Brent Lueck/Cary Junior High plays "we're all immigrants"/Ellis Island game

Posted Thu, Dec 13, 2007 at 11:16 am
From this:
After closely examining the immunization records and marriage and birth certificates of the eighth-grade "immigrant" with a magnifying glass, Brent Lueck asked him the important question.

"You're from Ireland," he said. "Are you a Catholic?"

Lueck said he was worried that the "immigrant" might try to subvert America in the name of the pope. "I've got some issues with you, some loyalty issues."

It was just one example of the mock prejudice faced by about 120 eighth-grade students Friday at Cary Junior High [Illinois] taking part in a simulation of immigrant arrivals and experiences at Ellis Island...
While the Irish and other groups certainly faced a great deal of prejudice, that doesn't mean that worries about what impact importing millions of Catholics into what was then an almost competely Protestant country would have was itself prejudice. This apparently far-left event was the culmination of a three-week class and I don't know what was in the class. However, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it engaged in the logical fallacy of implying that today's immigration is the same as yesterday's, despite the conditions changing.

Note also that he's been doing this for three years, and in 2004 I noted another example of the same thing from a town in Iowa. In that case, the logical fallacies were at least noted in the "news" report:
Students also learned how the lives of present-day immigrants mirror the struggles of new Americans from 100 years ago...

Comments

eh (not verified)

Thu, 12/13/2007 - 20:43

With a field trip [1] maybe they could've learned a bit more about the reality of immigration today.

Links:
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[1] www.lakecountymeg.org/Fugitives.htm

Tanstaafl (not verified)

Fri, 12/14/2007 - 16:50

"We're a nation of immigrants" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. For the time being it is also a lie. A Big Lie. For example, go try and sell it in Israel. Immigrants and the recent progeny of immigrants are obviously the biggest proponents and biggest benefactors of this Big Lie. They can shove it, right up there alongside all their other bogus arguments in favor of the invasion.

Fred Dawes (not verified)

Sat, 12/15/2007 - 00:34

Tanstaafi is dead on with that one, in 1620 and 1635 and 1716 and all the way up to 1775 people did not come here as immigrants but as people looking to make something new out of nothing, the people who came here after 1782 did come as immigrants, "but to a new nation from all over the world and built a nation out of nothing". Now the system wants something new a people who can't do and only want the things of a built nation like free money. The people of the third world cannot do anything but take. BUY GUNS.

Fred Dawes (not verified)

Sat, 12/15/2007 - 00:35

EH THANK YOU.