Subscribebitcrank: still...kind of tough point to drive home on 6th graders. i doubt the message made it across initially. the fallout might produce the results the teacher was looking for.
Don't be so quick to assume- maybe the point did get across. After all, the article explicitly states that most of the students didn't report the teacher because they liked him. I suspect- having been in school myself at one point, and having had great teachers that challenged the class to think outside the lines, to be an individual- that most of the students did get the point and even appreciated it.
Quite frankly, it pisses me off on many levels, this story: we claim to want good education, but the solution only seems to be "more testing, more testing" (as if simply taking a sick child's temperature several times an hour will be cure enough for what ails them)- yet the best teachers are found when we give them the freedom to be bold, innovative, and yes to take some risks- and taking risks means sometimes they won't work so great, but you've got to have the conviction to keep trying. That's where great education occurs.
posted by hincandenza at 12:22 PM on September 26, 2001
Not in a public school while under the employ of the government, you can't. Public school teachers have no right - zero, zip, nada - to inflict their own personal political ideologies onto their captive students.
posted by aaron at 12:20 AM on September 27, 2001
[13: In regard to the "whose", I would hope nobody's]
Impossible. The only way to lack bias is to lack opinion. The only way to lack opinion is to be supremely apathetic or supremely ignorant- neither of which are characteristics that we (hopefully) desire in our children. As I said earlier, my best teachers challenged me, even though I didn't always agree with them. However, there's a big difference between challenging your students- and what this teacher did sounds like a challenge, to make them think or question the preconceived notions they have- or even demonstrating alternative viewpoints and stances, and "recruiting" them. Really, calling it "recruiting" basically is a tagword you put on ideas you don't like as opposed to ideas you do- it is exceptionally hard for one teacher to "recruit" a student to a particular viewpoint (and we're not talking about "The Wave" or anything); and that's not always a bad thing, this exposure to a variety of viewpoints. Some might even call it "growing up". Others call it "Metafilter".
Besides, letting parents alone have exclusive access to their kids minds is a violation of societal trust, and one of the reasons I am most leary about home schooling.
posted by hincandenza at 12:17 AM on September 28, 2001
« Older From safety to where.... | Grootnik P. Bargelights' Golde... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
But I will say that if I were a parent, I'd be upset simply because having a teacher setting things on fire in a classroom, especially something to the nature of a flag that can flap around and spread the flames, outside of a controlled experiment is a pretty serious threat to my children's saftey. How's he so sure that "only lighting a small corner" of the flag is under his control?
posted by tomorama at 10:54 AM on September 26, 2001