I am a very fortunate father and grandfather.
Sun,
Oct 07, 2018
WHAT DOES 'GREEN EGGS AND HAM' HAVE TO DO
WITH THE METOO MOVEMENT?
"Do
you like green eggs and ham?"
It's a seemingly
innocuous question—and one that children and parents around the world will
be affectionately familiar with as the first line of Dr. Seuss' beloved Green Eggs and Ham children's book.
First published on
August 12, 1960, Green Eggs and Ham follows a
particularly persistent character, "Sam-I-Am," who pesters
another character, who is never named in the tale, to try a plate of green
eggs and ham, despite the second character's repeated refusals.
After being hounded by
the determined Sam-I-Am across several locations,
including in a car, on a train and on a boat in the middle of the ocean, the
second character finally relents, agreeing to give green eggs and ham a
chance.
The story
is supposed to be one about persistence, about trying new things.
But one
middle school teacher says the tale could also be interpreted in a more
negative way—and could have an important lesson to teach us about
consent.
"I had been
thinking about this ever since I read the book to my daughter who is now
five," Mike Fishback, a San Diego humanities teacher, told Newsweek.
"Every
time I read the book I think about how this is a really bad example of how
to have relations with people," he said. "Then it occurred to
me that now, in the context of the MeToo era, this could really be
interpreted as a story about lack of consent."
Fishback
said that Sam-I-Am's repeated badgering of the second character, demanding that
they try "green eggs and ham," despite their refusals, could be seen
as a form of harassment.
"If
someone says 'no,' you do not persist and badger them until they break down and
say yes", the teacher said.
"When
the second character at the end of the book says, 'ok, Sam-I-Am, I'll try it,'
he’s not saying he’s trying it because he's changed his mind. He's doing it
because he's exhausted, tired, worn down and trapped," Fishback
said.
Fishback
said he had initially wanted to teach his seventh grade class of 12- and
13-year-old students about how they could use storytelling to support an
argument.
A week or so before
delivering the lesson, in the context of an unrelated class activity, Fishback
lightheartedly referred to his dislike of Green Eggs and Ham,
which prompted significant pushback from the class.
"Many
students identified this as having been one of the first books they had loved
as children, and the importance of the lesson that you should be open to trying
new things," he said. "Simply telling them a different interpretation
wasn't going to help them understand. That's when I realized that I could use
this as a model for how they can use storytelling to shift people's thinking
about something."
So a few
days later, Fishback read the book aloud to the class and listened as students
shared their mostly positive thoughts about it with one another.
"The
class period ended with students feeling pretty good about having communicated
to me what was so great about this book," he said, adding that he felt
confident he had set the stage well for the next lesson on modeling
storytelling.
Then coincidentally,
on the day the seventh-grade teacher decided to teach his lesson and see if he
could show his students another side to the Green Eggs and Ham story,
much of the world was looking towards Washington, D.C. where senators had
gathered to hear the
testimonies of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Palo Alto University Professor
Christine Blasey Ford who had accused the judge of sexually assaulting her
at a high school party in 1982.
Fishback
realized he had an opportunity to turn this simple storytelling lesson into
both a current events lesson and a life-skills lesson about the importance of
consent.
Fishback
said many of his students had been aware of the Kavanaugh story and had been
following it.
However,
the teacher said that regardless of whether his students were aware of the
details of the allegations against Kavanaugh, he decided to focus the lesson
specifically on consent and sexual harassment with the guidance of his
school's principal.
"I want to
emphasize that if teachers would like to pick this up and use Green Eggs and Ham to teach about consent, that
it's really important to be careful about how you speak about sexual harassment
and sexual assault because we don't want to trigger any students," he
said.
As such,
Fishback did not discuss the full details of the allegations against
Kavanaugh.
Instead,
he decided to tell them about attorney Anita Hill who
testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee 27 years ago after
accusing Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his own
confirmation hearings in 1991.
The
teacher then defined sexual harassment, referred to the new round of Senate
hearings happening "at this very hour," and proceeded to read aloud
five real-life narratives of sexual harassment as told by working women to
various media outlets during the past year of the MeToo movement.
"Then
I told the class that when I, as a man, read stories like this from women, it
makes me angry. These stories of being chased, their polite 'No's being
ignored, of feeling trapped and having to escape, are experiences no one should
ever have to go through. As a parent, I would never want my children,
especially my son, to think this is okay."
Then, in a "slow
and intense voice," Fishback said he told his students: "This is why
I don't like the book Green Eggs and Ham.
"There
was an audible gasp in the classroom," the teacher said.
Fishback said that
after listening to stories of what sexual harassment looks like, the connection
between harassment and Green Eggs and Ham seemed
to click immediately.
"What
I really wanted to focus on is that 'no means no'," he said. "We
should be teaching kids how to listen to the word 'no" and to take it
seriously and step back."
Books like Green Eggs and Ham, Fishback said, can be used as
a teaching tool to start those important conversations.
"Many
teachers use picture books with older students as a way of showing how stories
can communicate a lesson or message," he said. "The 'hook' here is
that I'm turning a beloved book on its head and revealing a hidden message that
the author had not intended to teach. This gets the kids really engaged.
"Then,
we can have conversations about serious issues on a deeper level because they
have a prior story that they can reference-and that really is the power of
using these picture books," Fishback said.
"You
can still love this book," he said. "But what I hope is that when you
think about this book, you will consider this angle too."
