High school English teacher's controversial comments prompt investigation: 'Some people are trying to make it a racial issue'
An anonymous parent took issue with a comment allegedly made by an English teacher at Pardeeville High School in Wisconsin on Nov. 2 — and now the school has hired a private investigator to get to the bottom of it.
The teacher reportedly told the class something to the effect: “If I were a cop and you were all black, I would shoot you,” according to local news station WISC-TV. But the remark was said to have been made in the context of a book the class was reading — the popular young adult novel “The Hate U Give,” in which the protagonist is a 16-year-old black girl who is driven to activism after she witnesses the police shoot her childhood friend.
The teacher was apparently drawing a parallel between the way students might be disciplined in school and the way African-Americans can be targets of police violence, according to the Wisconsin News.
“We did feel that the information we got was worthy of discipline,” Pardeeville District Superintendent Gus Knitt told Yahoo Lifestyle. Knitt had previously called the statement “a horrible analogy” in an interview with WISC-TV.
“Whether the comment was in context or not, it is a terrible stereotype, especially when I think about (our local law enforcement). They do their job. They enforce the law, and they don’t care who it is that’s breaking the law,” he told Wisconsin News.
Although he said the school “in no way agrees with what she said,” he doesn’t see the teacher’s comment as a racist incident. “I know some people are trying to make it a racial issue … but we don’t view it [that way], and we’ll see what the investigator says,” Knitt told WISC-TV.
Knitt told Yahoo Lifestyle that a school board meeting was held on Nov. 19 to address the issue and that three parents voiced their concerns. He said there were 24 students in the class, and he called each one personally to let them know about the investigation and find out whether their families wanted to be involved. “I have six who want to come in and talk to investigators,” he said. He added that the teacher had already apologized to the class herself.
Some parents complained that the book should not have been part of the lesson plan to begin with, as it wasn’t part of the curriculum. But Knitt said, “that’s not the way we do things.” He described the curriculum as an overall guideline for learning, but he said teachers are free to introduce books of their choice as supplements. “We always give teachers the latitude to bring in materials that will enhance what they’re doing,” he said. “Was it listed [in the curriculum]? No. But the teacher felt it was enhancing topics they were already dealing with.”
Knitt says he encourages teachers to assign books the students are excited about reading. “We want students to read. We want them exposed to a variety of issues,” he told Yahoo Lifestyle, suggesting some of the classics can be a hard sell. “I have kids who don’t want to read those books. So we ask, ‘What’s the general topic we want to cover, and is there a book we [can choose] that the students might be more interested in?'”
He says that “The Hate U Give” has been so popular among Pardeeville High School students that the library can’t keep it on the shelves. The school even reached out to libraries in the area, but they couldn’t help either. “The books are all checked out, and there’s a waiting list of 100 people [at the library],” he said. “We understand how popular this book is.”
“The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas spent 50 weeks on the New York Times young adult bestsellers list after its release in February 2017. In October, a film adaptation hit theaters to critical acclaim. It was reportedly heavily influenced by the late rapper Tupac Shakur and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Knitt confirmed that the teacher is still teaching the English class and will do so throughout the investigation. “Parents had some concerns about the thoroughness of our investigation, so we brought an outside person in,” he told Yahoo Lifestyle. That person is reportedly an attorney from the law firm Davis and Kuelthau in Green Bay. Knitt said that in a few weeks, a report will be delivered to him based on the investigator’s interviews with students and parents, and the school will decide how to follow up.
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