Posted on 04/22/2010 4:28:52 AM PDT by RightField
The teenage girl standing with her father in line behind me at Kroger was clearly annoyed with her teacher. "I just gave her some b.s.," she said.
They were discussing the school day, and a writing assignment. Her father asked her what the topic had been and between loading my items onto the conveyor belt I gathered that the assignment had involved a journal entry regarding feelings about family and living arrangements.
"Well," her father replied, "you could have answered that with fewer than twenty words: 'My parents went through a ten-year custody battle and now I live with my father.'"
"Yeah," the daughter replied, "she has no business knowing about that stuff."
I cheered her on inside, for her resistance to an intrusive English teacher.
When I started teaching college English as a graduate teaching assistant in the 1990s, I dutifully assigned the journals that were recommended in teaching workshops and instructors manuals. Such prewriting was supposed to free up the student's creativity.
But the journaling ended up producing exactly "b.s." Still, my colleagues lug around heavy piles of spiral notebooks with emotive scribblings of college freshmen. They also assign topics from the required textbooks.
I did too. In response to one topic that asked students to describe a learning experience, I received essays about first jobs, joy rides in parents' cars, and joyful births of out-of-wedlock children.
But I embargoed those writing assignments because I also received the heartbreaking story of a teenage girl forced by relatives to have an abortion. I spent the rest of the semester with this awful knowledge about the nice, quiet young woman in the nurse's uniform in the back of the classroom.
Obviously, it is difficult to give a fair grade to such an essay or to write constructive comments on it. It is not information I want to have. As a freshman, I would have known better than to write about such intimate events for a college professor.
But after I had attended some workshops at the National Council for the Social Studies annual conference in November, I understood why some of my students reveal their most intimate experiences in essays: They have been told to do so by their teachers since elementary school.
(... the rest of the article is at the link.)
Ms. Grabar's full report on the conference, "Indoctrination without Apology: Social Studies Teachers Share Strategies on How to Mold Students" is here.
I found it to be a very interesting article on the specifics being taught in teacher education courses. There are many illustrations of Bill Ayers' influence on teacher education, and the contributions of "peace educator" Maya Soetero-Ng.
I love the title of that report: “Indoctrination without Apology”. When I did my student teaching ten years ago, there was a social studies teacher who actually took her students on a protest to the middle of the small town on Columbus Day with signs about how horrible Columbus was. That same teacher during the 2000 election came right out and told me that most of the kids supported Bush because their parents did, but it was her job to explain to them why Democrats were better.
I have become aware of this. It's an INVASION of a kids personal life. They might be given an assignment about, write about your best friend, or what do your friends think of YOU, or what was your most painful or embarrassing experience. Speaking of "best friends" we totally discourage that. We encourage getting along with all but have some special friendS that have our values. SO there is always a clash there. Naturally you will get to read the journal entry or essay to the class and the class is supposed to learn from it or you get to “lean” something from it.
We ALWAYS tell our daughter to NOT divulge personal stuff. We insist on having her write neutral ramblings. When I went to school, we'd write about an article or a famous person or the field trip to the museum. We were NEVER asked to unload private thoughts to others that we would not ordinarily do. It really puts the kid on the spot and it is NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS. Teachers should be TEACHING; NOT PRYING.
I have to say that a lot of teachers are voyeuristic about students’ lives and/or living vicariously It was not unusual in the teacher’s lounge of my last high school teaching job to hear teachers talking casually at lunch about which teenagers were currently sleeping with each other. I ended up eating by myself in my classroom, because it was just too much to bear. It’s disgusting that they are encouraging students to divulge this kind of thing. It is just another way to gain further control.
“We ALWAYS tell our daughter to NOT divulge personal stuff.”
Yea - for the short time that my kids were in private school it was a REAL PAIN, because we had to constantly explain what stays in the house and what does not. Teachers are required, UNDER LAW, to rat on families if they see something threatening (as oppose to debating an abortion, for example)...regardless of whether the kid is making stuff up to have fun with the teacher.
One of the sad things that I’ve had to do is teach my kids to lie, in order to protect ourselves. “Does daddy spank you?”...”Of course not, he would NEVER dream of such a thing”...unreal.
“When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”
- Adolph Hitler Quotes
Excellent reason to avoid public schools at all costs.
Yeah....
, “Indoctrination without Apology: Social Studies Teachers Share Strategies on How to Mold Students”
http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/Grabar_report.pdf
“President Obama’s sister — “peace educator” Maya Soetoro-Ng — is shown at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. She is associated with the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). The NCSS teaches students to become global citizens and commit themselves to “peace” and “social justice.” Obama’s group “Organizing for America” is recruiting students for the “progressive” agenda in the public schools.”
(MORE)
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My own example of intrusiveness is the Math teacher and TAG teacher asking my daughter what sort of prep work I did with her on math (in preparation for a placement test). It is none of their damn business, and if the elementary teacher did her job it should not even be an issue.
A typical assignment given to my 2nd-grader son is to write about what he did on a family vacation. I don’t think the teacher is trying to be nosy (she is following the “writing prompts” of a curriculum she is supposed to use). The general idea is that students should write about their own lives, because they cannot relate to things outside their experience. (But then why is my 4yo boy obsessed with dinosaurs?) However, I think a primary goal of education should be to broaden horizons, to make children less self-absorbed. I’d like to see more “impersonal” writing assignments.
Thanks, I downloaded the 60 page PDF (available at link) for later reading. I’ll be sending it along to my wife as she teaches as well.
I have a niece who is in public school in the Detroit area. From what I’ve heard it seems they are a test bed for a log of theories which come out of Chicago (i.e. Ayers and his ilk).
We took our son out of public school and began homeschooling when, during the parent-teacher conference at the beginning of the year (6 weeks into the term), I asked the teacher when we could expect that basic number facts such as addition and subtraction would be taught. Her response (direct quote), "If that is a concern to you, I suggest you and your son work on that stuff at home."
We had him out of there by the following week and never looked back.
Well said, Right Field.
Right Field— TOO FUNNY (in a sad way, but I was laughing out loud). I have a great quote from a homeschooler, that I may have heard here on FR: “if there is anything you absolutely want your children to know, teach it to them at home.” I totally agree with the quote, but I didn’t think math facts would have to be one of those things!
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