This really doesn't surprise me. ------------------
Tolerance fails T-shirt test
John Kass
November 13, 2008
As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.
Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.
She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be.
So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:
"McCain Girl."
"I was just really curious how they'd react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters," Catherine told us. "I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be."
Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.
"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.
Then it got worse.
"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.
But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.
"In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said.
If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college.
"Later, that teacher found out about the experiment and said she was embarrassed because she knew I was writing down what she said," Catherine said.
One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.
"He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.
Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."
Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn't want to jeopardize her experiment.
"I couldn't show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing," she said.
Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."
That's when you know America is truly supportive of diversity of opinion, when children must whisper for fear of being ostracized, heckled and crucifixed.
The next day, in part 2 of The Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment, she wore another T-shirt, this one with "Obama Girl" written in blue. And an amazing thing happened.
Catherine wasn't very stupid anymore. She grew brains.
"People liked my shirt. They said things like my brain had come back, and I had put the right shirt on today," Catherine said.
Some students accused her of playing both sides.
"A lot of people liked it. But some people told me I was a flip-flopper," she said. "They said, 'You can't make up your mind. You can't wear a McCain shirt one day and an Obama shirt the next day.' "
But she sure did, and she turned her journal into a report for her history teacher, earning Catherine extra credit. We asked the teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney, whether it was ironic that Catherine would be subject to such intolerance from pro-Obama supporters in a community that prides itself on its liberal outlook.
"That's what we discussed," Cassin-Pountney said about the debate in the classroom when the experiment was revealed. "I said, here you are, promoting this person [Obama] that believes we are all equal and included, and look what you've done? The students were kind of like, 'Oh, yeah.' I think they got it."
Catherine never told us which candidate she would have voted for if she weren't an 8th grader. But she said she learned what it was like to be in the minority.
"Just being on the outside, how it felt, it was not fun at all," she said.
Don't ever feel as if you must conform, Catherine. Being on the outside isn't so bad. Trust me.
Girl's lesson: Bias, like shirts, picked out at home
John Kass November 14, 2008
Catherine Vogtthe brave 8th grader who used a T-shirt test to find out about political tolerance in Obamalandis 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 whisperedperhaps 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 ****tail 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 nowI'm not mentionedbut 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 parentsliberal Democratic mom and conservative Republican dadhad 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.
