In the classroom of a 7th grade in a Danish school, more than 10 copies of the latest class photo adorned the wall. These copies stemmed from a German lesson, where students were asked to write in speech bobbles small presentations of each of their classmates. The purpose of drill was to practice their written German. The presentations took the form of, ‘Gertrud is a nice person and she is also the fastest runner in the class’, ‘Ali is the best football player’, ‘Thomas is a good pal, you can always count on him’, ‘Kira loves horses’, ‘Rasmus is the tallest boy in class’. When it comes to the speech bobbles added to Hamza, a boy with Somali background, they went ‘Hamza is black’, ‘Hamza is from Somalia’, ‘Hamza is a migrant’, ‘Hamza is very dark’, ‘Hamza is a Muslim’. All of his classmates had commented on his ethnicity, race or religion, no one found anything to mention of his interests, opinions or qualities as a friend.
One day in the lunch break 4-5 of the students were talking about a lecture that was presented to the class by a representative of an NGO. The lecture was about hate crimes, and the lecturer had listed words that he recommended not you use, because they could be harmful. A researcher that conducted fieldwork in the class asked what they learned from the lecture? Gertrud replied, ‘20 hate crimes against sexual minorities are committed every day and 20 more against other persons, it´s a lot!’ The researcher asks, ‘Do you think is has anything to do with you, or is it just something that happens somewhere else’. Gertrud, ‘Mostly somewhere else, but it was ok to hear about the words you should rather not use – he (the lecturer) had a long list with all the words he recommended not to use’. Gertrud continues, ‘But we actually often say some of it to each other when we are joking around’. The researcher, ‘what could that be? Whore?’ Gertrud, ‘NO, never... or maybe the boys’. The researcher, ‘Gay?’ Gertrud, ‘Yes’. The researcher, ‘Nigger or negro?’ Gertrud, ‘Yes… [she turns to Hamza] you say it yourself, too, it is just for fun’ Hamza, ‘yes, your right’.
Questions:
- Is there an ‘us and them’ in this class? - or any other problem with people being different from each other? And how is it in your class?
- Should students do anything different regarding the writings on the class photo? Should the teacher in German do anything different? Or any other teacher who watch the copies afterwards.
- Should anything be done regarding the other incident – how the students address each other?
- If you think that there is a problem in the class regarding difference, what could be done in the class to change that?
- How does it relate to Belonging, Identity, Expression and Motivation (IBEM)?
- Could this or a similar situation happen in your class?
