Not 5th grade, but it could be a good question for a college-level ethics class
Was anything about the KKK ethical? Because I'm drawing a huge blank here. They were violent cowards who found strength in numbers and terrorized and/or murdered folks at night.
yutterh posted...
What the fudge lol how do these people become teachers?
Remember: Half of all teachers come from the bottom third of their graduating class. And, when you have the chaff instead of the grain teaching, you wind up continually lowering the bar for teachers.
Currant_Kaiser posted...
Well, it looks like it's just trying to get kids to think from their warped perspective and understand why they could be so twisted as to hold the beliefs they have, i.e., not actually implying that it's in any way justified.
I'll grant that it could have and should have been worded better.
It's not a thought exercise that fifth graders could meaningfully participate in.
Kyuubi4269 posted...
I see nothing wrong with having students empathise and play devil's advocate to better understand why people do what they do and not default to knee-jerk demonising.
If this happened in schools earlier, maybe we wouldn't have BLM at all.
Not sure how any of that really correlates, but a fifth-grader won't have the context to really interpret the other person's point of view beyond "RACISM!" and, if anything, the exercise boils things down to oversimplification. While racism and xenophobia were the driving factors in the KKK, history and sociological factors have *some* importance because the organization was borne from the abrupt upheaval of sociological norms where a more protracted movement towards freedom then equality might not have triggered such a violent, visceral reaction... or, you know, at least a smaller one. No matter what, you're going to have a certain number of people who just hate based on skin color which has and will always be true of any society. However, things like forced integration will generally achieve a worse short-term (and potentially long-term) result vs natural integration over time.
In general, had abolition come at a slightly later period, we might have avoided the civil war and had much gentler race relations because pretty much everywhere else in the world was gradually banning slavery (WITHOUT going to war with itself) and it was only a matter of time before the South did as well (especially once technology helped reduce the dependency on manual labor). Keep in mind that the KKK is literally rooted in the Civil War and, without it, would never have existed.
Zeus I hate being against you, but i love it when you come in with the back up. ---