I teach college and Obama's speech in Philadelphia came during our spring break. Tuesday was the first day back and we were starting a new unit, a new paper. I was having trouble getting focused, so I clicked over to Bob Herbert's Op-Ed in the New York Times and read his call for it to be taught all across the country.
Wait a minute, I thought. I'm a teacher....by golly, I could do this.
So, I wrote up some questions on the substance and the rhetoric of the speech, printed out the transcript and went to my freshman Comp/Rhet class.
Of my 17 students (all under 20), only one had read or seen the speech. Only 3 knew about it. When I asked them if they knew why he'd had to make it, who Jeremiah Wright was, one asked if he was the person who called Barack a Muslim. In short, they were woefully uninformed.
Reading the speech was not going to be a review, as I had guessed, but an introduction. I decided we needed to see it. (Of course, they readily agreed.)
I defined rhetoric for my class (embarrassed not to have done it before, glad of the chance to do it now) and then asked them to read and listen for a) rhetorical moves that they noticed (either in admiration or suspicion) and b) observations about race that interested them (either in agreement, disagreement, or curiosity).
Class is 70 minutes long. I pulled up the Times website and we watched him give the speech. Many were visibly moved by the time the speech was over. But we only had five more minutes of discussion.
So today I opened class by asking them to write on these questions: what do you think the current state of race relations is in this country? where would you like to see it go in the next 20 years? what impact do you think Obama’s speech could have on race relations, if any? Is there a difference between what you think it could do and what you think it will do? To what do you attribute that difference?
My plan was to discuss these questions with them for half an hour, to discuss the originally assigned reading for the rest of the time, and then to vote on whether or not to continue with a unit on the rhetoric or race or to do the cultural history unit that I'd originally planned. After 45 minutes of discussion, they showed no signs of losing interest in race so we voted: 10 for race & 5 for cultural history.
Out of curiosity, I also asked them for their presidential picks:
I believe in the secret ballot--6
Hillary Clinton--2
John McCain--0
Barack Obama--6
Throw all the bums out--0
+ 1 write-in for undecided
It interested me a lot that several of my students said they were ready for this discussion but they didn't believe America was ready. I asked the class if anyone in the class was not ready. No one spoke. Then, if we are all ready, who are those who are unready?
I'll keep you posted on how this unit unfolds. In my bag, I have their responses to the homework:
Ex. 4.1.1 due in class, 3/28
Re-read Obama’s speech and mark a) everything that interests you about how the speech is written, its rhetoric and b) everything that interests you about its content (whether you agree, disagree, or simply want to hear or learn more). If you have not read or seen it, you can find it at the New York Times website.
As you work on your own analysis, you might be interested in this analysis of Obama’s regular stump speech from the Washington Post:
Over the weekend, I'm asking them to do this:
Ex. 4.2 Rhetoric of Race due in class, 4/1
Barack Obama’s speech argues that our government was “stained by the original sin of slavery” but that “the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution.” Read the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (You can find copies of it online all over the place, but the National Archives is a good, reliable site.) And write a one page response to Obama’s claim, using his speech and the Constitution itself as your primary sources.