Two Debates

The Question:  You have bought a house in a neighborhood whose ethnic makeup is different from yours.  Just as you are about to move in, with your spouse and two young children, some of your new neighbors threaten to harm you, motivated by racial prejudice.  Do you still move in?

Modeled after one of the problems of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, the question and its implications are clear to my students, who wrote for five minutes before dividing into sides based on their decisions.  They know racial prejudice, both in fiction and in life; to them the scenario is both feasible and manageable.

In theory, this debate should be just about the same in all five of my ninth grade English classes, which are composed of demographically similar students, balanced by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status to reflect the ninth grade as a whole.  Today's debate, the first of the year, is an experiment, a benchmark maturity test.  If they are able to form two coherent positions and then argue them without yelling, the debates will happen.  If not, I'll draw them to a screeching halt and plan less difficult communication exercises until we reach the tipping point where civilization wins over savagery.

Numbers for Thursday:

Classes Who Started Yelling: 1, 3, 4

Arguments Involving Weapons: 3

Arguments Involving Civil Rights: 1

Debates: 2

Mediocre Debates: 1

Best Debate I've Ever Witnessed: 1

Period Five: Fear and Fantasy

This debate isn't going well.

It's not terrible either, Period Five with their after-lunch energy, not as bad as the cancelled debates of Periods One, Three and Four.  They divide to the two walls of the room with minimal squealing, nominate their speakers and move on from opening statements to general discussion.  This is when it starts to break down.

"I mean, it's better to feel safe in an OK place than really scared in a good house, right?" reasons one advocate of staying.

"No, man, we're moving in!" argues a classmate across the room.

"We know you're moving in," I remind them.  "That's the side you picked.  But why?  You need to respond.  They're talking about safety.  This isn't a safe place.  What do you say to that?"

Getting students to connect arguments, to arrange counter-arguments, has never been my strong suit.  Not a great persuader myself, I value debate more for the exercise of disagreeing with civility than the salesman rhetoric that wins converts to my position.

"OK--OK.  We're not scared cause--cause we're strapped."

Based on the knowing laughter and pantomimes of his teammates, I assume this means he's armed and ready to counter prejudiced neighbors.

"What about your kids?" someone asks.

"Um, my kids are strapped, too!"

And that's how it falls apart, talking about children with weapons and the value of living your whole life indoors so as to avoid the possibility of harm.  A team of mostly teenage boys, stuck in the invincibility that they learn from action movies, believe that they can defend themselves and their self-respect with weapons, while the girls across the room shrink away in horror.

Period Two: The Best Debate Ever

I don't expect my second class to like debating.  They are the quiet group--I've had one every year--and they tend to shrink from tasks that involve one student talking in front of all the other students.  In small groups or alone, they quietly and efficiently complete whatever tasks I set to them, but I expect them to balk at debating.

To my surprise, when asked to choose a position they neatly divide themselves into almost even side, discuss their positions without much prompting and select natural leaders from among their ranks.  After I ask the two opening speakers to stand to deliver their one-minute addresses, the rest of the students charmingly follow suit, standing by their desks to make arguments until I feel like I'm teaching in Victorian Britain, watching my proper students engage in scholarly discourse.

At first, the debate goes smoothly but not remarkably.  One side argues for the value of safety above all things, while the other defends the rights of all people to own land and live where they please.  Then, all at once, they come to life.

J stands on one foot behind her desk.  I don't know her well; she seems popular and comfortable here, but in Language Arts she is as reserved as the rest of her classmates.  "But it's your family," she insists. "Can you really bring your children into a place that isn't safe?"

Across the room, E rises from her desk.  She is the younger sister of a rather difficult student I taught last year, but thus far she has also been sleepy and reticent, only occasionally uttering spirited remarks to match her heritage.  Today, though, she is worked up, energy in every inch of her formidable frame.

"But what does that say?  That you're OK with things the way they are?  How can anything change unless someone's willing to take the risk?"  She sits down, arms folded, convinced she's said it all.  Her teammates nod in appreciation.

"It's not just someone!" J replies.  "It's your family.  Your kids.  Are you really going to bring your kids into this?  Just because you want to make a statement?"

Undaunted, E stands, shakes her arms like a boxer about to deliver the deciding blow.

"What if Rosa Parks thought that way?  And she actually just went to the back of the bus?"  From both sides come murmurs, of approval and comprehension, students torn between the immediacy of family and the ideal of civil rights.  E knows she's made an impact; beaming, she continues.

"Or what about Martin Luther King?  What if he tried to just protect himself and his family and stay safe?  We wouldn't even be here!  We'd all be in different schools.  We wouldn't even know each other."

I'm breathless, at the edge of the stool that I've placed in center of the room, and aware of the great weight of history and knowledge--past, present and future--that they've brought here today.  They bring their education, a series of schools with students from all over the world who taught and continue to teach them more than their teachers can.  They bring their hopes for the future in which things will be better, turning to justice and peace and equality in a way that even their parents couldn't imagine.  They are the students who are growing up with an African American president that they love, students who believe that the world will change only if they are willing to take risk to change it.

And they bring their own histories, the love of parents who protected them or didn't .  They bring their vows to do it the same or differently when it's their turn.  We all do.  So easy, I remind them when they finish and go back to their seats to carry on whispered mini-debates at the close of class, so easy to live for ideals as individuals, when our decisions affect only us.  How can we live our lives in community, in families, when the risks we take aren't just ours, but are carried on to another generation?

It reminds me of the struggles of urban schools all over the nation.  As affluent young people return to city centers, buying homes and starting families, they bring hopes of urban renewal.  But when it's time to find schools, no one seems eager to make a statement with their child's education.  It may improve, but it will take time, longer than the four years parents and students invest in a school.

As the class ends, I congratulate them on the Best Debate Ever, but it's not over.  And not in the ridiculous, "we'll carry this in our hearts" sense that we teachers usually use wistfully when we hope our lessons will be remembered.  They leave the classroom talking about it, taking the conversation into the halls.  "This isn't over!" they declare.


This is going to be excellent.