{She Said} That 7th Grader Had Nothing on Me

Last week we had a debate in my class over whether Sam Houston or Mirabeau B Lamar was a better president of the Republic of Texas. I split the class into two groups (each one representing one of the presidents) and then told the groups to prepare for 5 mini debates: Native American problems, relations with Mexico, annexation, Texas finances, and the location of the capital.

In my first class, during the annexation mini debate, one of the students arguing in favor of Lamar (who was opposed to annexation) stated that Texas had just fought for independence to get away from things like constitutions.

After the debate I declared the Houston side as the winner of this mini debate and said that one reason was because the argument of Texas trying to escape constitutions was erroneous. The student that had made the original statement immediately looked directly at me and in the most matter-of-fact voice said, “no it wasn’t.”

You can imagine my facial expression here. I responded as any good 5 year old school yard champion would, “Yes. It. Was.”

Student: No, you’re wrong. Well, they were trying to get away from constitutions AND laws.

Me: Now, I don’t boast to never be wrong, but looking at this from the third party perspective of you being the student learning this material and me being the teacher, who would you guess was right and who would you guess was wrong? The fact of the matter here is that Texas wrote their own constitution before they ever won their independence from Mexico. Why would a territory trying to get away from constitutions ever do that? Now, it’s true that the Law of April 6th was a large spark that set off the revolution but it wasn’t the fact that there were laws that the Texans were fighting against, it was the fact that those laws were unconstitutional according to the constitution that MEXICO had put in place. Mexico wasn’t even following it’s own constitution. That was what we were fighting against. NOT constitutions and laws.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you tell off a 7th grader. Thank you, thank you, no applause necessary.