Speaker: quote ‘challenged’ teachers about ‘students’ resistance to traditional teaching methods’
A teachers’ professional development in Winnipeg, Canada featured the message “Resistance to colonialism is not terrorism” on a giant scoreboard screen.
The message appeared behind keynote speaker Christopher Emdin at the Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Columbia University’s Emdin, who spoke to some 5,000 educators in attendance just two days after Monday’s one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack against Israel, claimed the quote was intended to “challenge” teachers about “students’ resistance to traditional teaching methods,” CTV News reports.
About a dozen teachers walked out of the presentation, with one saying “That comment about resistance and terrorism didn’t fit with what we were led to believe this talk was going to be about, nor was this the place to make a comment.”
Another said the quote was “an anti-Semitic comment disguised as a conversation around curriculum and teaching.”
Winnipeg School Division Superintendent Matt Henderson’s offered an apology to those who took the phrase as a reference to the continuing Middle East conflict.
“Excusing terrorism by trying to downplay it and reframe it as resistance to colonialism cannot be the lessons we pass on,” Henderson said. “There is no equity in terrorism.”
Emdin (pictured) initially took umbrage at the complaints, noting on social media he was talking “very specifically about colonial teaching practices and students [sic] sometimes intimidating/aggressive responses.”
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Different interpretations of the quote, he added, are “intellectually dishonest and a gross misrepresentation of the sentiments.”
In a statement to CTV News, Emdin clarified that the quote “was intended to challenge the ways that we as educators, often interpret students’ resistance to traditional teaching methods.”
“Labeling or treating their frustration or pushback as unreasonable, violent, unjustified or a reflection of their incapacity to be good citizens frames them as “terroristic” – this is not only harmful, but also deeply misguided,” he said.
Embid nevertheless offered his “deepest apologies” if the quote “in any way conjured up any feelings of harm or hurt.”
“Let us view that hurt as a reflection of the feelings our marginalized students hold daily,” he said.
While the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg and the Centre For Israel and Jewish Affairs also criticized the quote, the president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba said Emdin “didn’t say anything about Palestine or Israel. Not everything is about the conflict in the Middle East.”
According to his faculty page, Emdin is a professor of science education whose “scholarly interests” include “the intersection of theory and practice in science education,” “race, classs [sic] and diversity in education,” and “Hip-Hop Education.”
His book “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too” is based on “his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color.”
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IMAGE: Tafsik Organization, AERA/X
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