Posted on 03/18/2013 7:58:11 AM PDT by JoeProBono
Tales of war, bombs and abduction — coming to a third-grade classroom near you. City and state education bureaucrats have given the green light to an English curriculum for elementary schools that includes picture books with startlingly realistic portrayals of war — to be read by 8-year-olds. They include “The Librarian of Basra,” which contains drawings of fighter planes dropping bombs on a palm-tree-lined Middle Eastern town.
In another illustration, the protagonist looks worried, peering out a window at soldiers manning machine guns on a rooftop.The terrified townsfolk wonder, “Who among us will die?” and “Will our families survive?” Similarly, “Nasreen’s Secret School” depicts the abduction of a young man from his home in Afghanistan by soldiers and discusses Taliban rules that forbid women to go out in public alone.“There’s no way in hell that I find it appropriate for third grade, let alone elementary school, on so many levels,” said a Queens elementary-school principal who was shown one of the books by colleagues outside the city.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
They Never say Ni!
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem who said, "Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation."
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed. Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
~-Psalm 137
Oh Wait we can't have that in schools either :\
I just requested these from the library. Interestingly, the catalog listing shows them as Kindergarten or first grade level, not 3rd grade. It looks like the New York curriculum suggestions are for children already a couple grades behind, when they’ve barely begun.
Maybe the curriculum committee should recommend they buy 500,000 copies of “Alpha-Phonics” first, and then hire teachers who can read.
I’ve read that. “The Underground History of American Education” by John Taylor Gatto is also extremely interesting.
One of the things the Education Establishment keeps largely hidden is the fact that a significant percentage of students never learn to read fluently, and that this is because they are not taught to read. When I was teaching 6th grade Sunday School last year, fewer than half the students could easily read from our textbook. I quickly learned to ask for volunteers, rather than going around the room expecting everyone to be able to read! And these were not children from the “groups” that many like to consider uneducable: these were the comfortable, surburban white children, receiving good grades at those county “Schools of Excellence!” with palatial facilities and every technological aid.
Billions of dollars (just in Charlotte!) are thrown into trying to improve the educational results of high school students, and it’s all money down the drain because they can’t read, because they weren’t taught to read in the K-3 years, when they needed to learn.
(/rant)
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