The Victorious Opposition

OK my head just exploded!

WHAT is going on in San Francisco!?!  First I don’t care whose wedding it is, you don’t bus your students to it and get married while you are suppose to be teaching, claiming that it is a teachable moment, BS!  You are simply pushing your agenda on little impressionable minds.

Why can’t they stick with educating only in the areas where they are trained and stay out of the social engineering aspect of it?

However, don’t lump teachers into category of social engineering.  There are a lot of aspects to teaching that I think most of us would want, such as civic responsibility.  Many schools have a get out and vote rally for their 18 year old students.  American government teachers drool at election time, it is civics in action.  Most teachers take the time to teach students how to educate themselves, teach about the importance of voting without injecting politics.  Isn’t this social engineering, though it doesn’t have the political connotations? 

Look at elementary schools?  We teach kids how to line up, obey, duck and cover.  All of these are teaching our students a prescribed set of beliefs, like you should shut up when people are talking.  All social engineering.  So where is the line?

Weddings, sure, but lots of schools have family classes, where students pretend to get married and raise a baby hard boiled egg.  Isn’t this social engineering?

I have a set of standards I have to teach, but I inject politics, history, and other lessons, simply German is a lot more fascinating if it is relevant.  I teach about the Holocaust, why, I feel students must know about this and social studies doesn’t have the time to teach it.  I teach it is wrong to murder 10 million people, I inject my beliefs right into the classroom and am not shy about it.  I avoid certain topics - the Jews killed Jesus (makes my blood boil when I see that), but I figure it crosses the line.  Who has a problem with me saying the Holocaust was wrong - not many.  Who has a problem with me saying the Jews didn’t kill Jesus - unfortunately too many. 

There are teachable moments, but they have to be something you have to stop as a teacher and say, will this get me fired?  Where I teach, birth control discussion will get you fired.  In San Fran, busing students to a gay wedding wouldn’t.  Yes, that teacher went way too far.  I would have hated to be a parent.  I wouldn’t want thrilla to go to any teacher’s wedding, but I would feel forced as I wouldn’t want her labeled as homophobic, because I had issue with her attending a private ceremony of her teacher.  I would give the OK, then call her in sick on that day.  How wrong would that be??

There is a line between what is too personal for a teacher to share.  Keep it professional.  We shouldn’t socially engineer, you are correct.  But define it.  What beliefs are acceptable to teach?  Teachers teach a LOT of beliefs in class, most we take for granted.  So where is the line rich?  Can we teach them to be responsible citizens?  Should we teach little kids to respect police and firemen?  Should we encourage, if not require all students to register to vote?  Should we teach that murder is wrong?  Students, especially the young ones, learn very early on about right and wrong, they learn it in school.  Most is already in the curriculum, especially elementary ones.

“When I grow up, I want to be a domestic terrorist just like Ayers”

“Not me, when I grow up, I’m going to have a sex change operation and be speaker of The House just like Pelosi”.

I just sprayed Coke all over the laptop.  That was too much! 

Can we teach them to be responsible citizens?  Should we teach little kids to respect police and firemen?  Should we encourage, if not require all students to register to vote?  Should we teach that murder is wrong?

Uh, yes, yes, no, and yes.

Students, especially the young ones, learn very early on about right and wrong, they learn it in school.

Time used to be when it was up to the parents to teach these things, along with the church. But now that God is no allowed to be mentioned, they get to define their own versions of right and wrong.

What about that teacher that decided to teach about marijuana being a good thing? Or Barry’s opinions that 2nd graders should be taught about masturbation? It is not up to the teacher to define morals and decide what is right or wrong.

They get paid to TEACH. (That’s why they are called “teachers’, instead of “philosophers”.

Funny how when they started these diversions into the fields of morality that teaching standards went down to the point where many students can’t even read their own diplomas, innit?

Reading. Riting. Rithmetic. I say keep religion out of schools (by not teaching Creationism), but the obverse of keeping schools out of the business of religion applies here, too.

“Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”—Proverbs 22:6

Can we teach them to be responsible citizens?

Define “responsible”. And what happens if my definition differs from yours? Who decides?

Well, one thing is for sure: if this sort of thing continues, America will have the most sensitive idiots in the world within a generation.

So where is the line rich?

Beats the hell out of me, I was hoping you would know

I guess my point of the whole post was that I would prefer teachers not be in the business of looking for that line in the first place.

I really don’t want teachers teaching what is right and wrong. Situational ethics aside, its not her job and her beliefs might be in conflict with mine.

The classroom must have rules in order to function, stay within the boundaries of these. The kids can be taught things like cooperation, sharing, respect for others, respect for authority, taking pride in your work, and to not talk in class, outside of this, I don;t see the need for anything else.

As far as civic responsibility and getting out the vote, unless this is covered under the auspices of a specific class (social studies) I don’t even want that discussed because you are just begging for political persuasion. Far too many people vote without putting in the required leg work, I don’t want peer pressure picking our leaders. If in the social studies class the lesson taught is that voting is important part of being a citizen and if you are going to vote then its your civic duty to learn about the issues, I’d but off on that.

What bothers me about the above story is that it illustrates teachers who are looking for a soap box. Not content to teach within the school’s confines, she is looking for something by which she can take a stand, to risk her job over. I would prefer she leave the MLK or Ghandi complex at home and just teach what she is suppose to.

And if anything in my post is construed as me ragging on teachers, let me just say I have the utmost respect for the profession. I volunteer at me son’s school, know many teachers, know the constraints in which they have to work, and are worth every penny we pay them.

Reading. Riting. Rithmetic.

Is that all we should teach?  No lessons of history, no foreign language?

Teaching, the glory years to many, where when a teacher with an 8th grade education would read from the bible and teach a room from grades K-8.  The problem isn’t what we teach, you all apparently think that none of these kids think for themselves, it is the way it is taught. 

Why is it that every single toy that is made now is educational, but yet all these kids are considered dumb?  The curriculum is designed not only by teachers, but by businesses and interest groups.  The Armenia genocide is now a standard in Kansas, because the Armenians got together and decided that he had to be taught, don’t get me wrong I am all for education about such events, but it had nothing to do with the 3 r’s and nothing to do with teachers.  It was decided politically that it should be taught.

Take the wedding.  Do you know that this trip had to be approved by the principal and more than likely the board of education - an elected body outside of educators?  You all pick a few cases where teachers have taught an agenda and you all act like we all do it.  My problem is that we have to teach to these tests and we loose meaningful information.  No one reads, like at print news, it is dying.  That has a huge impact on student learning.

I have to compete with games, television, and the internet.  If my classroom isn’t interactive, these kids don’t learn, because their brains are now so overly stimulized that they can’t comprehend simple written text.  Texting has murdered the English language, and the whole phonics movement has raised a generation incapable of spelling.

Define “responsible”. And what happens if my definition differs from yours? Who decides?

My definition will differ from many on responsible.  I say law abiding citizens, who are polite, take ownership of their actions, and don’t intend to harm others.  But many wouldn’t agree.  Who decides?  Well that depends.  Curriculums are often thrown down through state legislators and if they define responsibility then that is what we have to teach.  It can come from tax payers, parents, board of education.  Most ideas don’t get to come from teachers, we teach what we have to.  Our freedom of choice often comes in the way we teach.

Is that all we should teach?  No lessons of history, no foreign language?

That falls under “Reading” and “Writing”.

No one reads, like at print news, it is dying.  That has a huge impact on student learning.

“A man who does not read has no advantage over a man who can not read.”—Mark Twain

The problem isn’t what we teach

Actually, yeah, that’s exactly the problem. When it goes beyond simple things like “mathematics” and “science” and “languages” and “history”, and on into “public affairs” and “contemporary events” where “feelings” are more important that “learnings”, and where competitiveness is bred out of the students by never allowing them to suffer the consequences of their actions (no more F’s on report cards, no more valedictorians or salutatorians, where students get to sue to be allowed back into class after being expelled for cheating.

Once you have teachers trying to define what is “moral” or “immoral”, or even talking about things outside their specialty in the classroom, they are Keystone Kopping their way down that slippery slope.

Full disclosure: my eldest daughter just started her first year as a teacher a few weeks ago. And I would give her the same lecture. “You are there, collecting a paycheck supplied by the taxpayers, to do one thing: teach your students whatever subject you have been assigned. Do that to the best of your ability and leave the moralizing to the parents and the proselytizing to the religions. Your students will thank you for it. And so will their parents.”