Yesterday morning, I asked a question in our morning work:
The Occupy Wall Street Movement has been in the news these days. What do you think the slogan “We are the 99 Percent” means?
I had more blank looks than I have ever seen out of my students. Not only did most of them not know what the Occupy Movement was about, they didn’t even know what Wall Street was. Never mind the 99 Percent (one thought it was about the authenticity of a product someone was selling). In fact, of my 21 students, only three had any inclination of what I was asking them about and of those three, only one had some semblance of facts (mainly because his family drove by the Occupy Boston site recently on their way to a sports game).
I did my best to bring them a balanced view of the movement (stymied when one student asked what “economics” is, causing me to pull back my vocabulary even further). I probably did not do such a great job, although I was sure to balance my explanation with criticism of the movement, too. It’s a complex political situation with many offshoots that require more than I could give in that short period of time. I wish I had had time to show the video (above) that Larry Ferlazzo shared out, but I wonder if the information is too complex for my kids.
What I have been hoping for is that Time for Kids magazine does a cover story on the movement so we could use the reading for more discussions. But the magazine has avoided it almost completely, it seems to me (maybe for the same reasons I have struggled with it). Waiting for Time for Kids may just be a cop out on my end, but I feel as if I need a “teachable hook” to make it relevant to my students. As I told them, and as I remind them all year, they need to be paying attention to the world and to current events, and the politics of today are going to shape the world they become adults in. They can’t just be living under a blanket, ignoring what is going on around them.
On a related note, my 13 year old son read an article about Occupy in Rolling Stone, and promptly said to me, “I want to go to Occupy Wall Street.” I asked him why. “I want to see it in person. They’re saying something,” he explained. A day later, New York City tossed everyone out of the park where Occupy Wall Street began. But a little Occupy movement has sprung up in our small city’s downtown. I might just take him there and see what he thinks.
Peace (in the movement),
Kevin
PS — here is a comic I shared last week, poking fun at Occupy. Now I wonder if my students will even “get it” when they see it on our comic site.