Karen Hudlin, who teaches eleventh- and twelth-graders at The Urban Academy, an
alternative public high school in New York City, suggests that teachers set up the
documentary with a set of questions:
If you had an opportunity to do anything you wanted to do for a living, what
would that be?
What's your dream job?
Would you consider teaching? Why/why not?
Who have some of your favorite teachers been?
Why did you like them?
Who were some of your worst teachers? Why didn't you like them?
What makes a good teacher?
Have you had a minority teacher?
Do you think that it's important to have minority teachers in the school? Why? Why not?
What kinds of information do you think students should be learning?
Are there certain types of subjects that you think all students should have to take? If so, what are they and why do you think that they are important?
Are there certain subjects that you think should be dropped from the curriculum altogether? Which ones and why?
After students have viewed the documentary, teachers might pose questions like these:
What percent of college students are minorities?
Of that percentage, how many actually graduate?
What difficulties do these students encounter during their time at the university?
Having seen the documentary, what does the term "cultural war" mean?
Who are the people involved in this war?
What are the weapons being used to fight this battle?
For those who had to fight this battle in the past in order to enter the world of "the ivory tower," what techniques did they use in order to fit in?
Is this a question really of fitting in?
How would you define "affirmative action"?
Do you think that it should be saved or abolished?
If minority professors make up only 10 percent of college professors, why do many whites feel so threatened?
What do you need to do in order to become a professor?
David Wilkins, the Lumbee Indian who is a political science professor,
says in the documentary that his research is not considered to be "quite as
valid" as the research done by his white faculty colleagues. Are there "valid"
and "invalid" kinds of research, or subjects of research? If so, how should
people in universities decide which is which?
