Support NeoGAF

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

Found an interesting report from the Southern Poverty Law Center about how the current election cycle and Trump's rhetoric is affecting schools across the country.

https://www.splcenter.org/20160413/trump-effect-impact-presidential-campaign-our-nations-schools

I suggest you read the whole thing, but here are some key excerpts:

Every four years, teachers in the United States use the presidential election to impart valuable lessons to students about the electoral process, democracy, government and the responsibilities of citizenship.

But, for students and teachers alike, this year’s primary season is starkly different from any in recent memory. The results of an online survey conducted by Teaching Tolerance suggest that the campaign is having a profoundly negative effect on children and classrooms.

It’s producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom. Many students worry about being deported.

Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.

Our survey of approximately 2,000 K-12 teachers was not scientific. Our email subscribers and those who visit our website are not a random sample of teachers nationally, and those who chose to respond to our survey are likely to be those who are most concerned about the impact of the presidential campaign on their students and schools.

But the data we collected is the richest source of information that we know of about the effect of the presidential campaign on education in our country. And there is nothing counterintuitive about the results. They show a disturbing nationwide problem, one that is particularly acute in schools with high concentrations of minority children.

• More than two-thirds of the teachers reported that students—mainly immigrants, children of immigrants and Muslims—have expressed concerns or fears about what might happen to them or their families after the election.
• More than half have seen an increase in uncivil political discourse.
• More than one-third have observed an increase in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment.
• More than 40 percent are hesitant to teach about the election.

Every student, from preschoolers up through high school, is aware of the tone, rhetoric and catchphrases of this particular campaign season. Students are hearing conversations at home. They’re chatting, posting and joking on social media. Whether teachers decide to bring it into the classroom or not, kids are talking about it, modeling their behavior on that of political candidates and bringing heightened emotion to school along with their backpacks.

One California teacher noted, “YouTube, Instagram and Twitter make everything ‘live’ and interactive.” Some students attend candidates’ rallies. And then there is the endless cycle of talk radio, 24-hour news and cable comedy shows. “The explosive headlines and conversations have caught their attention,” a middle school teacher in Providence, Rhode Island, wrote about her students. “They want to talk about a cartoon/headline/video they saw.”

Fears are pervasive. Students tell teachers they are worried about deportation, having their families split, being put in jail or attacked by police, losing their homes, seeing their places of worship closed, going into hiding and being sent to detention camps. Some Muslim students think that, if Trump becomes president, they will have microchips implanted under their skin.

Students are stressed and anxious in a way that is threatening their health, emotional well-being and their schoolwork. We heard from dozens of educators about young students who expressed daily worries about “being sent back” or having their parents sent back. In many cases, the students are American citizens or come from families that are here legally. It doesn’t matter: Regardless of immigration status, they feel under attack. We heard about students from second grade to high school crying in class.

A Tennessee kindergarten teacher reported that she has a student who asks her every day if the wall has been built yet. “Imagine the fear in my students’ eyes when they look to me for the truth,” she said.

Thought it was interesting to get the education sector's perspective on the election.

 

[Sinfamy]

Trump is Trump.
I blame the news for giving him legitimacy from the beginning and not constantly calling him out on his rhetotic.
This lack of accountability has normalized this behavior.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

Kids are already bullying others base on their race, huh? Yup, that shit will never end.

 

[LegendofLex]

Yeah, the real fear for me wasn't so much that Trump would be elected (although I'm now kinda worried about that after Brexit), but that the existence of Trump's message would make life worse for lots of people regardless of whether or not he gets elected.

Sad to see that that's what seems to be happening. =(

 

[The Technomancer]

Yeah, I can't imagine my goofy-ass Pol Sci teacher in high-school who tried to facilitate even handed discussions about McCain vs Obama (and only revealed to us on the last day of class he was a Dem voter) being able to talk the same way about Trump

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

I feel bad for the kids and the teachers.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

Yeah, the real fear for me wasn't so much that Trump would be elected (although I'm now kinda worried about that after Brexit), but that the existence of Trump's message would make life worse for lots of people regardless of whether or not he gets elected.

Sad to see that that's what seems to be happening. =(

That message will unfortunately always exist. Even if its one persln spitting it out, if that person is in power it guarantees that atleast a few will hear and carry on that message.

I wish there was a way to just eradicate hateful rhetoric and those who preach it without violence.

 

[LProtag]

I teach in a fairly affluent and white community, and this past year when politics were brought up in my classroom kids were at each other's throats.

Bit of a different experience than the kids talked about in this article, but it was still pretty crazy to see. A lot of kids would repeat a lot of the hateful rhetoric from the primaries. As a teacher I'm really not supposed to discuss my personal political beliefs, but a lot of students accused me of being politically biased against them when I told them that the language they were using and the opinions they were stating were hateful. I don't stand for that in my classroom.

It was a fine balance between supporting the minority and LGBT students in my classes and not shutting down other students' beliefs to the point where they got their parents involved.

I had to ban political discussion of any sort in one of my classes. Granted, I teach English, so it's not something that was built into the curriculum, but I can't imagine how the social studies teachers fared.

 

[metalslimer]

Yeah I wouldn't want to touch this election with a 10 foot pole as a teacher. Even Obama v McCain turned my school into a racially divided mess for a few weeks.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

I teach in a fairly affluent and white community, and this past year when politics were brought up in my classroom kids were at each other's throats.

Bit of a different experience than the kids talked about in this article, but it was still pretty crazy to see. A lot of kids would repeat a lot of the hateful rhetoric from the primaries. As a teacher I'm really not supposed to discuss my personal political beliefs, but a lot of students accused me of being politically biased against them when I told them that the language they were using and the opinions they were stating were hateful. I don't stand for that in my classroom.

It was a fine balance between supporting the minority and LGBT students in my classes and not shutting down other students' beliefs to the point where they got their parents involved.

I had to ban political discussion of any sort in one of my classes. Granted, I teach English, so it's not something that was built into the curriculum, but I can't imagine how the social studies teachers fared.

Oh, man. I can imagine that a lot of them were down for the count by the time summer vacation started. That we have a presidential candidate that emboldens so much hate is a huge mark of shame on our country.

 

[PopeReal]

Sucks to grow up that way, especially when it doesn't have to be like this.

Why we continue to let hate and fear rule us is beyond me.

 

[Samurai G0SU]

Thanks for sharing...


It doesnt have to be this way .. =/

 

[kess]

This is an interesting thread to read in conjunction with the Clinton ad thread

 

[Karsticles]

I am a teacher, and I was scared to talk about it for a while. During a segment on analyzing graphs, I put some polling trends up on the screen, and my classroom went NUTS with conflict. It was the first and only time that semester that I couldn't keep control of my classroom because the students (highschoolers) were so enraged at one another.

I decided to approach it a second time in a different way. One of my TAs is a very skilled artist, and I had her draw portraits of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Lilo from Disney's Lilo and Stitch on my back board. I'd ask the kids who they would vote for between the 3 of them, and unanimously my students wanted Lilo for president. It became a fun item of conversation and helped reduce classroom tensions. The only person in the entire school that didn't back Lilo was a teacher that said she would vote Clinton - lol. Then she backpeddled, because she must have forgotten how extremely conservative our demographic is.

Spoiler

She was previously pulled aside by our boss for using the word "homosexual" in class.