ATLANTA — A North Georgia teacher is on administrative leave and could lose her job after she allowed four students to don mock Ku Klux Klan outfits for a final project in a high school class Thursday, administrators said. The sight of people in Klan-like outfits upset some black students at the school and led at least one parent to complain. Catherine Ariemma, who teaches the advanced placement course combining U.S. history with film education, could face punishment ranging from suspension to termination, Lumpkin County School Superintendent Dewey Moye said Monday.
Today’s story comes to us from the set of Birth Of A Nation II….
This wasn’t really intended as a follow-up to my reflections on the state of American edumication, but something events just take over, and…well, you get teachers allowing students to dress in Klan robes. To set the stage, Ms. Ariemma was covering “an important and sensitive topic” (the Klan’s fashion faux pas?). In so doing, she exercised “poor judgment on my part in allowing them to film at school”. Right; if you’re going to allow your students to dress in Klan robes, whatever you do DON’T ALLOW VIDEO CAMERAS TO RECORD THE EDUMICATIONAL PROCESS. Yeah, I know…what could POSSIBLY go wrong??
You’d think that in Georgia, in the heart of the former Confederacy, that Ms. Ariemma would have remembered that the Ku Klux Klan isn’t exactly remembered fondly by all segments of the population. As a teacher of History, Ms. Ariemma should have had the wherewithal (and the historical knowledge and perspective) to recall and understand the terror those robes symbolized for African-Americans. It may have seemed an exercise in historical realism to Ms. Ariemma, but there are many in her school district that (understandably) saw it as insensitive and highly inappropriate. Go figure.
I can understand what Ms. Ariemma was trying to accomplish. What I can’t understand is the brain-dead manner in which she attempted to translate that lesson to her students. When I taught, I found that getting students to participate if nothing else made the lesson more active…and sometimes more enjoyable. Having said that, though, one has to recognize when a subject is as sensitive as anything surrounding the Klan and the South’s collective racial history. Given the number of people that suffered at the hands of the Klan, and given the racial history of Georgia (and the rest of the Confederacy), Ms. Ariemma is guilty at the very least of gross insensitivity. As a History teacher, you’d think she’d know better (and as a former History teacher, I’m embarrassed).
I’m not going to hold forth on whether Ms. Ariemma should lose her job. That’s something for those who have a stake in what happened. Sadly, it’s people like her that provide ammunition to those who view teachers from the “those who can, do…those who can’t, teach” perspective.
WE DESERVE BETTER. And so do the students and residents of the Lumpkin County School District.
