In your "have you stopped beating your wife yet" opener, you are again  
tremendously misguided. To know anything, first one has facts, then  
one strings the facts together into coherent narratives and then one  
is only at the beginning. Your incredibly simplistic viewpoint doesn't  
get there, sorry. If you wish to have your students have the  
counterpoint to what you think are the standard dogmas regarding Nat  
Turner, it is not educational to go all the way to the opposite  
direction. You must reason your argument through so that your students  
can learn to think for themselves. As you present Nat Turner, there is  
no thinking about the various reasons he may have done what he did,  
much less the context of the times for the reaction to what he did,  
etc, there is only your politicized inverse. That is not an argument.  
Instead of rational discussion, there are the two extremes. If your  
wish is to educate, both sides need to be presented without undue bias.

We have had conversations about presentism before. Please revisit  
those posts before you fire off yet another polemic. Others on this  
list have suggested to you how to present a balanced and unbiased  
summation of Nat Turner. If your intent is to present the info as  
fully as possible, then you need way more "full" and way less  
political spin. And your moral relativism is also misguided.

Your statement that the "conditions of actual slavery were much  
harsher than the conditions of colonialism" has been shown not  
necessarily true, if you take from it the legal basis for slavery with  
all that meant. One wonders how many poor colonists came to death by  
starvation, deprivation, overwork, etc. There was no master around to  
ensure basic survival as there was under the peculiar institution.

Anything else I can help you with?


Lyle Browning



On Nov 12, 2008, at 1:40 PM, Anne Pemberton wrote:

> Lyle,
>
> One concept sbout education that you are missing is that education  
> is not about being told what to "know", but in learning to think for  
> oneself. In all likelihood, students are going to have textbooks  
> that present Nat Turner as a "bad man". They will not be told why,  
> other than that he killed "white" people. Imagine you black son  
> sitting in the class being told that a black man who killed white  
> people was bad without any discussion about his reasons for doing  
> so? Will your black son come to the conclusion that white people are  
> always right/good, and that when black people act contrary to that  
> fact, they are automatically "bad"?
>
> My intent is to present the information to the students as fully as  
> possible. Yes, I have some bias inasmuch as I am not condemning Nat  
> Turner but opening the possibilities that he did nothing more wrong  
> than was done by the Patriots of 1776.
>
> Consider, if you will, that the conditions of actual slavery were  
> much harsher than the conditions of colonialism. The colonists, by  
> comparison, cried before they were hurt!
>
>
> Anne
>
>
>
>
> Anne Pemberton
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.erols.com/apembert
> http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
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