Part II: In the Classroom: Practical Uses for Theories of Child Development
Chapter 3. Cognitive and Language Development
Chapter 4. Personal, Social, and Moral Development
Journal Activity, page 72
1. Should a teacher wait to teach certain skills until learners reach a certain age?
Age is not important. Developmental readiness is important; however, there are certain skills
that in this society we find to be of such vital importance that we feel it is better to demand all citizens learn them regardless of developmental readiness. One such skill is reading.
I do have experience with homeschool students whose parents did not teach them reading until what mainstream society would consider a very late age, as late as adolescence, because their parents did not feel that they were
developmentally ready. I can’t decide if my tendency to frown on that decision is based in reason or
prejudice. One concern I have about waiting is that the developmental issue might never resolve itself,
particularly if the child has a learning disability. You’re not going to“grow out of” dyslexia.
On the other hand, an older student will be more mature, and could be better equipped emotionally for the challenge of working to overcome their learning disability.
By the way, the kids I know turned out fine.
They know how to read, have jobs, and are productive members of society.
With other skills, it can be almost impossible to determine an age at which a student should be ready to learn because development varies among individuals so widely. Some individuals may never be ready to learn certain skills. They may lack the intelligence or capacity to learn them. I discussed this last semester at length with my mathematics professor regarding the teaching of Real Analysis in high schools. I took a course in Real Analysis in high school and got good grades, but I don’t believe that I conceptually grasped any of it, because at the age of 15, I don’t believe that my brain was mature enough to study such abstract ideas. Taking the Real Analysis
course did not prepare me for Calculus, and indeed, I am taking the course again this semester at YSU and remember nothing of it from high school. My high school mathematics beyond the algorithms of algebra and calculus is a blur, and not because too many years have passed. It was a blur back then, too.
Even geometry was too abstract.
My professor’s response was that it was an impossible question to answer. He said that mathematical intelligence varies so widely among students and that some students will never be able to grasp Real Analysis. He spoke about one of his teachers, who had been discovered at the age of 12 in an isolated Polish village and taken to a university to begin study of mathematics. If a person has the ability to learn, why should one wait until an arbitrary age to teach him? In my case, teaching me abstract mathematics as a teenager was a total waste of time. It needed to wait until I was in my twenties… I think I was twenty-four years old when I first began to sort-of understand abstract ideas related to statistics.
2. Can students’ cultural backgrounds affect the way they think?
Absolutely yes. Cultural backgrounds vary in the ideas and themes that are emphasized.
Some ideas may be absent from some cultures, whereas other ideas may be unique to a particular culture, only expressible in one particular language, for example. When students acquire new knowledge, it is learned by connecting how it relates to other pre-existing knowledge about the world.
The acquisition process will thereby vary among cultures, as well as individuals, as individual acquisition of cultural knowledge also varies.
3. Does having a second language interfere with the development of English skills? Yes
and no. Partially, this depends on the brain and partially, it depends upon aspects of the individual’s lifestyle
and personality. Research shows that elementary school students whose primary language is other than English
initially acquire English vocabulary at a slower rate than students whose first language is English because they are also acquiring vocabulary in their first language at a rapid rate; however, bilingual students “catch up” to
English-only students after a few years. This is the biological aspect of learning.
The lifestyle of the student cannot be discounted as a factor in the development of new skills.
Students who have more exposure to English outside of school will learn English faster than those who do not, and the more dependent a student is on learning English in order to communicate, the faster they will learn. I do not mean to suggest that bilingual education techniques are not useful.
What I am talking about are students who have the ability to live their lives without learning English. They have less incentive to learn.
This brings up the issue of personality, how badly does a person want to be able to communicate with others in English? Learning another language can be very hard when it is the dominant language of a culture, which can affect the student emotionally and even cause him to question his sense of self-worth.
It can be embarrassing, because in order to learn, you have to try to talk to other people. Often, you
sound like an idiot, and frequently, people laugh at you. In my opinion, students who possess qualities in their personalities such that they are willing to embarrass themselves, make mistakes, and look like an
idiot… a big idiot, frequently, for a long period of time, these students stand a better chance of acquiring proficiency in that language.
It doesn’t mean that someone who is the opposite, extremely shy, for example, cannot gain proficiency in English. It can be harder for them and take longer if they do not seek opportunities to practice speaking.
This could be mitigated by other factors, such as language practice with a trusted family member.
Individual circumstances vary greatly among students.
When I was learning to speak French, French people would tell me to stop speaking their language, and wanted to speak to me only in English. They would say things to me about my pronunciation being insulting to them, which as an American I found to be an absurd attitude, since our cultural attitudes about language itself are so
different, but the more experiences I had with people responding negatively to me when I would try to speak, the more it started to wear me down. In order to move forward, I had to develop an attitude of “Do not
validate the opinions of those people who don’t want you to learn,” which is what my teacher had to tell me.
The aspect of personality that supersedes all other factors is pride. If you think you are God’s
gift to the world and you aren’t willing to humble yourself down to the level of being like a child, a baby even, because children speak the language better than you do, you are going to have a really, really hard time learning a second language.
Age is not important. Developmental readiness is important; however, there are certain skills
that in this society we find to be of such vital importance that we feel it is better to demand all citizens learn them regardless of developmental readiness. One such skill is reading.
I do have experience with homeschool students whose parents did not teach them reading until what mainstream society would consider a very late age, as late as adolescence, because their parents did not feel that they were
developmentally ready. I can’t decide if my tendency to frown on that decision is based in reason or
prejudice. One concern I have about waiting is that the developmental issue might never resolve itself,
particularly if the child has a learning disability. You’re not going to“grow out of” dyslexia.
On the other hand, an older student will be more mature, and could be better equipped emotionally for the challenge of working to overcome their learning disability.
By the way, the kids I know turned out fine.
They know how to read, have jobs, and are productive members of society.
With other skills, it can be almost impossible to determine an age at which a student should be ready to learn because development varies among individuals so widely. Some individuals may never be ready to learn certain skills. They may lack the intelligence or capacity to learn them. I discussed this last semester at length with my mathematics professor regarding the teaching of Real Analysis in high schools. I took a course in Real Analysis in high school and got good grades, but I don’t believe that I conceptually grasped any of it, because at the age of 15, I don’t believe that my brain was mature enough to study such abstract ideas. Taking the Real Analysis
course did not prepare me for Calculus, and indeed, I am taking the course again this semester at YSU and remember nothing of it from high school. My high school mathematics beyond the algorithms of algebra and calculus is a blur, and not because too many years have passed. It was a blur back then, too.
Even geometry was too abstract.
My professor’s response was that it was an impossible question to answer. He said that mathematical intelligence varies so widely among students and that some students will never be able to grasp Real Analysis. He spoke about one of his teachers, who had been discovered at the age of 12 in an isolated Polish village and taken to a university to begin study of mathematics. If a person has the ability to learn, why should one wait until an arbitrary age to teach him? In my case, teaching me abstract mathematics as a teenager was a total waste of time. It needed to wait until I was in my twenties… I think I was twenty-four years old when I first began to sort-of understand abstract ideas related to statistics.
2. Can students’ cultural backgrounds affect the way they think?
Absolutely yes. Cultural backgrounds vary in the ideas and themes that are emphasized.
Some ideas may be absent from some cultures, whereas other ideas may be unique to a particular culture, only expressible in one particular language, for example. When students acquire new knowledge, it is learned by connecting how it relates to other pre-existing knowledge about the world.
The acquisition process will thereby vary among cultures, as well as individuals, as individual acquisition of cultural knowledge also varies.
3. Does having a second language interfere with the development of English skills? Yes
and no. Partially, this depends on the brain and partially, it depends upon aspects of the individual’s lifestyle
and personality. Research shows that elementary school students whose primary language is other than English
initially acquire English vocabulary at a slower rate than students whose first language is English because they are also acquiring vocabulary in their first language at a rapid rate; however, bilingual students “catch up” to
English-only students after a few years. This is the biological aspect of learning.
The lifestyle of the student cannot be discounted as a factor in the development of new skills.
Students who have more exposure to English outside of school will learn English faster than those who do not, and the more dependent a student is on learning English in order to communicate, the faster they will learn. I do not mean to suggest that bilingual education techniques are not useful.
What I am talking about are students who have the ability to live their lives without learning English. They have less incentive to learn.
This brings up the issue of personality, how badly does a person want to be able to communicate with others in English? Learning another language can be very hard when it is the dominant language of a culture, which can affect the student emotionally and even cause him to question his sense of self-worth.
It can be embarrassing, because in order to learn, you have to try to talk to other people. Often, you
sound like an idiot, and frequently, people laugh at you. In my opinion, students who possess qualities in their personalities such that they are willing to embarrass themselves, make mistakes, and look like an
idiot… a big idiot, frequently, for a long period of time, these students stand a better chance of acquiring proficiency in that language.
It doesn’t mean that someone who is the opposite, extremely shy, for example, cannot gain proficiency in English. It can be harder for them and take longer if they do not seek opportunities to practice speaking.
This could be mitigated by other factors, such as language practice with a trusted family member.
Individual circumstances vary greatly among students.
When I was learning to speak French, French people would tell me to stop speaking their language, and wanted to speak to me only in English. They would say things to me about my pronunciation being insulting to them, which as an American I found to be an absurd attitude, since our cultural attitudes about language itself are so
different, but the more experiences I had with people responding negatively to me when I would try to speak, the more it started to wear me down. In order to move forward, I had to develop an attitude of “Do not
validate the opinions of those people who don’t want you to learn,” which is what my teacher had to tell me.
The aspect of personality that supersedes all other factors is pride. If you think you are God’s
gift to the world and you aren’t willing to humble yourself down to the level of being like a child, a baby even, because children speak the language better than you do, you are going to have a really, really hard time learning a second language.
Journal Activity: Chapter 3, page 111
Again, I knew much of the information in this chapter before I came into this Educational Psychology class. I am beginning to think that maybe I should be taking a graduate level course on this subject, which speaks to
Vygotsky. I think that this course is a little too easy for me, but I am determined to get as much out of it as I
can. I have to constantly remind myself that it is designed for students with no prior knowledge of the
subject.
I did not know where the term “scaffolding” came from, but I am very glad that I know, because I get my back up whenever I hear a teacher talking about a need for “scaffolding” a student of lower socio-economic status, which in my opinion, is simply not bothering to teach that student. I have no problem with scaffolding as a teaching technique. I do it all the time without even thinking about it.
My problem is that I find in practice other teaching claim that they are“scaffolding” a student by offering lower order tasks for her so that she can succeed, but the student is never then adequately challenged or brought up to
the level she needs in order to succeed in life, and this does the student, as well as society, a grave disservice.
There was much in this chapter for me to disagree with. I am not dismissing the research, merely keeping an open mind. For example, while I imagine that there were empirical studies that put the moratorium on inner speech at age seven, I am aware that I use inner speech all the time when I am working on difficult math problems, and I am 36 years old. I am also skeptical that passive listening to conversations in another language is not an effective strategy; however, this is an idea that I would be more likely to implement in
the classroom. I think to myself, “But watching those videos really helped me.” Maybe it helped me learn less than I thought, but it did give me more confidence speaking because I could hear the voices from the tape and compare my pronunciation to those of native speakers. I guess it depends on how one defines “passive” listening. If I am actively thinking about pronunciation while I listen to others conversations, does that count as “active” listening?
Vygotsky. I think that this course is a little too easy for me, but I am determined to get as much out of it as I
can. I have to constantly remind myself that it is designed for students with no prior knowledge of the
subject.
I did not know where the term “scaffolding” came from, but I am very glad that I know, because I get my back up whenever I hear a teacher talking about a need for “scaffolding” a student of lower socio-economic status, which in my opinion, is simply not bothering to teach that student. I have no problem with scaffolding as a teaching technique. I do it all the time without even thinking about it.
My problem is that I find in practice other teaching claim that they are“scaffolding” a student by offering lower order tasks for her so that she can succeed, but the student is never then adequately challenged or brought up to
the level she needs in order to succeed in life, and this does the student, as well as society, a grave disservice.
There was much in this chapter for me to disagree with. I am not dismissing the research, merely keeping an open mind. For example, while I imagine that there were empirical studies that put the moratorium on inner speech at age seven, I am aware that I use inner speech all the time when I am working on difficult math problems, and I am 36 years old. I am also skeptical that passive listening to conversations in another language is not an effective strategy; however, this is an idea that I would be more likely to implement in
the classroom. I think to myself, “But watching those videos really helped me.” Maybe it helped me learn less than I thought, but it did give me more confidence speaking because I could hear the voices from the tape and compare my pronunciation to those of native speakers. I guess it depends on how one defines “passive” listening. If I am actively thinking about pronunciation while I listen to others conversations, does that count as “active” listening?
Journal Activity Chapter 4, page 116
1. Should teachers take into consideration the personal lives of their students?
Yes, good teachers do. When students come into our classrooms, they bring with them a wealth of knowledge based in personal experience. Students learn new concepts and ideas by making connections to their existing knowledge. Teachers can use students' personal experiences as perspectives on content knowledge and make content knowledge relevant to students' lives, thereby increasing their incentive to learn.
2. What do students typically worry about when they are in elementary, middle, and high school?
My experiences with pre-K and early elementary students is that their "worries" focus on home life, what is going on in their families. Middle school students worry about fitting in with their peers. High school students worry about romantic relationships.
3. Should teachers help students resolve their personal "crises?"
No. We can teach skills for managing personal conflict and stress, especially in special education with students who have behavioral or emotional disabilities, but if we made it our goal to resolve problems in our students' lives, we would not succeed, as students' problems exist on a continuum. As soon as one problem is resolved, another problem comes to center stage.
4. How might personal and social development issues interfere with students' learning?
Typically, K-12 instruction is designed to be age-appropriate for the level we are teaching, so problems tend to occur when a student is experiencing a developmental lag or disability. Typically, school students learn in groups. Typically, this takes place in a classroom of more than twenty students. If one of those students is socially disabled or developmentally lagging in their social development, he won't fit in. He will have difficulty interpreting increasingly complex social cues which can bring out a negative response from other students. It is the nature of learning with others that generates difficulty for the disabled student or one who is lagging in social development.
When I volunteered in a sixth grade classroom, there was one student who was socially alienated from the rest of the class. He ate his lunch alone. He was not invited to play with the other boys at recess. A girl in the class told me she avoids all interaction with him whenever possible. She calls him a "creep" and "gross" in private conversations, complains about him being unaware of social norms such as personal distance and standards of dress. In spite of being educated that this boy behaves this way because of his disability and their understanding that he is not trying to be rude, the other children still do not want anything to do with him. They don't bully him, but they don't go out of their way to socialize with him either. It undoubtedly affects his learning, since, for example, when other students pair up to review homework, he is left alone, but whether this will become an obstacle to his learning is unknown.
5. Do students change in terms of how they solve moral dilemmas as they grow up? They can; however, my experience with adults teaches me that many people, perhaps the majority of people, never seem to grow up. American moral consciousness is retarded. It is not an area of growth that our culture deems to be important, and very childish concepts of morality are reinforced in the media.
Yes, good teachers do. When students come into our classrooms, they bring with them a wealth of knowledge based in personal experience. Students learn new concepts and ideas by making connections to their existing knowledge. Teachers can use students' personal experiences as perspectives on content knowledge and make content knowledge relevant to students' lives, thereby increasing their incentive to learn.
2. What do students typically worry about when they are in elementary, middle, and high school?
My experiences with pre-K and early elementary students is that their "worries" focus on home life, what is going on in their families. Middle school students worry about fitting in with their peers. High school students worry about romantic relationships.
3. Should teachers help students resolve their personal "crises?"
No. We can teach skills for managing personal conflict and stress, especially in special education with students who have behavioral or emotional disabilities, but if we made it our goal to resolve problems in our students' lives, we would not succeed, as students' problems exist on a continuum. As soon as one problem is resolved, another problem comes to center stage.
4. How might personal and social development issues interfere with students' learning?
Typically, K-12 instruction is designed to be age-appropriate for the level we are teaching, so problems tend to occur when a student is experiencing a developmental lag or disability. Typically, school students learn in groups. Typically, this takes place in a classroom of more than twenty students. If one of those students is socially disabled or developmentally lagging in their social development, he won't fit in. He will have difficulty interpreting increasingly complex social cues which can bring out a negative response from other students. It is the nature of learning with others that generates difficulty for the disabled student or one who is lagging in social development.
When I volunteered in a sixth grade classroom, there was one student who was socially alienated from the rest of the class. He ate his lunch alone. He was not invited to play with the other boys at recess. A girl in the class told me she avoids all interaction with him whenever possible. She calls him a "creep" and "gross" in private conversations, complains about him being unaware of social norms such as personal distance and standards of dress. In spite of being educated that this boy behaves this way because of his disability and their understanding that he is not trying to be rude, the other children still do not want anything to do with him. They don't bully him, but they don't go out of their way to socialize with him either. It undoubtedly affects his learning, since, for example, when other students pair up to review homework, he is left alone, but whether this will become an obstacle to his learning is unknown.
5. Do students change in terms of how they solve moral dilemmas as they grow up? They can; however, my experience with adults teaches me that many people, perhaps the majority of people, never seem to grow up. American moral consciousness is retarded. It is not an area of growth that our culture deems to be important, and very childish concepts of morality are reinforced in the media.
Opportunity... young Americans choosing their own path & adults choosing it for them?
There are two stories I have encountered in the media that I can't get out of my mind because they challenge my core beliefs about one of the major responsibilities of high school faculty, to set young people on a course for a successful adult life. In both cases, the schools and parents are following traditional ideas about what it means to take advantage of opportunities for fulfillment and success. The stories question whether we know what is best for kids. They question our most celebrated educational institutions. They suggest that children's lives are ruined because they believe what adults, who have the best intentions, are telling them it means to succeed, and the kids are making decisions that have serious consequences on their adult lives. In the case of four boys, it led them to their death.
The first story I watched was on PBS about the student loan debt crisis, an episode of "Need toKnow." One of the main characters of the story was a young woman who was unemployed and struggling with interest rates on her student loans. She was orphaned as a kid, and so her high school staff and faculty influenced her decision to take out exorbitant student loans to pay for college. Another character, a young man, describes a similar story of the pressures the school guidance counselor and his parents put on him to go into debt to pay for college. Both students say that at age 17, it was not developmentally appropriate for them to make a decision to take on large debts that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
You can watch the program here on PBS.
The second story I watched was more disturbing. "Football High," was another episode of Frontline http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/football-high/ that focused on changes in the culture of high school football and the way it is played. The story showed boys who suffered life threatening injuries and death from the extreme rigors of training and a new style of play that turns boys into "monsters." I love high school football. It is a part of our culture and tradition that I celebrate; however, I don't think that as a society, we should be sacrificing the health and futures of our children to win games.
I was particularly upset about the role of the school in harming children. One school that was featured in the program, Shiloh Christian, http://www.shilohsaints.org/ , disturbed me because I think their goals have strayed so path from the path of educating children and Christianity, and unlike most schools, they appear to have the funding to continue down that path. The boys are suffering from brain damage and life-threatening injuries. In one case, a student who was treated at Arkansas Children's Hospital nearly died after suffering from heat stroke, and he was back on the team six weeks after leaving the hospital. In an interview, the boy said, "You're only 17 once." His mother described the boy playing for the Shiloh Saints football as an "opportunity."
We know developmentally that teens are not able to see the consequences of their actions the way an adult does. Their brains are not fully developed. Research on automobile crashes tells us that teen drivers take more risks, because they are not able to fully appreciate the consequences of those risks. As adults, we feel we know what is "best" for teenagers, and almost all high school teachers consider it part of the mission of public service to set kids on the right course. But what if we are wrong about "the right course?" What if the course we are leading them on is one of destruction, against our best intentions?
In the case of college preparation, perhaps we should not be putting so much pressure on our high school students to get into the "best" college. After watching Frontline programs on student loans, my attitude towards pushing children into colleges has changed. As I am a non-traditional student myself, I don't believe that if students don't begin post-secondary education right after high school that it means those students life chances will be diminished. As an adult carrying a large student loan debt, I understand what it means to be held in a financial yoke. I also believe that I have more insight now after watching this program to use to counsel parents who want their son or daughter going to the best college no matter what the cost. It is the child's course in life, and it is not my job to pressure him or her into making decisions that may not be the best. It suffices for me to teach them the skills that will set the foundation for successful post-secondary education, then allow the child to grow up and make his or her own decisions about when and where to study.
In the case of football, after watching this program, I believe as a faculty member at a high school, I will be much more involved in the oversight of the athletics program than I ever dreamed. I am resolute that athletics should complement a healthy lifestyle. We cannot conscionably destroy the health and welfare of our students through a school program. How can we teach mathematics to students suffering from brain damage? How can we teach mathematics to students laid up in the hospital from injuries?
The first story I watched was on PBS about the student loan debt crisis, an episode of "Need toKnow." One of the main characters of the story was a young woman who was unemployed and struggling with interest rates on her student loans. She was orphaned as a kid, and so her high school staff and faculty influenced her decision to take out exorbitant student loans to pay for college. Another character, a young man, describes a similar story of the pressures the school guidance counselor and his parents put on him to go into debt to pay for college. Both students say that at age 17, it was not developmentally appropriate for them to make a decision to take on large debts that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
You can watch the program here on PBS.
The second story I watched was more disturbing. "Football High," was another episode of Frontline http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/football-high/ that focused on changes in the culture of high school football and the way it is played. The story showed boys who suffered life threatening injuries and death from the extreme rigors of training and a new style of play that turns boys into "monsters." I love high school football. It is a part of our culture and tradition that I celebrate; however, I don't think that as a society, we should be sacrificing the health and futures of our children to win games.
I was particularly upset about the role of the school in harming children. One school that was featured in the program, Shiloh Christian, http://www.shilohsaints.org/ , disturbed me because I think their goals have strayed so path from the path of educating children and Christianity, and unlike most schools, they appear to have the funding to continue down that path. The boys are suffering from brain damage and life-threatening injuries. In one case, a student who was treated at Arkansas Children's Hospital nearly died after suffering from heat stroke, and he was back on the team six weeks after leaving the hospital. In an interview, the boy said, "You're only 17 once." His mother described the boy playing for the Shiloh Saints football as an "opportunity."
We know developmentally that teens are not able to see the consequences of their actions the way an adult does. Their brains are not fully developed. Research on automobile crashes tells us that teen drivers take more risks, because they are not able to fully appreciate the consequences of those risks. As adults, we feel we know what is "best" for teenagers, and almost all high school teachers consider it part of the mission of public service to set kids on the right course. But what if we are wrong about "the right course?" What if the course we are leading them on is one of destruction, against our best intentions?
In the case of college preparation, perhaps we should not be putting so much pressure on our high school students to get into the "best" college. After watching Frontline programs on student loans, my attitude towards pushing children into colleges has changed. As I am a non-traditional student myself, I don't believe that if students don't begin post-secondary education right after high school that it means those students life chances will be diminished. As an adult carrying a large student loan debt, I understand what it means to be held in a financial yoke. I also believe that I have more insight now after watching this program to use to counsel parents who want their son or daughter going to the best college no matter what the cost. It is the child's course in life, and it is not my job to pressure him or her into making decisions that may not be the best. It suffices for me to teach them the skills that will set the foundation for successful post-secondary education, then allow the child to grow up and make his or her own decisions about when and where to study.
In the case of football, after watching this program, I believe as a faculty member at a high school, I will be much more involved in the oversight of the athletics program than I ever dreamed. I am resolute that athletics should complement a healthy lifestyle. We cannot conscionably destroy the health and welfare of our students through a school program. How can we teach mathematics to students suffering from brain damage? How can we teach mathematics to students laid up in the hospital from injuries?
Teaching Morality, Not Religion?
Prior to enrolling in this course, I had thought that I would
prefer to teach at a public school because the expectations of pay are higher
than private school teaching and because I value academic freedom.
I prefer to belong to a labor union that will represent me should a
conflict regarding academic freedom arise with parents or the school
administration. There are not many opportunities for employment at private schools that are committed to academic freedom where the teachers are organized in labor unions.
Frankly, there are few opportunities whatsoever for employment in K-12
education at institutions committed to academic freedom.
A brief look at lawsuits in our courts in recent years, combined with my
experience as a public school student, suffices to convince me that academic
freedom for children is not something our culture values.
We still have school librarians tearing pages out of books.
We have parents still filing lawsuits because their kids read
Huckleberry Finn in English class.
I am committed to pushing the envelope with my teaching because
I believe that is conducive to learning (See Moreno, page 79, “Piaget argued
that disequilibrium acts as a force to drive cognitive growth.
Therefore, teachers should find ways to promote cognitive conflict to
help children learn in meaningful ways.”)
I have already described how disruption of equilibrium can be
uncomfortable, and from Piaget, we have that this disruption is necessary for
learning to occur; however, sometimes, and in some circumstances, some parents
do not want their children’s equilibrium disrupted.
Parents seek to instill values in their children that they do not desire
schools to challenge. They do not want their moral authority to be challenged, and often, disruption of a child’s
equilibrium can create a potential to disruption of the parents’ equilibrium,
resulting in the parents experiencing additional discomfort.
The parents’ discomfort can and does lead to political action.
Lucky for me, I chose to teach in a high-needs discipline,
mathematics, that contains few if any political controversies.
If there existed a shortage of American history teachers, I would be
getting a social studies endorsement to teach American history, which would
certainly lead to problems arising in the classroom with students’ and their
parents’ core beliefs being challenged.
However, I am still anticipating political problems with students’
parents, and through them, with school administrators, regarding the other
beliefs that I will challenge through my pedagogy and classroom management, and
I feel strongly that labor union membership will help guide me through these
challenges. Ironically, since my most controversial ideas are deeply rooted in my Christianity, I think I may be
a better fit as a teacher at a Christian school.
My professor for Introduction to Education, is a
Christian educator who lectured our class about how she did not experience a
conflict with Ohio law regarding the separation of church and state at the same
time that she considered her teaching a ministry.
Certainly, Christ’s commandment to “love one another,” does not create a
conflict with the goals of public education. Loving my students and demonstrating
that love through teaching them and affirming their value does not create a
conflict in the public school… usually.
Romans 13 teaches us to submit to authority and at the same time, we know
that love is the fulfillment of the law; therefore, as a Christian, I can cede
to the authority of the school board, the superintendent, and the principal so
long as I am not commanded to turn my back on the law, which is to love my
neighbor as myself. The scenarios
where my witness for Christ seems to put me in a controversial position are
where something else has already gone horribly wrong and the authorities are not
dealing with it, situations like this http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-02/los-angeles-teacher-bondage-photos/52933424/1
Still, stuff like this happens at Christian schools, and I don’t
believe that to be a whistleblower at a Christian school is any bit more
pleasant than at a public school. It’s likely to be worse.
In the words of Richard Beck, a lot of Christian churches are factories
churning out jerks. http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/27/bait-and-switch-contemporary-christianity A lot of
evangelical churches, including the Southern Baptist Conference with which my
church has been affiliated, emphasize unity among the membership and adherence
to the directives of the leadership.
If you don’t think that a church will turn against a believer who speaks
out of lockstep, talk to anyone who has been kicked out of a church.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2012/02/mars_hill_pastor_mark_driscoll_faces_backlash_over_church_discipline_case_.html Sometimes,
they don’t even formally kick you out, you simply become persona non grata, and
they freeze you out. Under federal
law, if you work for a religious school, there truly is no such thing as tenure
or job security when you do not remain in the good graces of church leaders,
because churches are exempt in many ways from law and policy that would
otherwise protect workers, including even the Americans with Disabilities Act.
See: http://www.alternet.org/belief/154068/supreme_court_says_religious_school_can_fire_teacher_for_illness?page=entire
I am content in my ministry to witness Christ to others in the
workplace by loving, or in the words of one Ohio Department of Education
publication, becoming “The Nurturing, Compassionate Teacher.”
I don’t feel like it is my mission to subvert my job to some personal
goal to spread propaganda. I have
seen this in action, and it is not effective teaching.
I find that the captive audience of students who have little choice but
to submit to a teacher’s campaign of indoctrination very quickly become bored
and annoyed. Teachers who are
really out there about their mission to save the world are the worst!
Every teacher seems to have a hobby horse that can get in the
way of effective teaching. Since
we work largely unobserved by colleagues, the professional teacher needs to
constantly self-evaluate how his teaching of morality, ethics, and philosophy
benefits his students and complements each student’s intellectual growth. Just like our instruction of content
from our discipline, we need to align our instruction on morality, civic duty,
patriotism and democracy with the goals of the school and evaluate our
teaching’s effectiveness on an ongoing basis.
For example, I had this teacher, who possesses some rather
ridiculous ideas that he demanded were Universal Truth and the explicit word of
God. I learned so much in his
class about American literature because the level of thinking about philosophy
he demanded of us was vastly beyond what was expected in our other high school
classes; however, he probably would have been more successful teaching us
American literature if he didn’t spend at least one full class session each week
foaming at the mouth about his Universal Truth. At the time, it was mildly interesting
for me to try to understand what on earth he was talking about, something to do
with Plato, the Roman Catholic Church, and the triumph of the individual, but it
was evident after a few minutes of listening that he refused to incorporate any
ideas that had entered Western Civilization in the past century such that he
made no good sense. It was like
trying to talk to someone from the 19th Century about genetics or robotics or communism.
Occasionally, I would point out obvious problems with his philosophy, he
would respond with ad hominem attacks, declare that the world has gone to hell
since the Second Vatican Council, and then continue his rant in his own special
combination of Greek and Latin peppered with some choice words from the
venerable Anglo-Saxon. I really like him. Even though the most
interaction I had with him was as one of many students at whom he hurled abuse
and obscenities, he was loveable in his own way. I think what made his diatribes only
mildly annoying was that he accepted that his nonsense was his nonsense, that
nobody else, certainly not any of his students, were likely to adopt his
philosophy or worldview. If he believed that his was a mission to convert us, his lectures would have been
insufferable.
I don’t think it is effective teaching to try to make converts to your own cause or belief system, and I think my pedagogy is too far into the neighborhood of Friere to support using my classroom as a tool of indoctrination. You just don’t ram it down kids’ throats like that.
The point of creating cognitive conflict is to foster growth and learning. When you engage in a campaign of indoctrination, you supplant one pre-existing notion of the world with another, the teacher’s. The
point is to disrupt equilibrium so that the student herself will generate a new
point of equilibrium. Our metacognitive goal is to teach students how to generate those new points of
equilibrium whenever they acquire new contradictory information, to become
comfortable with the process, to become skillful with the process, because we
cannot even anticipate the information that they will have to adapt over the
course of their adult lives. There is not a teacher alive who can say, “You should think and believe what I tell
you, and it will serve you well the rest of your life.” Culture changes. Ideas change.
We innovate and evolve as a society. For heaven’s sake, my mother studied
stenography for two years in high school! And she will probably live another
twenty years! When she graduated from high school, the Civil Rights Amendment hadn’t been passed.
It is hubris for us to believe as teachers that we know what the students need to know or how they should look at the world.
One thing our American public school system does well is to help generate adults who are among the most creative and innovative in the world. Americans don’t just adapt well to change. We drive the change. We have the new ideas that solve problems. I want to be part of a system of education that nurtures the next generation of world-class leadership, of world-class thinkers. I don’t want to mold students to think like me.
They can do better than me.
The kids get “bored” doing the same thing all the time. I believe the students have their own interests that they would like to explore in creative ways. It’s not about the teacher. It’s about the kids. That’s why it’s called
Student-Centered Learning.
Everything we teach ought not to be so deep and heavy. Kids have their own emotional issues
going on outside of school. In grades 7 – 12, there are a lot of hormones that make life difficult enough. I’m not saying don’t teach about the “big issues.” I’m saying that as important it is to create an educated citizenry who can make informed choices about global issues, it is important that the kids have an opportunity to study
topics of individual interest when they are at school so that learning is personally relevant. I was
interested in warfare when I was in high school, so in my second year of chemistry, I did a term project on chemical weapons. My friend did her project on correlating breast cancer to water pollution created by the steel industry, which you can say is a “big issue.” She chose the topic not because it was on a list of teacher-generated choices, but because her aunt was recently undergone a mastectomy. Some other kid did his project on toilet paper, not a “big issue,” but it was relevant enough to him to hold his attention for weeks at a time. Who am I to tell some kid that toilet paper isn’t important? Don’t I use toilet paper?
Still, in everyday classroom management, we must shape the morals of our students as we demand that they conform to certain behaviors. Ohio Revised Code Section 3313.601 states explicitly,
“No board of education shall prohibit a classroom teacher from
providing in the teacher’s classroom reasonable periods of time for activities
of a moral, philosophical, or patriotic theme. No pupil shall be required to
participate in such activities if they are contrary to the religious convictions
of the pupil or the pupil’s parents or guardians. No board of education of a
school district shall adopt any policy or rule respecting or promoting an
establishment of religion or prohibiting any pupil from the free, individual,
and voluntary exercise or expression of the pupil’s religious beliefs in any
primary or secondary school.
( http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3313)
which is a departure from prior state policy which forbade public school teachers from
instructing students in religion, philosophy, or morals.
ORC 3313.602 was passed by the same congress that implemented 3313.601 in
2002, during the height of the post-9-11/George Bush mania. Along with
directions about the Pledge of Allegiance (that was further amended,
in the 128th Congress to ensure that nobody tried to omit the
words “under God” from their recitation of the Pledge in a bill sponsored by
Tom Niehaus, the enemy of Ohio teachers who led Republicans championing Senate
Bill 5), ORC 3313.601 states,
“In the development of its graded course of study, the board of
education of each city and exempted village school district and the governing
board of each educational service center shall ensure that the principles of
democracy and ethics are emphasized and discussed wherever appropriate in all
parts of the curriculum for grades kindergarten through
twelve.
Each city, local, exempted village, and joint
vocational school board shall adopt policies that encourage all certificated and
noncertificated employees to be cognizant of their roles in instilling ethical
principles and democratic ideals in all district
pupils.”
(see also: http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/analysis.cfm?ID=128_HB_1&ACT=Veto%20Message&hf=analyses128/09-hb1-128.htm
It would seem to me that pretty much leaves it wide open for
teachers, even math teachers, to present religious-based instruction as long as
you call it “moral instruction”or “ethics.” Basically, it sounds to me like the
Ohio legislature combined with former Governor Bob Taft declared it both legal and
appropriate to teach religious-based views regarding ethics, behavior, duty to
your countrymen, just so long as one does not teach religious rituals or other
aspects of religion not related to ethics or behavior. It
sounds like is legal for teachers to lead prayer as well.
To my knowledge, neither of these laws have been challenged in the
courts. It seems consistent with
existing legal opinions regarding prayers before football games,
etc.
I foresee two problems for my career as a public school teacher
with this law.
First of all, to my knowledge, neither of these laws has yet
been challenged in the courts as to where the “line” is exactly where teachers
exercising this provision for religious education in Ohio public schools becomes
an abridgement of the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. If federal courts decide that Ohio law
is in violation of the U.S. Constitution, what will that mean for teachers? We will have an absence of any written
policy. I can say that I plan to cross that bridge when I come to it; however, I have a propensity for upsetting
people with things I say in ways I don’t think are possible to anticipate.
For example, in my Real Analysis class yesterday, I described my
opinion on the insignificance of a particular value of a sequence and its limit
by comparing it to a reasonable margin of error when plotting a target for an
aerial bombing mission. My professor and classmates were offended by the violence implied by my example of
a military application. I found their response unexpected and bizarre, as well as idiosyncratic, since our
Calculus textbook frequently has us plotting trajectories for shotguns, cannons,
catapults and other weapons, and we talk about military applications in many of
my other classes. Calculus is the backbone of rocketry, so where these people get off thinking that math is in no
way related to blowing things up, like I am the first person to have that thought cross her mind, I cannot understand.
Another example, at a Girl Scout Service Unit meeting in November where Leaders were asked to go around the room and share what our troops were doing for the holidays, I shared that my troop was commemorating
World AIDS Day. I had no inkling that could have caused such a controversy in the 21stCentury. You would have thought I had said that we were planning to worship Satan.
The other women insisted that I could not mention AIDS in front of children, even though I was using the activities that were suggested on the Girl Scout website and World AIDS Day is officially recognized by Girl Scouts. I came away from that meeting shocked by how ignorant and horrible so-called normal people can be, and when everything was said and done, the Girl Scout office made me get signed permission slips from all of the girls’ parents saying that they were aware that AIDS was being discussed.
Only one parent opted out, not for the reasons that the other Girl Scout Leaders objected, but for an even more shocking reason. She said that she was completely okay with discussing AIDS, as long as I didn’t mention that people die from AIDS, because she did not believe that death should be mentioned in the presence of
children.
I really don’t understand what goes on inside parents’ heads. I really, really don’t. And I’m pretty sure that someday, I am going to say something that is going to upset someone’s parents.
And I don’t want to be the teacher embroiled in a lawsuit because I said something, having no way of anticipating the shitstorm it would bring down on my school. I don’t want to be the teacher who is at the center of the drama when ORC 3313 is challenged. But I could be. So I need to belong to a union.
Secondly, I have taught Sunday school, and I hate it. I don’t like teaching religion, so I don’t understand why, no matter what church I go to, they always seem to want me to teach Sunday school. You would think they would ask me to stop coming because I tell the kids stuff like the great flood of the Noah’s Ark story never really happened, that Jonah was never really swallowed by a whale because those sorts of things don’t happen in real life, but I suspect as I am working for free, heresy isn’t an issue. It’s not like I am going to get in trouble because I love teaching religion so much that I can’t stop myself from doing it in a public school. But I don’t want to teach “ethics” either, “ethics” being just a code word Republicans came up with because they definitely were not going to get away with putting “Christianity”into state law. If I have to teach ethics, it’s going to be Christian ethics, and I don’t know how to do that and“leave Jesus out of it.” I don’t know that I would want to try.
If some kid at school gives me lip when I tell him to respect his elders, what do I say? It’s going to be, “Because I said so, and if you do it again, you’re getting a detention.” I have no interest in making up some whole secular guide to why-you-should-do-this and why-you-shouldn’t-do-that. Because we don’t need it. That is the job of religion, to teach morality. If parents want to teach their children morality, I will be glad to back up what they are teaching at home if they want to get me on board with their program. I’m just happy for parents to teach morality at all!
Opening it up to say that it is the schools’ job to teach morality and then to expect us not to bring religious into it is absurd. If parents are not going to see to it that their children are instructed in morality outside of school, what am I going to do with them in school, when I am under gag rule?
It is one thing to tell students what they may or may not do at school,
to have rules. It is another thing entirely to teach them why they should do something or not do something. That is another animal. It is much more complex. I am comfortable keeping it on the level of “because you will go to jail,” because frequently, the students you have in high school who are causing the most behavioral problems
fall into one of two categories: they are not developmentally capable of understanding morality at a level
of maturity much beyond “because you will go to jail” or they are well aware and
fully appreciate why they should behave morally, and they choose not to. Instruction in ethics is not going to be
effective at modifying the behavior of either cohort.
I have a hard enough time trying to teach my own kids morality with the assistance of church and Christian school. Now I’m expected to teach morality to a bunch of kids who don’t go to church whose parents are models of what-not-to-do? I am very happy to reinforce the lessons parents are teaching at home
when the parents are teaching morality. I understand and sympathize with how difficult it can be.
But in real life, I have had parents of totally unruly teenagers engaging in all sorts of inappropriate behavior, get in my face about who am I to tell them not to raise their child to act like that? Who am I to tell their child to behave differently, they want to know, when that is the behavior their parents support?
The answer to the question is obviously, “I am an adult who is charged with training your child how to behave, and your child is in my care and custody,” but in real life, you don’t say anything to those parents.
You don’t mention their recent incarceration for methamphetamine and ask who are they to try to tell you how to behave? You get away from them before it gets violent.
And I have had parents threaten me with violence, including in front of the children. I can deal with it, but I can’t tell you I am going to be successful training those young people to rise to the call of their civic duty when they are instructed to say, “My momma told me to tell you that she is gonna come down to the school and kick your ass if you ever ask me that again,” in response to the query, “Where is your homework?”
which I heard during one of my observations in a public high school. I wonder, did her mother believe that biology homework fell into the category of “No pupil shall be required to participate in such activities if they are contrary to the religious convictions of the pupil or the pupil’s parents or guardians?” The teacher ignored her remark, then the student spent the rest of the period talking with her girlfriend about other acts of violence that her mother was going to inflict upon the teacher, including pulling his hair out.
That doesn’t happen to me often. I usually get backtalk once. Then Momma actually does show up to kick
my ass. I’m not intimidated by the threat of violence, but I am pretty sure that I am not allowed to kick Momma’s
ass, so someone else is going to have to handle that one. Lucky for me, most of the larger public schools seem to have armed police officers in the halls, and I guess that is what they get paid for.
I know I have a lot of that to look forward to. The last year my aunt taught in a public school in Ohio, in the 1990s, she had an army of parents who would come to the school every Friday and stand outside of her classroom window, which was on the first floor, and yell at her. The kids were in fourth
grade. I cannot think of anything more damaging to classroom management than several parents of students standing outside the classroom yelling at the teacher. Her principal had no control over the
situation. I don’t know why she never called the police, but my aunt was not intimidated by anyone.
When she taught at a public high school back in the day, she had two separate students try to stab her in unrelated incidents, and she routinely confiscated guns. Apparently, this was not considered a big deal in the 1970s, because she kept the weapons in her desk drawer and returned them at the end of the year to any student who didn’t drop out.
Like I said, I can deal with it. I’m just saying.
No promises on how civic-minded these youth grow up to be or how thoroughly they embrace duty of democracy. Or how long they stay out of jail.
I don’t feel like I am on a Christian mission to “save” kids, their souls or otherwise. You always see these people on television when they are talking about inner city schools, talking about how we need to“save” our kids.
Well, I can’t save anybody.
That is God’s job. Only through God can we be saved, and only through his grace.
God can use us how He wants to, according to His plan, but that’s all on Him. Because I know this, I don’t
feel responsible for sneaking religious instruction under the radar to public school students. That’s not the
job public school teachers are being paid to do. If I am suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to start putting Bibles into kids’ hands, like I said, church is begging for Sunday school teachers.
prefer to teach at a public school because the expectations of pay are higher
than private school teaching and because I value academic freedom.
I prefer to belong to a labor union that will represent me should a
conflict regarding academic freedom arise with parents or the school
administration. There are not many opportunities for employment at private schools that are committed to academic freedom where the teachers are organized in labor unions.
Frankly, there are few opportunities whatsoever for employment in K-12
education at institutions committed to academic freedom.
A brief look at lawsuits in our courts in recent years, combined with my
experience as a public school student, suffices to convince me that academic
freedom for children is not something our culture values.
We still have school librarians tearing pages out of books.
We have parents still filing lawsuits because their kids read
Huckleberry Finn in English class.
I am committed to pushing the envelope with my teaching because
I believe that is conducive to learning (See Moreno, page 79, “Piaget argued
that disequilibrium acts as a force to drive cognitive growth.
Therefore, teachers should find ways to promote cognitive conflict to
help children learn in meaningful ways.”)
I have already described how disruption of equilibrium can be
uncomfortable, and from Piaget, we have that this disruption is necessary for
learning to occur; however, sometimes, and in some circumstances, some parents
do not want their children’s equilibrium disrupted.
Parents seek to instill values in their children that they do not desire
schools to challenge. They do not want their moral authority to be challenged, and often, disruption of a child’s
equilibrium can create a potential to disruption of the parents’ equilibrium,
resulting in the parents experiencing additional discomfort.
The parents’ discomfort can and does lead to political action.
Lucky for me, I chose to teach in a high-needs discipline,
mathematics, that contains few if any political controversies.
If there existed a shortage of American history teachers, I would be
getting a social studies endorsement to teach American history, which would
certainly lead to problems arising in the classroom with students’ and their
parents’ core beliefs being challenged.
However, I am still anticipating political problems with students’
parents, and through them, with school administrators, regarding the other
beliefs that I will challenge through my pedagogy and classroom management, and
I feel strongly that labor union membership will help guide me through these
challenges. Ironically, since my most controversial ideas are deeply rooted in my Christianity, I think I may be
a better fit as a teacher at a Christian school.
My professor for Introduction to Education, is a
Christian educator who lectured our class about how she did not experience a
conflict with Ohio law regarding the separation of church and state at the same
time that she considered her teaching a ministry.
Certainly, Christ’s commandment to “love one another,” does not create a
conflict with the goals of public education. Loving my students and demonstrating
that love through teaching them and affirming their value does not create a
conflict in the public school… usually.
Romans 13 teaches us to submit to authority and at the same time, we know
that love is the fulfillment of the law; therefore, as a Christian, I can cede
to the authority of the school board, the superintendent, and the principal so
long as I am not commanded to turn my back on the law, which is to love my
neighbor as myself. The scenarios
where my witness for Christ seems to put me in a controversial position are
where something else has already gone horribly wrong and the authorities are not
dealing with it, situations like this http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-02/los-angeles-teacher-bondage-photos/52933424/1
Still, stuff like this happens at Christian schools, and I don’t
believe that to be a whistleblower at a Christian school is any bit more
pleasant than at a public school. It’s likely to be worse.
In the words of Richard Beck, a lot of Christian churches are factories
churning out jerks. http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/27/bait-and-switch-contemporary-christianity A lot of
evangelical churches, including the Southern Baptist Conference with which my
church has been affiliated, emphasize unity among the membership and adherence
to the directives of the leadership.
If you don’t think that a church will turn against a believer who speaks
out of lockstep, talk to anyone who has been kicked out of a church.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2012/02/mars_hill_pastor_mark_driscoll_faces_backlash_over_church_discipline_case_.html Sometimes,
they don’t even formally kick you out, you simply become persona non grata, and
they freeze you out. Under federal
law, if you work for a religious school, there truly is no such thing as tenure
or job security when you do not remain in the good graces of church leaders,
because churches are exempt in many ways from law and policy that would
otherwise protect workers, including even the Americans with Disabilities Act.
See: http://www.alternet.org/belief/154068/supreme_court_says_religious_school_can_fire_teacher_for_illness?page=entire
I am content in my ministry to witness Christ to others in the
workplace by loving, or in the words of one Ohio Department of Education
publication, becoming “The Nurturing, Compassionate Teacher.”
I don’t feel like it is my mission to subvert my job to some personal
goal to spread propaganda. I have
seen this in action, and it is not effective teaching.
I find that the captive audience of students who have little choice but
to submit to a teacher’s campaign of indoctrination very quickly become bored
and annoyed. Teachers who are
really out there about their mission to save the world are the worst!
Every teacher seems to have a hobby horse that can get in the
way of effective teaching. Since
we work largely unobserved by colleagues, the professional teacher needs to
constantly self-evaluate how his teaching of morality, ethics, and philosophy
benefits his students and complements each student’s intellectual growth. Just like our instruction of content
from our discipline, we need to align our instruction on morality, civic duty,
patriotism and democracy with the goals of the school and evaluate our
teaching’s effectiveness on an ongoing basis.
For example, I had this teacher, who possesses some rather
ridiculous ideas that he demanded were Universal Truth and the explicit word of
God. I learned so much in his
class about American literature because the level of thinking about philosophy
he demanded of us was vastly beyond what was expected in our other high school
classes; however, he probably would have been more successful teaching us
American literature if he didn’t spend at least one full class session each week
foaming at the mouth about his Universal Truth. At the time, it was mildly interesting
for me to try to understand what on earth he was talking about, something to do
with Plato, the Roman Catholic Church, and the triumph of the individual, but it
was evident after a few minutes of listening that he refused to incorporate any
ideas that had entered Western Civilization in the past century such that he
made no good sense. It was like
trying to talk to someone from the 19th Century about genetics or robotics or communism.
Occasionally, I would point out obvious problems with his philosophy, he
would respond with ad hominem attacks, declare that the world has gone to hell
since the Second Vatican Council, and then continue his rant in his own special
combination of Greek and Latin peppered with some choice words from the
venerable Anglo-Saxon. I really like him. Even though the most
interaction I had with him was as one of many students at whom he hurled abuse
and obscenities, he was loveable in his own way. I think what made his diatribes only
mildly annoying was that he accepted that his nonsense was his nonsense, that
nobody else, certainly not any of his students, were likely to adopt his
philosophy or worldview. If he believed that his was a mission to convert us, his lectures would have been
insufferable.
I don’t think it is effective teaching to try to make converts to your own cause or belief system, and I think my pedagogy is too far into the neighborhood of Friere to support using my classroom as a tool of indoctrination. You just don’t ram it down kids’ throats like that.
The point of creating cognitive conflict is to foster growth and learning. When you engage in a campaign of indoctrination, you supplant one pre-existing notion of the world with another, the teacher’s. The
point is to disrupt equilibrium so that the student herself will generate a new
point of equilibrium. Our metacognitive goal is to teach students how to generate those new points of
equilibrium whenever they acquire new contradictory information, to become
comfortable with the process, to become skillful with the process, because we
cannot even anticipate the information that they will have to adapt over the
course of their adult lives. There is not a teacher alive who can say, “You should think and believe what I tell
you, and it will serve you well the rest of your life.” Culture changes. Ideas change.
We innovate and evolve as a society. For heaven’s sake, my mother studied
stenography for two years in high school! And she will probably live another
twenty years! When she graduated from high school, the Civil Rights Amendment hadn’t been passed.
It is hubris for us to believe as teachers that we know what the students need to know or how they should look at the world.
One thing our American public school system does well is to help generate adults who are among the most creative and innovative in the world. Americans don’t just adapt well to change. We drive the change. We have the new ideas that solve problems. I want to be part of a system of education that nurtures the next generation of world-class leadership, of world-class thinkers. I don’t want to mold students to think like me.
They can do better than me.
The kids get “bored” doing the same thing all the time. I believe the students have their own interests that they would like to explore in creative ways. It’s not about the teacher. It’s about the kids. That’s why it’s called
Student-Centered Learning.
Everything we teach ought not to be so deep and heavy. Kids have their own emotional issues
going on outside of school. In grades 7 – 12, there are a lot of hormones that make life difficult enough. I’m not saying don’t teach about the “big issues.” I’m saying that as important it is to create an educated citizenry who can make informed choices about global issues, it is important that the kids have an opportunity to study
topics of individual interest when they are at school so that learning is personally relevant. I was
interested in warfare when I was in high school, so in my second year of chemistry, I did a term project on chemical weapons. My friend did her project on correlating breast cancer to water pollution created by the steel industry, which you can say is a “big issue.” She chose the topic not because it was on a list of teacher-generated choices, but because her aunt was recently undergone a mastectomy. Some other kid did his project on toilet paper, not a “big issue,” but it was relevant enough to him to hold his attention for weeks at a time. Who am I to tell some kid that toilet paper isn’t important? Don’t I use toilet paper?
Still, in everyday classroom management, we must shape the morals of our students as we demand that they conform to certain behaviors. Ohio Revised Code Section 3313.601 states explicitly,
“No board of education shall prohibit a classroom teacher from
providing in the teacher’s classroom reasonable periods of time for activities
of a moral, philosophical, or patriotic theme. No pupil shall be required to
participate in such activities if they are contrary to the religious convictions
of the pupil or the pupil’s parents or guardians. No board of education of a
school district shall adopt any policy or rule respecting or promoting an
establishment of religion or prohibiting any pupil from the free, individual,
and voluntary exercise or expression of the pupil’s religious beliefs in any
primary or secondary school.
( http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3313)
which is a departure from prior state policy which forbade public school teachers from
instructing students in religion, philosophy, or morals.
ORC 3313.602 was passed by the same congress that implemented 3313.601 in
2002, during the height of the post-9-11/George Bush mania. Along with
directions about the Pledge of Allegiance (that was further amended,
in the 128th Congress to ensure that nobody tried to omit the
words “under God” from their recitation of the Pledge in a bill sponsored by
Tom Niehaus, the enemy of Ohio teachers who led Republicans championing Senate
Bill 5), ORC 3313.601 states,
“In the development of its graded course of study, the board of
education of each city and exempted village school district and the governing
board of each educational service center shall ensure that the principles of
democracy and ethics are emphasized and discussed wherever appropriate in all
parts of the curriculum for grades kindergarten through
twelve.
Each city, local, exempted village, and joint
vocational school board shall adopt policies that encourage all certificated and
noncertificated employees to be cognizant of their roles in instilling ethical
principles and democratic ideals in all district
pupils.”
(see also: http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/analysis.cfm?ID=128_HB_1&ACT=Veto%20Message&hf=analyses128/09-hb1-128.htm
It would seem to me that pretty much leaves it wide open for
teachers, even math teachers, to present religious-based instruction as long as
you call it “moral instruction”or “ethics.” Basically, it sounds to me like the
Ohio legislature combined with former Governor Bob Taft declared it both legal and
appropriate to teach religious-based views regarding ethics, behavior, duty to
your countrymen, just so long as one does not teach religious rituals or other
aspects of religion not related to ethics or behavior. It
sounds like is legal for teachers to lead prayer as well.
To my knowledge, neither of these laws have been challenged in the
courts. It seems consistent with
existing legal opinions regarding prayers before football games,
etc.
I foresee two problems for my career as a public school teacher
with this law.
First of all, to my knowledge, neither of these laws has yet
been challenged in the courts as to where the “line” is exactly where teachers
exercising this provision for religious education in Ohio public schools becomes
an abridgement of the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. If federal courts decide that Ohio law
is in violation of the U.S. Constitution, what will that mean for teachers? We will have an absence of any written
policy. I can say that I plan to cross that bridge when I come to it; however, I have a propensity for upsetting
people with things I say in ways I don’t think are possible to anticipate.
For example, in my Real Analysis class yesterday, I described my
opinion on the insignificance of a particular value of a sequence and its limit
by comparing it to a reasonable margin of error when plotting a target for an
aerial bombing mission. My professor and classmates were offended by the violence implied by my example of
a military application. I found their response unexpected and bizarre, as well as idiosyncratic, since our
Calculus textbook frequently has us plotting trajectories for shotguns, cannons,
catapults and other weapons, and we talk about military applications in many of
my other classes. Calculus is the backbone of rocketry, so where these people get off thinking that math is in no
way related to blowing things up, like I am the first person to have that thought cross her mind, I cannot understand.
Another example, at a Girl Scout Service Unit meeting in November where Leaders were asked to go around the room and share what our troops were doing for the holidays, I shared that my troop was commemorating
World AIDS Day. I had no inkling that could have caused such a controversy in the 21stCentury. You would have thought I had said that we were planning to worship Satan.
The other women insisted that I could not mention AIDS in front of children, even though I was using the activities that were suggested on the Girl Scout website and World AIDS Day is officially recognized by Girl Scouts. I came away from that meeting shocked by how ignorant and horrible so-called normal people can be, and when everything was said and done, the Girl Scout office made me get signed permission slips from all of the girls’ parents saying that they were aware that AIDS was being discussed.
Only one parent opted out, not for the reasons that the other Girl Scout Leaders objected, but for an even more shocking reason. She said that she was completely okay with discussing AIDS, as long as I didn’t mention that people die from AIDS, because she did not believe that death should be mentioned in the presence of
children.
I really don’t understand what goes on inside parents’ heads. I really, really don’t. And I’m pretty sure that someday, I am going to say something that is going to upset someone’s parents.
And I don’t want to be the teacher embroiled in a lawsuit because I said something, having no way of anticipating the shitstorm it would bring down on my school. I don’t want to be the teacher who is at the center of the drama when ORC 3313 is challenged. But I could be. So I need to belong to a union.
Secondly, I have taught Sunday school, and I hate it. I don’t like teaching religion, so I don’t understand why, no matter what church I go to, they always seem to want me to teach Sunday school. You would think they would ask me to stop coming because I tell the kids stuff like the great flood of the Noah’s Ark story never really happened, that Jonah was never really swallowed by a whale because those sorts of things don’t happen in real life, but I suspect as I am working for free, heresy isn’t an issue. It’s not like I am going to get in trouble because I love teaching religion so much that I can’t stop myself from doing it in a public school. But I don’t want to teach “ethics” either, “ethics” being just a code word Republicans came up with because they definitely were not going to get away with putting “Christianity”into state law. If I have to teach ethics, it’s going to be Christian ethics, and I don’t know how to do that and“leave Jesus out of it.” I don’t know that I would want to try.
If some kid at school gives me lip when I tell him to respect his elders, what do I say? It’s going to be, “Because I said so, and if you do it again, you’re getting a detention.” I have no interest in making up some whole secular guide to why-you-should-do-this and why-you-shouldn’t-do-that. Because we don’t need it. That is the job of religion, to teach morality. If parents want to teach their children morality, I will be glad to back up what they are teaching at home if they want to get me on board with their program. I’m just happy for parents to teach morality at all!
Opening it up to say that it is the schools’ job to teach morality and then to expect us not to bring religious into it is absurd. If parents are not going to see to it that their children are instructed in morality outside of school, what am I going to do with them in school, when I am under gag rule?
It is one thing to tell students what they may or may not do at school,
to have rules. It is another thing entirely to teach them why they should do something or not do something. That is another animal. It is much more complex. I am comfortable keeping it on the level of “because you will go to jail,” because frequently, the students you have in high school who are causing the most behavioral problems
fall into one of two categories: they are not developmentally capable of understanding morality at a level
of maturity much beyond “because you will go to jail” or they are well aware and
fully appreciate why they should behave morally, and they choose not to. Instruction in ethics is not going to be
effective at modifying the behavior of either cohort.
I have a hard enough time trying to teach my own kids morality with the assistance of church and Christian school. Now I’m expected to teach morality to a bunch of kids who don’t go to church whose parents are models of what-not-to-do? I am very happy to reinforce the lessons parents are teaching at home
when the parents are teaching morality. I understand and sympathize with how difficult it can be.
But in real life, I have had parents of totally unruly teenagers engaging in all sorts of inappropriate behavior, get in my face about who am I to tell them not to raise their child to act like that? Who am I to tell their child to behave differently, they want to know, when that is the behavior their parents support?
The answer to the question is obviously, “I am an adult who is charged with training your child how to behave, and your child is in my care and custody,” but in real life, you don’t say anything to those parents.
You don’t mention their recent incarceration for methamphetamine and ask who are they to try to tell you how to behave? You get away from them before it gets violent.
And I have had parents threaten me with violence, including in front of the children. I can deal with it, but I can’t tell you I am going to be successful training those young people to rise to the call of their civic duty when they are instructed to say, “My momma told me to tell you that she is gonna come down to the school and kick your ass if you ever ask me that again,” in response to the query, “Where is your homework?”
which I heard during one of my observations in a public high school. I wonder, did her mother believe that biology homework fell into the category of “No pupil shall be required to participate in such activities if they are contrary to the religious convictions of the pupil or the pupil’s parents or guardians?” The teacher ignored her remark, then the student spent the rest of the period talking with her girlfriend about other acts of violence that her mother was going to inflict upon the teacher, including pulling his hair out.
That doesn’t happen to me often. I usually get backtalk once. Then Momma actually does show up to kick
my ass. I’m not intimidated by the threat of violence, but I am pretty sure that I am not allowed to kick Momma’s
ass, so someone else is going to have to handle that one. Lucky for me, most of the larger public schools seem to have armed police officers in the halls, and I guess that is what they get paid for.
I know I have a lot of that to look forward to. The last year my aunt taught in a public school in Ohio, in the 1990s, she had an army of parents who would come to the school every Friday and stand outside of her classroom window, which was on the first floor, and yell at her. The kids were in fourth
grade. I cannot think of anything more damaging to classroom management than several parents of students standing outside the classroom yelling at the teacher. Her principal had no control over the
situation. I don’t know why she never called the police, but my aunt was not intimidated by anyone.
When she taught at a public high school back in the day, she had two separate students try to stab her in unrelated incidents, and she routinely confiscated guns. Apparently, this was not considered a big deal in the 1970s, because she kept the weapons in her desk drawer and returned them at the end of the year to any student who didn’t drop out.
Like I said, I can deal with it. I’m just saying.
No promises on how civic-minded these youth grow up to be or how thoroughly they embrace duty of democracy. Or how long they stay out of jail.
I don’t feel like I am on a Christian mission to “save” kids, their souls or otherwise. You always see these people on television when they are talking about inner city schools, talking about how we need to“save” our kids.
Well, I can’t save anybody.
That is God’s job. Only through God can we be saved, and only through his grace.
God can use us how He wants to, according to His plan, but that’s all on Him. Because I know this, I don’t
feel responsible for sneaking religious instruction under the radar to public school students. That’s not the
job public school teachers are being paid to do. If I am suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to start putting Bibles into kids’ hands, like I said, church is begging for Sunday school teachers.
Since I am not interested in teaching religion, I think I will do well to keep the option of teaching public school open for now. I want to belong to a union to represent me when I get in trouble next World AIDS Day, and
there are more jobs available teaching public school. It is important to me to be in a school with a strong culture of supporting teaching and learning. It is important to me to be in a school with a principal who takes an
active role, but who will also support me and listen to me on matters related to student discipline. I think my expectations for student behavior are reasonable for a school with a functioning culture of learning, such that when students misbehave, they are taught that it is not acceptable. I enjoy teaching children how to behave, and I am especially interested in working with students with behavioral disorders, but I am not interested in teaching ethics.
there are more jobs available teaching public school. It is important to me to be in a school with a strong culture of supporting teaching and learning. It is important to me to be in a school with a principal who takes an
active role, but who will also support me and listen to me on matters related to student discipline. I think my expectations for student behavior are reasonable for a school with a functioning culture of learning, such that when students misbehave, they are taught that it is not acceptable. I enjoy teaching children how to behave, and I am especially interested in working with students with behavioral disorders, but I am not interested in teaching ethics.