Bonobos

Stereotypes should be limited to audio categories. I purport that daily in my US History course. My name is Barry G. Hayes and I teach in a district where constant physical confrontations occur between the Hispanic and black communities. These students are worried weekly about wearing colors based on gangs. There is a stereotype that they dress to their ethnicity and the limits of what they have been exposed to in the scope of a violent world.

I push that misguided notion back with force. Students in my classroom are exposed to music from Argentina, Japanese anime, and wound dressing techniques of on-the-fly care in warfare. In America we come from a diverse background with a history of making something of ourselves. These kids appear stuck in a cycle of gang warfare, poverty, and lack of opportunity. As their ambassador, their teacher from a culture and world they have not experienced, I want to constantly give them license to enter a lifestyle outside their own.

Fitzgerald wrote of stylish men and disaffected women struggling to understand themselves. Men were starving in the streets in the Great Depression but had enough self worth to wear proper trousers and braces. Dueling was a gentleman’s sport, and there were rules for murdering your friend. Americans have long understood the need for style under pressure, we are a nation begun through war but founded on the most beautifully written documents imaginable. My students have not had experience with classic American style. They know violence and pressure but not the calm servitude that a backbone in American style can lend.

A modern American understands the world around him is dangerous, yet he strives to add grace, knowledge, and style where he can.

These students have not laid eyes on a proper pair of Bonobos. With admittance to the Band of Brothers, that hurdle of showcasing a world outside the gangs and guns comes closer.

(Attached is a picture of myself and a student demonstrating the difference between fisticuffs and flat-out brawling. Gentlemanly conduct always, sport.)