How parents put up with public schools is completely beyond me. I would be tearing my hair out. I hope a lot of parents are getting used to pushing back hard and often.
Private elementary schools and middles schools are a good investment, if you can't homeschool. My kids have been in a mixture of both. The differences are enormous, and very telling.
An assignment in hideously poor taste, and asking for trouble, but at least it probably assumes that the student is adopting a point of view that's completely alien to him, for the purpose of stretching his mind. I doubt that's what the instructor had in mind when he had very young student use crayons to write "I am willing to give up my Constitutional rights . . . ."
If, in 10th grade, the students were given the 4th grader's sentence and asked to support it, and the following week given the opposite sentiment, no problem. I don't object to the "taking the Nazi viewpoint" essay either, though I think it was botched. German expansion and tribal superiority wrt all groups were as important as Jew-hatred. The teacher played to the history stereotype.
If the teacher had picked some other group, there would still have been trouble from somewhere. But it's a legitimate exercise.
As for the 4th-grade teacher, I would like to hear the whole story. Working in a psychiatric hospital, I am very used to seeing stories in the paper that we are not allowed to explain and refute.
Patrick Henry speaks to this issue, in ways I have always loved. I wonder if they still read him in school. "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
I have been thinking more about this Nazi lesson. My instinct was to object that the children were too young for the lesson, so I tried to work through why I should have that uncharacteristic response.
It's not that they're too young. It's that it's scary to wonder which of these two very different approaches would be adopted:
(1) "Children, today we're going to learn something about why it's unwise to assume we're immune to the shocking errors of our forebears. Some things look more obvious in hindsight than they did at the time. If you had been living in Germany in 1933, can you be completely sure how wisely you would have chosen? Do you fully understand how scared and disoriented they were? Have you ever fallen victim to a temptation to find a scapegoat or indulge an unreasoning hatred of a stranger?"
(2) "Children, today we're going to learn that all deeply held personal moral positions are merely relative, accidental, and superstitious. In order to break down your natural prejudices, we're going to practice adopting the worldview of the most horrifying error we can think of in recent history, so you can get used to thinking that way, and can learn to ignore and override the urgent messages of alarm that you sometimes receive from your nascent conscience."
I grew so fed up with the scools here in Oregon, that I let my son drop out as a sophomore. He took his GED and passed all the tests in the 90th percentile.
He works as a web developer, and pays his own way for the most part.
9 comments:
The fiancé and I have discussed private school or homeschooling if we are able to have kids...
Private elementary schools and middles schools are a good investment, if you can't homeschool. My kids have been in a mixture of both. The differences are enormous, and very telling.
Valerie
Well, you know, it could be worse...
An assignment in hideously poor taste, and asking for trouble, but at least it probably assumes that the student is adopting a point of view that's completely alien to him, for the purpose of stretching his mind. I doubt that's what the instructor had in mind when he had very young student use crayons to write "I am willing to give up my Constitutional rights . . . ."
Putting the two together -
If, in 10th grade, the students were given the 4th grader's sentence and asked to support it, and the following week given the opposite sentiment, no problem. I don't object to the "taking the Nazi viewpoint" essay either, though I think it was botched. German expansion and tribal superiority wrt all groups were as important as Jew-hatred. The teacher played to the history stereotype.
If the teacher had picked some other group, there would still have been trouble from somewhere. But it's a legitimate exercise.
As for the 4th-grade teacher, I would like to hear the whole story. Working in a psychiatric hospital, I am very used to seeing stories in the paper that we are not allowed to explain and refute.
Fair enough, but it applies to every story.
Patrick Henry speaks to this issue, in ways I have always loved. I wonder if they still read him in school. "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
I have been thinking more about this Nazi lesson. My instinct was to object that the children were too young for the lesson, so I tried to work through why I should have that uncharacteristic response.
It's not that they're too young. It's that it's scary to wonder which of these two very different approaches would be adopted:
(1) "Children, today we're going to learn something about why it's unwise to assume we're immune to the shocking errors of our forebears. Some things look more obvious in hindsight than they did at the time. If you had been living in Germany in 1933, can you be completely sure how wisely you would have chosen? Do you fully understand how scared and disoriented they were? Have you ever fallen victim to a temptation to find a scapegoat or indulge an unreasoning hatred of a stranger?"
(2) "Children, today we're going to learn that all deeply held personal moral positions are merely relative, accidental, and superstitious. In order to break down your natural prejudices, we're going to practice adopting the worldview of the most horrifying error we can think of in recent history, so you can get used to thinking that way, and can learn to ignore and override the urgent messages of alarm that you sometimes receive from your nascent conscience."
I grew so fed up with the scools here in Oregon, that I let my son drop out as a sophomore. He took his GED and passed all the tests in the 90th percentile.
He works as a web developer, and pays his own way for the most part.
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