"I was just following orders."

I had a GREAT lesson this week that I want to share.  We are currently covering post WWII in U.S. History, and after talking with a colleague, I decided to approach the war crimes trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo a little differently this year.

We started by talking about the trials, and talking about the excuse of "I was just following orders."  We had some great initial discussions about any and all of the following:
      -Is all fair in love and war?
      -Because the Nazi's believed that exterminating Jews was the right and "moral" thing to do, can we use
           "general lack of morality" to describe their activities?  Obviously from our angle, but from theirs?
      -Is it fair to expect someone to subject themselves to court martial/imprisonment/death in order to
           disobey a direct order?

Obviously, the courts at Nuremberg and Tokyo needed to send a message that genocide is not to be tolerated, and that punishment would result.  And in the years after WWII, much of the prevailing social and scientific thought was that there was just something "wrong" with the Germans...either a cultural or genetic abnormality that allowed them to carry out such heinous crimes against the Jews...something that made them obedient to a fault. 

Stanley Milgram, a sociologist, decided to test that theory.  I asked the class "What percentage of people would inflict physical pain on another person, simply because an authority figure asked them to?"  The stipulations would be that there would be no negative consequences (court marshall, etc.) and that the authority figure would not be somebody you knew or influenced any significant part of your life.

Most of the kids answered 10-20%, or 1-10%...there were a couple of kids that chose higher increments, but most stayed pretty low.  We had a good discussion about that, and the kids were excited to give their feedback.

At this point in class, we watched this set of videos:

                                                   Video 1

                                                   Video 2



                                                   Video 3



The kids were floored.  And then....they wanted to talk about it.  We discussed the overall concept for about 25 minutes in each class, and it was some of the best discussion we've had thus far in the semester.

The main concept?  We as people are VERY obedient, and that's pretty scary! 

Be careful what you blog, fellow educators!!

Recently there's been a lot of uproar over a Pennsylvania teacher that blogged about her students.  While she claims the blog was annonymous and was never designed to be seen by her students, she's caught a lot of flack about the content of the blog.  Not only does she refer to students as "rude, lazy, disengaged whiners", she also references specific events with students in the blog.  There are no names...not even the name of her school, but it would seem obvious enough to the students that are being described.

Here's a link of an article with more information: 
Natalie Munroe defends Blog

So, the question this raises (and one that Natalie says she hopes this event inspires people to talk about) is simple:  Should  a teacher be punished for something they blog about students on their own private blog?

It's not an easy answer.  Obviously, we are protected to express ourselves by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution.  But it's not that simple, in my opinion. 

Teachers (most of the ones I know), entered in this profession with the full knowledge that their reward for teaching was most often not going to be a financial one.  Those that didn't have this figured out initially ended up leaving the profession for greener pastures, and I don't blame them one bit.  What most teachers stay for is the rush of teaching, as well as the respect we feel from parents and our community when we work hard for their kids and for our school.  This is why teachers are especially up in arms when the powers that be try to cut benefits/cut jobs...it's a respect issue for most of us. 

The problem is that some teachers don't realize that the respect/prestige is something that needs to be earned, cherished, and preserved.  Natalie Munroe, by airing her grievances in such a mean-spirited way, has transcended the "I'm just venting" intent of her blog, and she's lost the respect of her school.  She's lost the respect of her students and her community.  It doesn't matter if the content of the blog is true, false, or somewhere in between.  It was hateful, and it does no good for anybody but Natalie, and even that is questionable anymore (although it has garnered her quite the impressive media tour). 

In one of her interviews, she stated that she plans on returning to her school once this issue gets settled, provided the school doesn't fire her.  The interviewer immediately asked the question that was on my mind..."Don't you think it's going to be strange going back?"  Natalie answered that "I'm sure it's going to be awkward."  Gee...do you think so?  And herein lies the problem.  She's going to have major trouble at that school because she forgot that SHE was supposed to set the standard for respect. 

So, what's the lesson?   In my opinion, the lesson is twofold.

#1:  In this day and age, ANYTHING you write on the internet is going to be accessable if people want to find it.  Don't write it unless you would be comfortable with anybody reading it.

#2:  If you don't have anything nice to blog about your students, don't blog anything at all.  Vent to your husband, your wife, or your colleagues.  Go out after work and vent together...it can be therapeutic and you might even get some suggestions from your friends on solutions.  But keep it off the ole' interwebs! 

First Blog Post...

Well, here we are!  Let's see how this goes...  :-)  Went ahead and started my blog as a result of reading an article on Edublogger.com.  I'm also doing an HTML project in my masters class, and thought that this would be a great avenue to apply that technology. 

Well, since this is just a start and I don't have much to say, here's a video I hope you'll all enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK_CKtYCRIc