A settlement between federal officials and the Owatonna public school district after a federal civil rights investigation of alleged harassment of Somali-American students in schools ended in Somali parent’s favor. A student in the school district had written a paper on the Muslim religion and culture. In the paper the student wrote about how Muslims pray dress, and eat dogs. Somali students found the paper derogatory and their parents complained to school officials. Somali parents didn’t feel the school did enough to correct the situation. They didn’t give the age of the student that wrote the paper but I can see a younger less mature or educated student writing a paper like this. But a younger student may not know that this is a bad thing, and in that case I don’t think it’s a big deal unless the school doesn’t explain to that student why it is bad. If this student was in high school and knowingly wrote this paper to make fun of or anger Somali students then it’s a different story. If the student writing the paper did write this paper with ill intentions then the district should be held accountable for not punishing the student. I think the right thing to do is educate students on other religions before these things happen. I know after a guest speaker came into our 12th grade classroom to talk about Muslim beliefs a lot of stereotypes were discounted, and the class agreed the experience was good. If we leave our students uneducated on subjects like this some will make these kinds of decisions more often.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/04/13/owatonna-somali-harassment-settlement/
No comments:
Post a Comment