THE ISSUE:
A teacher takes an exercise in history and writing way too far.
THE STAKES:
It shouldn't undermine the essential goal of teaching students to think outside their comfort zone.
It's easy enough to say that assigning high school kids to pretend they're Nazis and spew anti-Semitic stereotypes crosses the line.
The hard part is knowing where the line is, and where it is not, when it comes to teaching students how to think. That was where this episode started before it went horribly off course.
It would be more than just a shame if incidents like this — and there have been a few — gave a bad name to the teaching of critical thinking.
Students, perhaps more than ever, need more than rote basics. That's apparent in the complaints of both colleges and employers who say that secondary schools are not producing enough graduates ready for either higher education or the workforce.
And today's graduates need to be able to think critically simply to be responsible citizens in a world in which information — and misinformation — are so abundant and accessible.
We don't know what was in the mind and heart of the Albany High teacher who came up with the awful idea of assigning students to prove they were loyal Nazis and write a persuasive essay on how Jews are evil. That's for the district to sort out as it decides where this educator's career goes from here.
Certainly the teacher could learn something from the students who decided the assignment was too repulsive to do and refused. That should qualify for an automatic "A."
But there's a more complex issue here. Teachers are being asked to take a more interdisciplinary approach under the new Common Core curriculum, and the local flap is hardly the first. Math teachers in New York City and Georgia earlier this year used beatings and whippings of slaves in math problems in a similarly objectionable attempt to mix history with mathematics.
But that doesn't undermine the value of the interdisciplinary spirit of this effort. Our lives are not that neatly compartmentalized. Just a simple trip to the supermarket is an exercise in math, reading, health and, especially with a toddler in tow, physical education.
Nor is there anything inherently wrong with the idea of challenging students to defend a position that's unpopular or even disagreeable to them. Debate teams engage in just this sort of mental gymnastics; so do students of philosophy, law, and theology. Being able to see an opposing view or even "think like the enemy" is indispensable in all sorts of fields, from the military to business to sports.
Short of asking students to defend something so enormously evil as the Holocaust, there are all sorts of difficult topics with which to challenge students, issues sitting right in front of them today — the death penalty, nuclear proliferation, capitalism, socialism, health care, immigration, globalization, fossil fuels, alternative energy, tax policy, drone technology, privacy, civil rights, gun control, money in politics — to name a few.
Those are all issues with two sides — at least —that can be bitten off in high-school-sized chunks, and engaged in with both research and passion.
Do teachers need perhaps some more training and guidance in this new curriculum? Perhaps.
But it would surely be a disservice to students if a few flaps like this scared educators off. The lesson here really isn't that hard — teachers need to use common sense, not to be afraid to exercise it.