Learning Curve: Re-enact overreact

By Maureen Downey

Maybe it’s time for a show of hands among all Georgia teachers: Who has allowed students to dress as Klan members, Nazis or Salem witch burners?

Second question: Who cares?

Classroom costumes exploded into controversy in Georgia last week after news broke that a Lumpkin County High School teacher allowed four students in her class to create Klan costumes out of sheets and party hats for a class film decrying racism in America.

The students asked to stage part of the movie outside, and teacher Catherine Ariemma escorted them since their costumes were hard to remove.

The sight of Klan robes alarmed some students in the cafeteria, provoked parent complaints and sparked a media onslaught. Now, the class project has been denounced in news conferences, debated on blogs and resulted in planned sensitivity training.

Ariemma, who is white, was placed on administrative leave for what Lumpkin superintendent Dewey Moye called “extremely poor judgment.”

A few days after the Lumpkin High incident went viral on the Internet, we learned that a Lawrenceville teacher also let her students don Klan robes. Sweetwater Middle School teacher Stephanie Hunte is African-American.

Hunte permitted eighth-grade social studies students in two classes to wear KKK robes as part of a re-enactment. Another teacher told a school administrator about it.

“As a result of this information, we have launched a human resources investigation into the matter,” said Gwinnett schools spokeswoman Sloan Roach.

Given the outrage over these costumed productions and accusations of inadvertent racism, it may be time for a policy on historical re-enactments in schools and guidelines on what performers can wear.

However, it seems an overreaction to conclude that these two teachers did something so terribly wrong that town hall meetings must be held and careers threatened.

Certainly, no one should be supporting any campaigns to fire the teachers. That’s completely without justification.

Since most high school history students study racism, I suspect we are likely to hear of more students wearing Klan costumes for past re-enactments.

It’s also likely that somewhere students dressed in Nazi uniforms to illustrate a lesson about the Holocaust and World War II. And perhaps a class or two has burned a witch at the stake in their study of the Salem witch trials.

After the online flaming of these two teachers, we may never see a class re-enactment of anything except “Goldilocks.”

I would argue that costumes are appropriate if dramatizations of real-life events enrich instruction and if the point is to show the true nature of these hateful acts.

I understand how the sight of hooded students would upset classmates, but once the project was explained, I would think that their concerns would be allayed.

The question here is intent.

It seems clear that the teachers were trying to bring history to life for their students.

And that’s an admirable goal at a time when students complain of sterile lectures and mind-numbing worksheets.

There are valid questions about whether the teachers went too far in their efforts to invigorate history.

Was it a mistake for the teacher to walk her student actors through the school in their KKK garb? Other students had no inkling of the re-enactment and weren’t expecting to look up from their pizza and spot four Klansmen.

But again, once the situation was explained to the shocked teens, I am not sure how much serious damage was done.

If re-enactments teach students in a more meaningful and lasting way how the Klan terrorized people, isn’t that a good thing?

Shouldn’t the goal be a searing and permanent lesson on how hate and terror once lived comfortably in our midst and good people did little to stop it?

I also worry about all the attention that this sideshow is getting at the same moment that real calamities face Georgia’s schools.

In the week that the Klan costumes dominated the news, the state Board of Education threw out all limits on class size to cope with the worsening budget crisis. While local systems avowed they won’t jump classes to 40 students, they are now free to do so.

Also in the same period, Kathy Cox, the superintendent of schools, announced that the Legislature’s funding cuts are so deep that the state is now only paying for 147 of the mandated 180-day school year.

While we’re fixating on class plays designed to teach students about dangerous chapters in Georgia history, we’re ignoring the dangerous chapter unfolding in our schools, one of dramatic underfunding and lost opportunities.

Maybe Cox could command more attention on these issues if she dressed as Marie Antoinette and served cake.