I think I know how Bob feels now when his class takes part in debates. Here's a dumb little rant I had to get out before the day was done.
First period in US History is killing me with the kinds of people we have in there. The debates are jokes--every time, they boil down to the same groups of debaters on either side (I bet you've all experienced this before):
* Slackers/YGGs/Quiet People (but not me): on the side that seems to have the "easiest" argument.
* The nerdy/cynical group, who like to prove people wrong and take the side of the less obvious opinion. Some are actually bent on having a serious debate.
Today the debate was centered around a real life black slave in the 1850s. When the guy's owner died, he then tried to jump to a northern state to become free, since the North was supposedly the "Safety Zone." The controversy back then was whether or not he should be a free man--is a slave considered a slave anywhere in the US?
Obviously, if this were an argument today, we'd all be for the guy. But, putting ourselves in the historical time period, taking roles of either side of the people discussing the issue back then, we were supposed to argue our points on whether he should be a free man or not. Naturally, Henry and I joined the small group of "pro-slavery" guys.
But just as with the last debate, the Other Side took a moral standpoint instead of a political one. They (or, more like three people who actually bothered to argue) couldn't grasp the concept of what was happening, or how they were expected to argue their points, and found a couple different ways to say "We're all the same! Just because you're black doesn't mean you should work for a white man!", spiced up with 287346 "likes" and "y'know"s.
Jeebus. I am so sick and tired of the crappy "moral" arguments that people in this class try to put into a historic time period! People didn't think the same as us back then! If they did, how would it still have been an issue? How do you think we got the more refined views of today? This issue was only years before the civil war, yet people in my class already thought it was "obvious" the guy should be free from the time he was born.
The teacher tried to give us material to go off of to make points, but we still had arguments turning up from Middle School. "It's not fair for a black man to be held back from his freedom!"
I bet the teacher couldn't wait until his AP class walked in.
| >> posted by CaptainCanada at 10/4/2001 01:56:24 PM |