“What is race?”
The question, asked by a child at Adkins Elementary school Nov. 8, opened up a controversy for Phoebe Harris, a social studies teacher at the school. Her answers, which led to her suspension, were the focus of a hearing Tuesday, Jan. 10 before the Pulaski County Special School District board.
Harris was suspended Dec. 7 after Interim Superintendent James Sharpe sent a letter to the board in which he recommended Harris’ immediate suspension and termination.
The board voted, at the hearing, to continue the suspension through the 2006-2007 school year, require Harris to attend sensitivity training, and write an apology.
“Harris answered the student’s questions as good as she could at the time, and given 20-20 hindsight, would have answered differently,” Schulze said.
(Illustration: Phoebe Harris and her lawyer at the hearing)
Andrea Davis, mother of twin boys in Harris’ fourth-grade class, said her son asked her if black people were cursed, having heard the remark mentioned by Harris.
Parent Laura Johnson said her son asked her a similar question, saying Harris had told the class there were three theories about the origin of black people. According to Johnson, Harris told the class an environmental theory and Biblical stories about the curse of Cain and the tower of Babel.
“We were setting up a mock government, and one of the rules was that all persons could run for office regardless of race, creed, or sex,” Harris said. “When the word ‘sex’ was mentioned the kids asked about it, and I told them it was whether you were male or female.”
Harris said the questions about race then came up as part of the subject lesson. She said she wrote the word “theory” on the board as she discussed the origins of race.
Harris told the board she also answered the student’s questions about differences in creed. Davis said her children told her Harris wrote the inappropriate words “nigger” and “nigga” on the chalkboard after hearing two black children call each other those names. Johnson said Harris told the boys the words were inappropriate.
Harris said when she heard the students use what she called “the N word,” she told them, “That word will not be used in my classroom.” She had sent children to the office for saying the word before, she said, but only when it was used in anger. The two students in question used the word teasingly, Harris said, noting she wrote the word on the board as she reprimanded the boys. She also wrote “Niger” on the board, and said all the words meant “black.”
Later Harris said she told the students the words were derived from a root word which meant “black.”
“I should have erased it,” she said.
Josephine Brazil, principal of Homer Adkins Elementary, said she conducted an investigation which revealed Harris had taught things not in the prescribed curriculum. Harris’ lesson about race was inaccurate and not age appropriate, Brazil said.
Harris told her students to not tell their parents about what she said during the lesson, Brazil said, or she would be fired. Brazil said this was not in keeping with the school’s objective of involving parents in their student’s education.
Remarks about being fired stemmed from her remark in reaction to a child’s request that the teacher lead the class in prayer on a different occasion, Harris said.
“I’d be fired if I led you in prayer,” Harris said she told the class.
Brazil said that when questions like the children asked were asked to her, she was always careful in answering, and referred them to the parent.
A school official told the board that teachers are trained on how to teach about questions of race in a non-threatening way. Harris said that, since she was hired as a non-certified teacher, she never attended cultural diversity training. “We got off the subject,” Harris said of the lesson.
Harris gave a statement during an investigation in which she said she told the students, “I could get fired if I taught the Bible in school.”
Dr. James Bolden, Jacksonville’s representative on the board, asked Harris about her statement that she told the students the word “nigger” meant black.
“That’s what the dictionary says,” Harris told Bolden.
When Bolden asked Harris to produce a dictionary that did so, Harris read to the board from a dictionary she had brought to the hearing.
“What year was that dictionary published?” Bolden asked.
“1968,” Harris said.
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