My first reaction to “Night: Feed My Lambs” was “Oh. Another one of these stories.” Inexperienced young white teacher teaches a rowdy class of inner-city minority kids that are unresponsive and dangerous, yet in the end you know they’ll come to love her and feel better about themselves. Lovely. That isn’t cliché at all. I swear there’ve been a billion movies and books about this already. Why do we need another one?
That was my initial reaction until I saw the subject material that they covered. Marni Asplund-Campbell illustrated her unit on intolerance with Night by Elie Wiesel. That made all the difference. Night is a powerful work, a memoir of a survivor from the death camp of Auschwitz. I had to read Night my freshman year of high school. I really have never forgotten it. I remember feeling nauseated at the descriptions of the atrocities in there, wondering if I was going to make it through the in-class reading without making a mad dash to the garbage can. It totally shocked me how human beings could be so vile. I knew about the Holocaust, from earlier lessons in school and outside learning, but to read a survivor’s account was just…awful. Yet I’m glad I read it. I highly recommend it to everyone I know. It’s the kind of thing everyone who’s old enough should read, even if they really don’t want to, so that it will never be forgotten. A thing like that should never happen again.
I think it was Night, more than any teaching technique put forth by Asplund-Campbell, that made the students sit up and take notice. I can certainly identify with the statement put forth by one of the students after she had read the book: “It certainly made me think.” The students most likely felt empathy at reading Night, as they are the ones society looks down upon. They can also identify with the death and destruction seen in Night, as many die extremely young and live in poor conditions. Nothing on the scale of a death camp, naturally, but the students perhaps gained an appreciation for the conditions they live in after reading about what they could live in.
Asplund-Campbell states that giving the disenfranchised students empowerment was a false illusion. Perhaps that is so, but I think she succeeded in giving them perspective.
This was a really great article. I want to read Night now (not quite sure why I haven't read it yet...)
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting that, at the end, she leaves. Not sure what it says... but it caught my attention.
I had to read Night in High School as well, but had completely forgotten about it until I read this article. It makes me sad to know that there are kids in schools that don't have the same opportunity or safe environment to learn in. I find the teacher's desire to read from Night captivating. Yet, it was a book that connected with many of the youth. I was reading this article as I do with a good book. I was sad when it ended and read the excerpt from Night trying to find closure, but it didn't. So instead I'm commenting on this blog and yet I still do not feel closure.
ReplyDeleteI read Night in high school also and LOVED it. Wiesel does a great job at describing the circumstances in the camps with full detail. It really opened my eyes and made me grateful for what we enjoy every day.
ReplyDeleteThis story made me realize how completely
ReplyDeleteI know nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have no idea what these kids have to go through, of the life where gang fights and killings are a common occurrence. In my sheltered life, I don't understand it. And I probably won't ever understand it unless I were to live it. This story made me realize how blessed I am, to have a life where I don't have to worry about making it through the day alive, of being stuck and unable to get out of the society I grew up in...it's unfathomable to me. Instead I am here at BYU, getting the best possible education I can. And what is the difference between me and them? The societies we grew up in. Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?
I'd never heard this particular story before, but I'd heard similar ones before. I haven't read Night, but I've read other works that sound similar, and I can see how something like that would make them change. Amazing
ReplyDeleteThis story was nice in its ability to convey the topic that the teacher began to understand the students and what they were facing, but honestly, it made me ashamed of her. She had been able to bring something to these kids and yet she ran. I understand that she heard gunshots and saw awful things, but she could've made a bigger difference. In the movie "Freedom Writers" Hilary Swank portrays a woman named Erin Gruwell. While this is the typical "white teacher impacts the black kids" movie, Erin was willing to stay, to sacrifice her time and money to bring kids to a better understanding of the world. While this teacher did that, she still abandoned the next group of kids who needed someone to stand up to them, to teach them that not all people were addicted to narcotics, had children in high school, or were in gangs. This woman could've made a bigger impact. The writing was good. I didn't like the book Night, because in the end, Elie Wiesel decides that God does not exist. Corrie Ten Boom went through the same thing and she believed in God more fully after her experience. Personal prejudice I guess.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I'm not the only one turned off by the whole 'white teacher impacts the black kids' theme. It just annoys me. Not that these people aren't doing good things by helping those with problems, but i think that it communicates just the wrong idea. These things, movies like "Freedom Writers" and "The Blind Side" always remind me of the Ruyard Kipling poem "The White Man's Burden", which says that it's the white man's responsibility to act as stewards over brown people, or something racist like that. I know thats not at all what their trying to do, thats just what i perceive in it, especially the hollywood versions of these stories. Aspland-Cambell does a good job of lifting that little stigma here, but i still feel weird reading these 'inspirational' stories.
ReplyDeleteAfter the AP calc test, we watched a movie that was basically the same story as this, except the teacher was black, I wish I could remember the name of it. This made me change my perspective on the whole "White Man's Burden" to one of a more "Educated man's burden." Maybe that is why the theme doesn't bother me at all.
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