Societial Issues

Teaching Something That Matters

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I have to shake the dust off of this place. I’ve been absent and the cobwebs have fully taken over–both this space and my mind.  I have been consumed with teaching, learning, and parenting. My energy has been used to think and I am sad that my thinking (so much thinking) has not been written down–beyond tweets of 240 characters or less.

I started this post in April 2018 and here I am still working hard to teach something that matters. To make a difference in not just the lives of my students, but in the lives of the people they interact with.  That is a tall order.  I teach in an all-boys Catholic high school. Our demographics are 94% white and about 70% of our students are middle to upper-class. Our school tends to lean a bit to the conservative side.  I have been working over the last few years to disrupt the narratives my students have about others. They live in a pretty protected bubble of thought and it is important that they examine that thought before they move onto college, etc.

This semester I have decided to have my students listen to Scene on Radio’s Seeing White podcast. When I first listened to the podcast this past summer, I knew it was something that I wanted to include in my curriculum.  I just wasn’t sure how. I did a lot of thinking and contemplating and finally settled on listening to an episode a week (will fill our semester) and video responses via Flipgrid.  Scene on Radio has a curriculum guide that accompanies the podcast and I provide some of their questions as prompts to the video responses, to help guide students.

I will admit as the first responses are pouring in, that I am nervous. We aren’t a perfect school, but one of the main tenets of our school is Education for Service, Justice, and Peace.  I feel strongly as a parent, that we have to teach these values explicitly at times. I have also invited other faculty members in school to participate and several have expressed interest.  I feel it is important that my ideas aren’t the only ones that students hear.

I am pleasantly surprised that many students picked up on the idea of institutionalized racism and we’ll be doing some unpacking this week about racism (prejudice + power) and how that is entrenched in our founding and our institutions. We’ll talk about how “reverse” racism isn’t a thing and we will also be looking at logical fallacies.  After teaching logical fallacies, I am going to ask students to listen back to their first video responses and see if they used any fallacies–we had a lot of Straw man arguments happening as well as weak analogy and false dichotomy, and post hoc.

I am interested to see if they can recognize these fallacies in their own arguments, as well as the arguments that our politicians are making these days.

**edited to say that in January I resigned my position as the school and I were no longer a mission/vision fit. I am sad that I won’t get to see my students expand their thinking and be exposed to narratives that disrupt their biases.  But white supremacy requires the ignoring of history and there was a lot of resistance to my pushing of narratives that remind us of our White Privilege and how we have benefited from centuries of White Supremacy.

Loving

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

I am not naive.  I know that our country has a horrendous past regarding the treatment of those the white establish deem as other.  Our differences use to be rather easy to determine–White was good–everything else was bad.  Pretty simple right.  Well what happens when whites don’t get the memo or choose not to drink the kool-aid?  It throws the establishment off balance and the results are often catastrophic.

Meet the Lovings:

All they did was love each other in 1958 Virginia.  They showed their love by getting married.  Less than 2 months after their marriage they were arrested and sentenced to 1-year in jail.  Their sentence was suspended if they would leave Virginia–for good.

They came to visit family for Easter and were again arrested.  This was 1958.  Both of my parents were alive.  There were 24 states that had miscegenation laws at that time.  They just wanted to love each other, raise their 3 children and be around family.

This documentary hurt me deeply.  It reminded me that while my children (who are black) don’t have to deal with this level of racism in their daily life, this level of racism still exists.  The people who spoke out in favor of miscegenation are still alive.  Their children to whom they pass on their beliefs are still alive.  Our world still favors white and rich and the other has many more obstacles.

I know that these laws existed and I know that they were horrible.  But I never thought about the real-life implications of the laws.  But this documentary really brings to life the implications of these laws and the real people whose beliefs fueled these laws.  That is what really get me.  That people really thought they needed to protect the “purity of the races.”  That is such a crap reason.  I am pretty sure the whites who supported these laws were only worried about the “purity of their own race.”

The thing that struck me and by struck I mean scared the shit out of and pissed me off the most is that in 1967 (while the Loving V. Virginia case was moving through the courts on it’s eventual way to the Supreme Court) a federal judge said “God created separate races on the separate continents to ensure that the races did not mix.”  This was espoused by a federal judge who was charged with upholding the law.  What does God have to do with this?  Isn’t there a separation of church and state?

This movie forced me to think about and consider the implications that these thoughts and feelings have on me and my children.  I am lucky that my kids are raised in an environment where they are accepted for who they are as people and not because their skin is beautifully brown.  Skin color is really no different than hair color or eye color.  It is the only thing we can’t change about us, but it is just a thing.  I cut off all of Noah’s beautiful curls–he is still the same kid.

Richard Loving said it best.  When their ACLU lawyers asked him if there was anything that he wanted them to tell the court, Richard simply replied–“Tell them I love my wife.”

It is time that the state and people’s own beliefs stopped deciding who can love whom and let everyone “love their husband/wife.”

The supreme court in a 9-0 decision, in 1967, stated:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

I would like to see the phrase sexual orientation added to this.  It’s time we stop separating groups and bring us all together.

We Are Losing Focus Here

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

What Jerry Sandusky did was/is heinous.  There is no excuse and no way to ignore the atrocities that he inflicted on those young boys.  I cannot even comprehend for any fraction of a second how ANY ONE can think this is ok.  But that is a topic for another post.

There is something clearly wrong with Mr. Sandusky.  This is not said to excuse his actions in anyway.  But to make a point.  He has issues and big issues.  What sickens me even more is that other adults knew about this.  And. Did. Nothing.  NOTHING.  This is more disturbing to me.  There is no excuse to stand by and 1-watch a rape of anyone–let alone a 10-year-old boy and walk away; and 2–to pass the buck.  That is what Paterno did.  He will die knowing that is what he did.  He will watch his legacy fade because he walked away.  Is that the message he wants to send to the generations he has coached?  To the boys he has coached into manhood?

Lest you think I judge without experience–you are wrong.  During my first year of teaching there were rumors about one of our administrators at our school.  Rumors that he had improper relationships with male students.  Relationships that were not consensual but predatory.  I was outraged.  I was sick.  While I learned that these had been rumors for a few years, I was even more sick.  No one had done any investigating or pushed the envelope.  This was someone who was around children in a position of power every day.  I could not and would not sit idly by if these rumors were true.

I didn’t go to my principal right away.  I did some good old investigative work and found out that this man had been removed from his previous teaching job a few years early for attempting to get a student to meet him at a hotel in exchange for an A.  It still make me sick to think about it. It also turned out that his teaching certificate in the neighboring state had been revoked and he was ordered to never work with children again.  So what the fuck was he doing working as the disciplinarian at a high school?  Well turns out when background checks are run–they are only run to see if someone committed a crime in that state–not a different state (scary huh?)

As soon as I found this information out, I went to my administration.  I had no choice.  This man was around children everyday.  My administration immediately (the very next day) put him on leave while they investigated.  Two days later he was fired.  This is what it looks like when we put kids first and not our own jobs/careers/images.

I could not have lived with myself if I didn’t say anything and he tried to attack/molest another young student.  I don’t know how Paterno has lived with it?

We must hold our leaders accountable.  There is no excuse for what has transpired.  There is no excuse.  There should be no support for those who turned a blind eye.  I respect the job Paterno did as a coach–I am sickened by the job he did as an advocate for kids and as a man.  A CNN headline claims that Paterno will never escape Sandusky tragedy but he was about so much more.  Yeah maybe–but in the scale of justice–being a winning football coach loses out every time to covering up for the rape of children.  EVERY TIME.

 

The Hypocrisy of Murder

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I am sure that some of you are tired of hearing about Troy Davis.  What a shame that most of us only heard about Troy Davis and his unfortunate case too late.  Sad that some of you are asking–“Who is Troy Davis?” You can read more about his case here.  I know the link is to wikipedia and it’s isn’t always the best source–but this one seems pretty straight forward.

Do I know if Troy Davis was innocent?  No.  Do I know he was guilty?  No.

But I can say that not being able to answer that second question should be enough to stop a man from being murdered.  And that is what the death penalty is–MURDER.  Am I saying that criminals/murders who are so heinous don’t deserve to die?  No, not necessarily.  But I also don’t think that the government should be in the business of murder.  But again, is life in prison any better?  No and our system is barbaric and punitive when it should be rehabilitative–but that is a totally different topic.

I think what angers me the most is the hypocrisy of the both sides in this fight.  The right and the left are flipped on this and then on other sides on the topic of abortion.  I know that that word just touched a nerve in the few of you who read this.  I support a woman’s right to choose.  But just because I support their right to choose doesn’t mean that I agree with it.  Are there exceptions to everything yes–even to capital punishment.  But you can’t preach pro-life and then relish at the taking of a life.  If people espouse that every life is valuable and should be born–then every life is valuable and Troy Davis should still be alive.

I don’t know the difference and how at one point all life is valuable and at another it isn’t.  This idea of an eye-for-an-eye justice isn’t appropriate.  As I try to teach my children that we turn the other cheek–that when someone wrongs you, you walk away-you don’t wrong back.  There will be exceptions to this rule, but how can I teach him that retaliation is not acceptable when our government retaliates.   This, government sanctioned murder, is harder to explain than the individual who commits the original crime.  I can explain that as a person making a bad decision.  But when the government does it–how do I explain that?  How do I explain the people who call for and relish in the murder of someone?  I do I explain that only some life is valuable.

I know this is philosophical and an issue that divides us all.  But the death penalty is murder.  And if the state is going to continue to do it–it needs to do a better job of carrying out justice and justice cannot be carried out if we aren’t certain of someone’s guilt.

How many other murders are in prison for life because they took someone else’s live.  Troy Davis allegedly killed a police man.  Is that police man’s life that much more valuable that we can rationalize killing his alleged murder (without any real evidence).  How many men are in prison for life having killed more than one man?  For justice to be served–it must be carried out fairly.  And there appears to be nothing fair in the murder of Troy Davis.

This needs to move us to do better as a nation.  To do better as a justice system.  To do better.  Sadly, I fear Troy will be forgotten next week as there will be something new–FB’s redesign, that will cloud the airwaves and the status quo will resume.  It makes me sad.

Teaching Our Girls To Respect Themselves

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

There was a huge brouhaha that lit the interwebs and twitter up like Times Square.  Ah….JCPenney, what are you thinking?  What were you thinking.  As the mother of a little girl who loves being pretty and make-up and frilly clothes, I struggle with teaching her that those are not the things that matter.   And this doesn’t help…

Cute and sassy?  I don’t mind if my daughter is cute and sassy, but she is also going to be intellectual and use her brain for more than picking out the right shade of lipstick.  I know that being pretty is overvalued in our society. I know the research that says that pretty people make more money and have more opportunity (just look at TV, movies, print ads–we totally overvalue beauty).  These pressures are abundant in our society and they don’t go away as you get older.  Hell, I’m 40 and I still feel them.  But to market to that?  To make being pretty a value just doesn’t sit right with me.

Our job as parents raising boys who are caring and girls who value smarts is already difficult enough, does it really need to get any harder?