As many of you are all too keenly aware, this school year was like no other. It also provided some very rich educational opportunities. No, I don't just mean shooting our paper towels into the trash, although that was a lot of fun. A CCP class with juniors and seniors voted to read Arthur Miller's adaption of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Now, it bears to mention that these kids are SMART. Forget what you think you know about academics in a vocational school. The connections they made between the play and COVID-19 were inspiring to watch. Dr. Thomas Stockmann's discovery of harmful bacteria in the town's bathhouses prompts a political battle fueled by the mayor's (his brother, Peter) desire to keep the baths open to a) not ruin the town's reputation and b) continue to make money, in which science offers an inconvenient truth, and unfortunately, people's baser nature wins the day. Not only did students connect the dots on the political and economic connections to national, state, and local government's handling of the virus (to shut down, or not to shut down, etc), but they appreciated other connections as well, such as parallels between Dr. Stockmann and Li Wenliang.
From a teacher's perspective, teaching this play could have been problematic. My approach was to read the play together and have students blog their thoughts. In retrospect, a podcast was an ideal way to encourage discussion during a year in which classroom discussion proved challenging. Either way, I kept my opinion out of it and let them make up their own minds.
And they did.
