrong' comment, but when called on to share his views said 'I'm not getting into it'.

(then I made some notes about what I would do if the class was my own)

The next class, a remedial English skills class which is mostly poor minority students (hello, achievement gap!) was told of the previous class views. THESE students loudly denounced the classist views. Two students agreed that poor women shouldn't have children, but they were in no way as vocal about it as the students in the first class.

So, that was my day.