Article

2006-11-22 Fifth Column

Teacher promotes ~~hatred~~ "a different point of view"

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Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2006-11-22 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Another version:

NG BEACH, Calif. - Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them. The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.
Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.
He has replaced it with a more realistic look at the complex relationship between Indians and white settlers. Morgan said he still wants his pupils at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving. But "what I am trying to portray is a different point of view." Others see Morgan and teachers like him as too extreme. "I think that is very sad," said Janice Shaw Crouse, a former college dean and public high school teacher and now a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization. "He is teaching his students to hate their country. That is a very distorted view of history, a distorted view of Thanksgiving." Even American Indians are divided on how to approach a holiday that some believe symbolizes the start of a hostile takeover of their lands.

Chuck Narcho, a member of the Maricopa and Tohono O'odham tribes who works as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, said younger children should not be burdened with all the gory details of American history. "If you are going to teach, you need to keep it positive," he said. "They can learn about the truths when they grow up. Caring, sharing and giving that is what was originally intended." Adam McMullin, a member of the Seminole tribe of Oklahoma and a spokesman for the National Congress of American Indians, said schoolchildren should get an accurate historical account. "You can't just throw an Indian costume on a child," he said. "That stuff is not taken lightly. That's where educators need to be very careful." Becky Wyatt, a teacher at Kettering Elementary School in Long Beach, decided to alter the costumes for the annual Thanksgiving play a few years ago after local Indians spoke out against students wearing feathers, which are sacred in their culture. Now children wear simple headbands.

"We have many mixed cultures in Long Beach, so we try to be sensitive," Wyatt said. "What you teach little children is important." Laverne Villalobos, a member of the Omaha tribe in Nebraska who now lives in the coastal town of Pacifica near San Francisco, considers Thanksgiving a day of mourning. She went before the school board last week and asked for a ban on Thanksgiving re-enactments and students dressing up as Indians. She also complained about November's lunch menu that pictured a caricature of an Indian boy. The mother of four said the traditional Thanksgiving celebrations in schools instill "a false sense of what really happened before and after the feast. It wasn't all warm and fuzzy."

After she complained, it was decided that pupils at her children's school will not wear Indian costumes this year. James Loewen, a former history professor at the University of Vermont and author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong," said that during the first Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag Indians and the pilgrims had been living in relative peace, even though the tribe suspected the settlers of robbing Indian graves to steal food buried with the dead. "Relations were strained, but yet the holiday worked. Folks got along. After that, bad things happened," Loewen said, referring to the bloody warfare that broke out later during the 17th century.

Morgan, a teacher for more than 35 years, said that after conducting his own research, he changed his approach to teaching about Thanksgiving. He tells teachers at his school this is a good way to nurture critical thinking, but he acknowledged not all are receptive: "It's kind of an uphill struggle."

Posted by Thoth 2006-11-22 00:16|| 2006-11-22 00:16|| Front Page Top

#2 35 years of teaching means this clown qualifies for retirement. Why hasn't he retired? Simply so he can infect more minds with his deranged outlook on the world.

You think I want to go back to living in the dirt as a hunter gatherer go get your brain examined bozo.

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-11-22 01:04|| www.sockpuppetofdoom.com]">[www.sockpuppetofdoom.com] 2006-11-22 01:04|| Front Page Top

#3 Wait till civil war lessons come around. He's gonna whip some of those little 8 year old bastards into lessons they'll never forget.

Posted by Thoth 2006-11-22 01:22|| 2006-11-22 01:22|| Front Page Top

#4 Bill Morgan should immediately give his house, property, and personal possessions to the nearest native American and go live naked out in the woods.

Posted by gorb 2006-11-22 02:02|| 2006-11-22 02:02|| Front Page Top

#5 Pilgrim bashing is a growing cancer on the body historic and needs to be burnt with what's her face, that Hawthorne woman, you know, the Big A gal.

Posted by National Association of Puritans 2006-11-22 09:10|| 2006-11-22 09:10|| Front Page Top

#6 Adam McMullin, a member of the Seminole tribe of Oklahoma and a spokesman for the National Congress of American Indians, said schoolchildren should get an accurate historical account.

Yes, please indeed. To include the facts that the natives were not peaceful lovers of nature. They raided, murdered, and pillaged their environment. Long before the European set foot on the North American continent, the usual human territorial behavior was operating well among the tribes and clans. Check the Anasazi in the Southwest who overworked their lands and had to abandon their settlements for sustainment. Check the raiding of the Apache who constantly hammered their neighbors. And let us not forget the quaint rituals of the Aztec whose literal blood lust drove the other regional tribes to willingly join the Spanish to destroy them. Time to end the myth of the happy content child of nature image that has gone on way too long about the aboriginals.

Posted by Procopius2k 2006-11-22 09:30|| 2006-11-22 09:30|| Front Page Top

#7 sounds right to me...

Posted by Ward "Big Chief" Churchill">Ward "Big Chief" Churchill 2006-11-22 09:34|| 2006-11-22 09:34|| Front Page Top

#8 How about we tell the real truth? For instance the pilgrims had the large feast to give thanks to GOD. While they were preparing the meal several Injuns natives (smelling a good meal) showed up and were invited to partake. After years of tilling the land it seems the Euros made the land more productive than the natives could ever imagine.

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2006-11-22 10:30|| 2006-11-22 10:30|| Front Page Top

#9 You all have made good and historically accurate points. Morgan misses the main premise behind the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving - their escaping a religiously intolerant europe/england for a freer existence in America. They give thanks to God for a safe passage over a hostile ocean and thank Him for the blessings of this new land and seemed to have coexisted quite well w/the local tribes. He needs to put it into context.

Sure, future settlers of all backgrounds had issues w/expansion and dealing w/the local tribes (see the pequot massacre) and imho the U.S. gov't in the 1900s had some real failings dealing w/the indian equitably. The fact remains though, trying to connect the dots on the initial Thanksgiving and its intended meaning w/subjugating and oppressing native peoples is a far f*cking stretch (except for the far left obviously). Also, any natives that get pissed off about little kids of any ethnicity wearing feathers this week need to lighten up. It's like me as an irish guy getting pissed about non-irish wearing shamrocks, celtic crosses, or claddaghs on 17 March - who give's a shit methinks - I'm actually proud others admire my ancestry & could care less if they do not. Kind of like still being pissed at the Brits about cromwell - time to get over that shit. *sigh* Government schools........

Posted by Broadhead6 2006-11-22 11:27|| 2006-11-22 11:27|| Front Page Top

#10 Amen Broadhead! My best line on St. Pats Day: "Do have any Irish in you?"
Followed by: "Would you like some?"

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2006-11-22 12:48|| 2006-11-22 12:48|| Front Page Top

#11 Indians who wear feathers are the anti-Christ.
These devils are taking advantage of chickens being,,,,,,well, chickens.
I say boy, I denounce this practice.

Posted by Foghorn Leghorn 2006-11-22 13:38|| 2006-11-22 13:38|| Front Page Top

#12 One of the kids should steal Bill Morgan's car and hide it and blame it on the pilgrims...

Posted by tu3031 2006-11-22 13:44|| 2006-11-22 13:44|| Front Page Top

#13 Time to end the myth of the happy content child of nature image that has gone on way too long about the aboriginals.

That would be the myth of the "Noble Savage". One of the most highly prized lies liberals use to excuse moral relativism where none is either merited or justified. Go back more than a century or two and existence for 99.99% of this globe's population was a nasty, brutish affair that involved bulk quantities of slavish labor in exchange for an exceedingly short spin on this mortal coil. People who romaticize about these early conditions should be forced to live under them for a solid month or two.

Indoor plumbing, antibiotics, clean water, telecommunications and scientifically based medical treatment are all advancements that people essentially had to FIGHT AND DIE FOR so that we might have them. The latest round of the aforesaid self-deluded morons want us to believe that Islam is a similarly noble institution, despite its intention of abolishing many of the items I listed. Again, we in the West are having to fight and die for these precious inroads against brutish existence even as others in our midst extoll those who actively seek to destroy them.

that Hawthorne woman, you know, the Big A gal.

That would be Hester Prynne.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-11-22 14:15|| 2006-11-22 14:15|| Front Page Top

#14 Yeah, what Zen said. I like my cappuccino machine, my hot running water, and my Tempurpedic bed.

Posted by mcsegeek1 2006-11-22 15:08|| 2006-11-22 15:08|| Front Page Top

#15 Cleveland Elementary School (San Francisco) teacher Bill Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have decided to prove that school vouchers are an idea whos time has most certainly arrived.

Posted by rjschwarz 2006-11-22 16:47|| 2006-11-22 16:47|| Front Page Top

#16 Some people don't have enough brains to know when to stfu. Add Bill Morgan to the list.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2006-11-22 17:50|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2006-11-22 17:50|| Front Page Top

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