Wild and exotic animals

On Friday Mrs. D passed around an article detailing the suicide in Zanesville, Ohio of a man who kept dozens of wild and exotic animals as pets. He freed the animals from their "dilapidated" cages before shooting himself in his driveway, and the police only caught wind of what was happening when a bear and a tiger were spotted on the road. They spent the rest of the day hunting down the reportedly aggressive animals in order to prevent anyone from being injured or killed; only six of the creatures were sedated and brought to area zoos.

The article created a productive uproar in Mrs. D's classroom. Most of the students were against killing the animals, while a significant minority was for it. I suggested Mrs. D have them go through the article and pick out words and phrases backing up their opinions, and noted that most of them were able to do it - including those who recognized that the "dilapidated" condition of the cages meant that the animals were poorly cared-for.

After that, Mrs. D decided to give her original plan a shot and have them work in small groups to develop a list of five questions that the article did not answer. Between the two of us, we managed to keep the groups enough on task to accomplish that. But I noticed that the kids either weren't able or didn't want to make enough effort to have a civil discussion on this subject, about which they all felt so strongly. The comments quickly became insults about the intelligence, physical attributes, or maternal physical attributes of those who disagreed with each other.

When school let out Mrs. D and I sat together for a good half hour talking about possible strategies to motivate more courteous discussion habits. She suggested we divide them into teams and add points for a good argument while deducting points for shouts or personal remarks. Today there was no discussion on the agenda, so I didn't see that strategy put into practice. I'd like to know if it has an effect.

But during our discussion, Mrs. D came up with an interesting cultural contrast. In the suburban high school she attended, she told me, there were cliques galore - Goths, jocks, punks, cheerleaders, etc. - and all of them were set on tearing down members of other cliques. "I don't see that here," she said. "There aren't even body image issues that are so typical of white high schools." I theorized that there was violence woven into the culture of most high schools, but in suburbia the violence tended to be more psychological. "Maybe there's a strongly supportive community here that might be weaker in a more individualistic suburban setting," I suggested.

It brought home to me a lot of the reading I've been doing in other classes about respecting the contributions of various cultures to the class. Mrs. D's classroom - in fact, the whole high school - is not particularly diverse. Pretty much all the students are from lower economic status African American families; the teachers are the ones who provide a little variety, such as it is. But of course that isn't the kind of diversity that counts, or the kind I'm reading about in my Education courses. I'm not sure if it should count or not, but my gut feeling says that teachers have to be included in the learning community as well.