Obama Primer

[Blackdiamond]

She's only 14 and won't be able to vote for a while. I really didn't get the significance of the whole thing other than getting some publicity. Big thing to be 14yrs old and in the Newspaper.

[fedupinwaukegan]

This is the columnist follow-up for those interested.

Girl's lesson: Bias, like shirts, picked out at home
Read yesterday's John Kass column on Catherine Vogt's t-shirt experiment

John Kass
November 14, 2008

Catherine Vogt—the brave 8th grader who used a T-shirt test to find out about political tolerance in Obamaland—is something of a celebrity now, thanks to you readers of this column.

By the time you read this, she will have already finished a round of TV and radio interviews, including a PBS spot for a Philadelphia station. It's all somewhat unsettling for a 14-year-old girl who had important high school entrance exams Thursday and a tryout for "The Music Man" at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School in Oak Park.

"Well, a lot of people came up to me and told me that they saw me in the paper, and my teacher told me that a lot of people were telling her 'Way to go, way to support your student' and everything," Catherine told me Thursday. "It's been very exciting and hectic too."

The Catherine Vogt Experiment on Diversity of Thought took place before the presidential election. She shared her idea secretly with her history teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney.

Catherine wore a McCain shirt one day and secretly recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The next day, she wore an Obama shirt and also recorded the comments.

Her findings?

When she wore the McCain shirt, she was stupid and was told to go die. One kid said she should be "crucifixed," which should prompt outrage from that student's grammar/lit teacher. Crucifixed?

One student whispered—perhaps like Winston Smith in "1984"—"I really like your shirt." But she said it quietly so no one else would hear and denounce her.

And when Catherine wore the Obama shirt? Her brains grew back and she was smart again and welcomed into polite society.

Since many liberal journalists live in Oak Park, I expect to receive many snarky reviews. My crime? I dared to illustrate, through the actions of a brave 8th-grade girl, that even high-minded liberal communities can be intolerant, no matter how many times parents gush on about "diversity" at their cocktail parties.

So much for the audacity of hope.

But it's also true that if Catherine lived in a beet-red community and wore an Obama shirt, she'd get a similar negative, intolerant and ugly reaction. And certainly some Republican children would outrage their grammar/lit teachers by wanting her crucifixed as well.

All such outrage is predictable. Whether red or blue or right or left, many adults don't get it. But Catherine Vogt sure gets it: Children learn their politics from their parents.

A kid doesn't learn to love Democrats or hate Republicans or vice versa by reading editorials. You can't blame this one on bloggers or "Grand Theft Auto." You can't even blame Fitty Cent or however he incorrectly spells his own stage name.

Many parents in Oak Park and elsewhere want their kids to figure out things for themselves. Others only want a mirror for their own tribalism. Parents, Catherine told me, "are actually a pretty big influence on kids. They take a lot of what's home to school."

At school Thursday in Ms. Cassin-Pountney's class, they discussed Catherine's experiment and my column.

"The students were mostly shocked because when they read it they kind of figured it out. They were like, 'Oh, I actually said that thing to her and now—I'm not mentioned—but I'm actually in the paper for saying something mean?' "

She said her classmates tried to determine whether she cracked and gave up their names to me, but because she's not a Chicago machine politician under federal indictment, she didn't have to name names.

"They were all like, 'So who did you mention and what did you say?' But I didn't give out any names," she said.

There were some rough patches on Thursday. The phone rang off the hook at home. She had her big tests and that tryout. And her parents—liberal Democratic mom and conservative Republican dad—had to run down to school to stave off an impromptu imposition of the Fairness Doctrine.

"Some parents were upset that one teacher remarked about her shirt. And other parents were upset that the experiment was conducted in the first place, and didn't go through 'proper channels,' " said Catherine's mom, Pamela Webster.

"So we rushed down to school to say we were backing the principal and all the teachers and not to make a big thing of it," she said. "It was just crazy. There was no crime committed here."

Not even a thought crime?

"No," she said. "We support the principal and the school. Let this be a way for students and teachers to discuss the issue. That's what we want in our home, not indoctrination but discussion."

Catherine still won't say whether she's a Democrat or a Republican.

"I still have four years to pick a guy or a woman," she said of the presidential election in 2012, which will be her first. "I've still got four more years. Then I can decide."

Catherine says she doesn't want to become a lawyer, but perhaps a surgeon. Either way, this week, she was a great teacher.

Thank you, Catherine.

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[Blackdiamond]

There were a lot of beet-red folks at Grant Park.