What are your thoughts on this "finding your identity" lesson that one of the lessons in a course in the program we use?

I am not sure (at all) what the question is.
But it looks interesting, the subject.

Using ancestry.com as the only source for this exercise is quite limiting. Who are ancestors are just a facet, if at all, of who we are. You can include other activities that wouldn’t seem like this one thing is something the ‘real African’ kids don’t have. Or, you know, you can just teach them that ancestry.com is for certain kinds of people only, really.

So, Simone you wouldn’t feel kind of…cut loose when it hit you that your last name is of European origin, but YOU aren’t? You wouldn’t feel cut off from your true ancestors and that there was no way to find out who they were?

This is a problem for students who don’t know what their original family names were including adopted kids, sometimes, and many kids whose origin was Africa. You have to decide, by class population, perhaps, if you want to use that method of teaching the subject. Origins of Names doesn’t have to be personalized. Why do some early people have only one name? and how do names change? Or you could research other sources of names.

I wonder how KatawaGrey would answer this, having no information about half of her genome. Interesting Q.

I think it’s a great idea if you talk about the whole idea of naming and power. Who gets to name and who doesn’t? What’s in a name and how did classism effect naming? etc.

Well. Chances are, in his case, and in many others involving African Americans, “Rick”* has the last name of the person who owned his great-great-great grand parents.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that his name had nothing to do with his ancestry. Of course many Afro-American’s surnames came from their ancestors slave names.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_name
I am not very well informed about African history concerning names and lineage. Maybe it had similar influences.
All in all, I don’t consider name to be a big part of identity. Yes, it’s true, it can lead you to discover your roots, but then, an overall knowlege of your ancestors’ place of birth can tell you a lot. How much does making it distinclty familial add to things?

@Earthgirl Of course it’s no surprise. And your thoughts are a good philosophy, but is it really a discussion you would want to start with people who are directly affected by this when you really have no concept of it? Put yourself in their shoes. I can trace my last names back to Holland and England, and to actual people who are still living there, if I wanted to. They can’t.

Dutchess lll I do put myself in their shoes. I try to do that all the time. Understand things from the perspective of the other person and not my own. That is what it means to be sensitive. But I sense that you feel badly and want to protect this student and others like him from the truth of their past. I think most black people know about the black diaspora. It may be upsetting to them to reach a roadblock in their genealogical pursuit but it is their history and hence, a part of their identity, albeit a dead end. Their identity may have to remain as part of a larger cultural heritage versus knowing the names and birthplaces of those on their family tree. I don’t see that as being so horrible. Yes, it’s sad, but in the end, we create our own identity, we don’t have it handed down to us.

@Earthgirl I am sure they are fully aware of the “truth of their past.” They aren’t idiots. I just don’t think it is a great idea to bring up, unawares, the realization that they aren’t ancestrally connected to their last names, especially in an integrated classroom taught by a European-American white girl who doesn’t have to even consider that issue.

Has it ever occurred to you that sometimes you can’t put yourself in another person’s shoes? Just because you may want to, or try to, doesn’t mean you really can. It would be presumptuous of me to assume that I could. Therefore I decided to forego that lesson altogether. But I’ll be happy to bring you in to the classroom as a professional and knowledgeable guest speaker if you like.

It sounded that in your own words…
“It’s always been really neat for the students to realize, for the first time, that their last names aren’t just random words.”
that this has been a fun exercise for your students and I can’t think of one class or activity in my school years where one or more students just didn’t fit in with what was being done and IMO it would be a shame that all those other students miss out on something you apparently had success with and lots of fun! You even went to great lengths to do what you needed to do to keep the opportunity alive….I would say keep going though do honor this other students unique situation as I am sure you will do or have already done.

Dutchess lll I don’t know why, but you seem to be getting so upset with what I said. I said that I “try” to put myself in their shoes. I don’t claim to understand totally or feel what they are feeling. But trying is all I can do. If you feel it is insensitive to bring it up, you may be right. Some of that depends on the age of the students in question. It would probably be better if they dealt with this issue with their parents first. Do you think that would be the better way for them to deal with it? Or do you think it is better not to think about the past at all? I resent your jibe about my being a “professional and knowledgeable guest speaker”. It seems a bit hostile to me. You asked for my opinion and I gave it. I am not even disagreeing with you so I do not understand your hostility at all.

So, @Dutchess_III, let me get this clear. If your exercise is all hummingbirds and unicorns, then you are real happy to have it, but as soon as it points out something about a piece of history you are ashamed of, you can it? I’ve just lost a bit of respect for you.

What would happen if one of your white kids had a name that turned out to mean “daughter killer?” Would that be fine because you could trace it back to the ancestor who lived in the prison in Budapest where they got that name?

We all have good and bad in our history. The key is to teach kids not to judge themselves that way. It’s history. It’s not who you are. That’s the lesson I’d want the kids to learn. By making everything all happy, you take away a serious learning opportunity and whitewash history. It’s dishonest. Don’t do it. Reinstate your exercise and act like a real teacher. Teach more of the truth, not your completely biased version of history.

You think you are saving your kids’ feelings, but you are not. You are saving yourself from having to deal with anything uncomfortable. I wonder who the real teachers are in your classroom. Your kids live in the real world. Shouldn’t you honor that instead of trying to sweep it under the rug? And teachers wonder why kids don’t take them seriously.

@wundayatta Attack the post not the poster….you usually have more constructive thoughts than that drivel!

Do you mean the name didn’t point the black student to Africa?

@Dutchess_III I don’t dwell on who my ancestors are. I don’t find meaning in that kind of thing.

This problem is not going to be limited to people of obvious ethnicity…. probably several of your Caucasian students will be given UK histories by ancestry.com based on their surnames… but they could very easily have had difficult-to-pronounce European names that were replaced when they arrived in the US. There is no way for you to tell whether any of your students’ surnames have been seriously altered at some point in their history.

Thinking about it, I have 2 suggestions. You could teach about the meanings behind surnames in a more passive way – explaining that they are not random words, and perhaps giving some specific examples that are traced through time. Or you could do the ancestry.com thing, but first talk about some of the reasons that the results may not be accurate. This gives you the option of explaining about slave names and renaming immigrants, so that the student doesn’t run home with interesting news, only to be told by his parents, “no Kirk, we may now be called Douglas but 100 years ago we were the Danieloviches.”

Some of you guys are being really harsh. I’m sure @Dutchess_III did what she thought was best at that moment. Now she’d like our opinions, not our scorn.

Honestly, I understand why you were flustered, and opted not to share this information with the student at the time. Having never had to think about such things in relation to your own ancestry, you probably felt a little like a deer in headlights, and froze.

However, I sincerely hope you will rethink this, and go with one of the suggestions @dappled_leaves has offered. It’s a good lesson to learn, including all of the things one might learn along the way. I’m sure your students (I’m assuming middle school or high school age students?) will handle this just fine, with proper preparation.

In high school, we once had to search for our names in a family crest database. Obviously, a Chinese name was going to turn up zilch, so I just shared in the discoveries of my classmates.

I wouldn’t be so worried about it, if slavery is a part of someone’s family history then it’s a part of their history, and if they can’t trace their family’s place of origin, then they just don’t know. Sure, it’s a bit of a shame that they have less to get excited over, but nothing to get hung up about.

@Dutchess_III, did you know that Al Roker traced his ancestry on a series the Today show hosted several years ago and he’s from the UK? Not all black people in America are descendents of slaves because not all black people were slaves. Not all black people in America come from Africa.

I think you may have withheld some very important information from the man out of fear of offending him. I commend you for what you do with the inmates. It is very interesting and I’m sure it is fulfilling work for you. If the students are interesting in tracing their roots, it can be a very good history lesson for them that could include not just history, but research, reading, critical thinking. Well, you know what I mean. Keep up the good work.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/26437206?sssdmh=dm13.159793&o_iid=36854&o_lid=36854#26437206

@bkcunningham Roker is in the minority (heh) and you know that. The vast majority of African Americans are descended from slaves and slave owners.

As for my job…well, you never know what’s going to transpire in your life to bring a miracle about! At first I was kind of scared and worried. I had all of five minutes to worry and then I reported to my new job. I couldn’t be happier. : )

@Simone_De_Beauvoir You say your ancestry means nothing to you. Yet how many times have you told us that your Grandmother or somebody came from Russia?

@augustlan That’s one piece of the puzzle…I don’t teach kids. I teach in a high school completion program. It’s not a GED program. I teach all HS classes (Algebra, Science [yay!] Government, History, English [boo!] and Skills for Living which is the class in question) with an eye toward the students someday receiving their actual HS diploma through one of our local high schools. It can take a long time, but my students aren’t going anywhere for a while! The average age of my students is 27.

One of my African American students is enrolled in that class. He’s very intelligent and thoughtful. I think I’ll quietly unskip that lesson and see what, if any reaction, he may have. He knows I’m up for a good discussion, and I trust him to open up an calm, adult, non-emotional conversation if he wants to.

I was really kind of hoping an African-American Fluther-person might chime in. So far all the “experts” have been of European descent (as far as I know.)