I am a language teacher. My primary function is to teach grammar, writing, reading, and listening skills.

In my department (students are 18+) there is an article about women’s obituaries with some comprehension questions and a writing assignment afterwards for it. The writing assignment is that they need to summarize the article. It checks for summarizing skills, and I do a lesson teaching them how to summarize. Originally the article is supposed to elicit a writing response, but I changed it to summary and I am going to do a response for something else. I have a lot of freedom to do what I want, but I have to adhere to the basics (a summary, response, essay, group presentation, etc.).

Anyway, we were discussing the reading comprehension questions. The questions were like asking about the main idea, who this article is for, tone, and some true and false questions.

A student raises his hand to mention that we should talk about men’s rights because feminism has been going on for 30+ years and now men don’t have any rights. English is not their native language, btw. I just saw the other women in the class make faces and my jaw just kind of dropped. It’s on Zoom thank god, but still.

I just said that’s an interesting point, but that’s not what the article and summary assignment is about and moved along. I’m already behind this semester and there is no time to waste.

I usually stay away from topics that are polarizing and this topic was not. It’s a language class, not a debate class. The article was just comparing language in women’s obituaries and men’s obituaries.

For those in the academic area, how do you handle this?