Are American Teachers Failing their Students?
I know I have some school teachers that read this blog so I am particularly interested in what they have to say about this LA Times article about teachers in a Los Angeles high school doing everything possible to ban a JROTC program at the school. Is this acceptable behavior for teachers in America’s high schools today?:
Last year, Jesse, the 11th-grader, a master sergeant and JROTC flag detail commander, was the only student wearing a JROTC uniform in Martha Guerrero’s first-period world history class. He said that Guerrero, who often wears a "War is not the answer" T-shirt and has a flag of the revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara hanging in her classroom, sometimes asked him pointed questions in the middle of class.
"Jesse, are you going to go to Iraq and die?" she asked. "Why are you wearing a uniform? Aren’t you embarrassed?" Jesse said he felt singled out by the question and told his JROTC instructor about it.
A Che Guevara flag hanging in a high school classroom!? The Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom is not okay, but it is okay to have a Che Guevara flag? Attacking a student for wearing a JROTC uniform? How is this woman still employed?
This is what another teacher was doing:
 Lopez, the social studies teacher, keeps a stack of glossy brochures propped on his chalkboard titled "Don’t Die in a Dead-End Job! Information for Young People Considering the Military" that show a soldier saluting flag-draped coffins. Prominent on his wall is a poster called "Ten Points to Consider Before You Sign a Military Enlistment Agreement." "I want to see more Latinos go to college," Lopez said.
I got news for teacher Lopez, I am willing to bet that the US military is able to get a higher percentage of Latinos a college education than what their high school is able to do. Is it any wonder why this high school can’t get many Latinos through college when they are indoctrinating them with the teachings of Che Guevara?Â
I'd be interested to know the ages of those two teachers.
I am guessing boldly, but I believe that kind of thing is more common with the Vietnam Era teachers than those who grew up with no experience with that generation.
That being said, I am sure there are plenty of teachers of all ages who have the same thoughts in their heads and a certain percentage of them that put those thoughts on clear display and action in their classrooms.
I am a little suprised they are so bold – because the teaching profession is obsessed, like many others in American society, with being sued.
Liability liability liability is all you hear.
You have to take out an insurance policy before they will let you student-teach as I am now…
But, the teaching major is much like the journalism major which is much like the humanities overall —- left leaning and wanting to make America better by breaking it down and starting over.
The military and religion are two prime targets that are either openly or covertly deconstructed in our schools by a fair percentage of teachers.
I know before 9/11 – it was fairly common for schools to refuse to allow military recruiters to come to the school for career day and would only allow colleges or businesses. And schools would refuse to give mailing address or contact information to military recruiters though they would give the same to colleges.
What is bitterly funny to me is that —- well —- yes — a Che Guevara flag and t-shirts mocking "Bush's War" would be acceptable in many schools –
— but a Christian cross or image of Jesus would get you fired in many places and would get you in trouble any public school in the land.
In my classes, I avoid political topics like the plague.
I do it for pedagogical reasons:
I have never been in a class yet in secondary school – were a hot button issue was brought up —- were real discussion took place.
Most of the time in college, contemporary hot button issues deginerated immediately into "fight for my team no matter what" "debating" that closed minds rather than opened them.
They were most often a complete waste of time.
I want my kids to think analytically – not learn how to shout over the other person…
So, I don't touch Bush, the war in Iraq, aborition vs choice, religion in schools, any thing like that.
If I can't put it into a historical context somewhat removed from our present lives – and I see it is going to get many of the students riled up – I pick something else to talk about.
If students begin getting into such a (non)debate, I ask this question before forcing the conversation to move on:
"When was the last time an American president won an election with 70% of the vote?
What percentage of people think abortion is bad? What percentage think it is a woman's right of choice? What percentage of people are in favor of the death penalty? What percentage oppose it?
If this or that issue has the country divided roughly together – say – even 40-60% – it should be obvious there are more than one arguments that can be made on any of these topics."
Oh, I thought of this:
I remember some time after the war in Afghanistan began and before Iraq War II had gotten underway — I was watching C-Span.
It was a panel discussion at a big national teacher's conference.
Every member of the panel was against the war. Every one in the crowd of some 50 to 100 teachers were against the war. If there was anybody in the crowd in favor of Bush or the war, they kept their mouths shut.
Right there — any teacher who doesn't have his or her head stuck in their rectum should be able to note a problem:
We teachers are all about diversity – but we have a 100% group think at this conference? Doesn't that tell us something about our own tolerance for other ideas?
Anyway, I was fascinated by one of the themes that came out as several teachers on the panel and in the crowd were saying they had some problems with:
The theme was: How can I get my students to talk openly and thoughtfully about the war, US foreign policy, and other such topics –
– because ——— and this is the crucial part —-
these different teachers described finding that the students did think about these topics – but were afraid to mention their ideas in class.
DING DING DING –
Pray tell what reasons could be behind such fear?!
One of the panel members said something highly profound that touches on education in America today:
She said that teachers needed to find a way to encourage their students to respond in class, whatever their view points might be, and then the teachers could show them why they are wrong — ha ha ha…
She said the last part as if she were throwing in a joke, and the crowd laughed —
—and I said, "Too bad that is exactly what you seek to accomplish in those classes and exactly why the students bite their tounges."
I wrote somewhere in the K-blogsphere comment section recently about a time in the 1980s where I got kicked out of class for complaining about the way my teacher was teaching us about WWII.
It was her presenting a slide show a Japanese teaching visiting for a few days brought with her. It was about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
My class got to see it later than others, and I never even saw the Japanese teacher, but the influence of the images and narrated story on the student body was impressive. People were literally walking the halls like zombies. The halls were dead. A common thing you heard was, "How could we do that to people?"
When the slide show made it to our class, I was walking in the door, and the teacher was handing out a translation of it, and the first slide's caption said, "On blah blah date, the young children of Nagasaki woke up hoping for a quick end to the war."
That was more than I could take, and I told the teacher it was non-sense and why do we only get one view all the time. She said I could either sit down and watch the show when it started or leave. I chose option two, but when I got to the door, she included with it a trip to the detention office and 3 days of afterschool detension where I had to write an essay on the war, and I covered things we never talked about, like the Bataan Death March and so on.
But, even before this slide show came to our school, this teacher was quietly but steadfastly guiding the class along her way of thinking.
I remember well one day, as I was getting more and more discouraged by what she was saying – and what she wasn't saying – that I stopped commenting altogether and just waited for the bells to ring each day
but on this one day, a student finally made her put her cards on the table by asking, "Well, what do you think about those attacks?"
She paused for a minute and then said, "Well, I just think it is a shame the United States is the only nation on earth to have used nuclear weapons on another people."
Fine. That is your opinion, but there are others many people hold, why do you consistently shut those out if students bring them up????
Irony; Jesse should get the ACLU to attack that bitch.
Arrogant teachers like her give us Liberal Leftie Moonbat hags a bad name> 🙂
I got a kick out of this quote from the original story:
"Angered by what he (the JROTC recruiter) saw as bullying of his student, he confronted Guerrero, who apologized to Jesse. She said she wasn't harassing the student. "I just tell them things I know are right or wrong. I stand against war, against JROTC."
Morality is individual and societal values constructed through consensus.
I have little tolerance for teachers who brainwash their students with overt political views, whether those views are right-wing or left-wing. A good teacher does not "tell" students what is "right or wrong" but rather, facilitates thoughtful discussion. There are societal and universal values, but children learn and adopt these values through guided interaction, called "character education," not by lectures and dualistic thinking.
No matter how parents and teachers may try to get kids to believe or hold certain views, all kids grow up and go out into the world and refine their views through experiences. My mom sent my five siblings and me to Catholic schools. Only the one who lives at home still attends Mass regularly. The others are either agnostic or follow another faith.
Shame on that teacher and hooray for that kid.
Oops, forgot to turn off the italics after the quote.
to say that I am not suprised would be a huge lie.
I have delt with teachers like that and while I was doing my student teaching, I had to deal with a few like that. They claim that they love their students, so that they do not want them to die. I can understand it but this teacher went way over the line.
Has she heard of the anti-bullying laws in her state? How about trying to be a professional.
Cab you imagine being the only G.O.P. person in class and listening to garbage like that? Been their and done that.
As for the above Japan lesson. I have never heard of that lesson ever being taught, but if it was. I would do the same thing as the writer above did. I would question every comment and ask them to explain both sides of the argument.
As a teacher, things people like her make me sick. They claim first amentments rights but refuse to allow othes that same right that men have died to protect.
The best teacher I ever had was when I was in college because no one in the class ever knew what he thought. No matter what you believed he would play devil's advocate and challenge your views no matter what they were.
Whenever we would ask him what he personally thought on an issue he would always told us that it was not his job to tell us what to think, it was his job to teach us how to think.
That's an interesting point.
For those of you not in the education racket in the US, bullying is a big theme these days.
I'm fairly new to the world of secondary education in the US, but you run across the theme of combatting bullying a whole lot. It was somewhat surprising given what I could remember from when I was a teen.
And I would think what these teachers we are describing would be what these teachers in the profession would call bullying.
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That was SOP for the lefties when I was in high school during the late 60s.
History will show that the left is wrong again just as it was about communism and Viet Nam.
Have you (the generic you) ever noticed how their being so wrong about communism is never mentioned – unless you listen to AM talk radio???
Funny how that works…
The left has a soft spot for communism. Like a crack addict they just can't give it up.
When I was in college I had a professor who actually believed that communism was a great idea but when challenged on the failure of the Soviet Union he told my class that the Soviets were not practicing real communism and if they had implemented real communism it would have worked.
Everytime communism has failed some where this is what they believe and how they justify to themselves to keep believe it would work.
Yes, I guess they figure they'll shot the right people the next time.
The major flaw of communism is that it is at heart fascist and totalitarian, so that it must always be ruled by a ruthless small cadre, which is a direct contradiction of its basic reason for being.
Well, at least she had a Che Guevara flag! I mean, wsa there anyone ever more anti-war and anti-death penalty than El Che? Only his victims knew for sure…
I saw Paris Hilton with a Che Guevara flag on the other day.
I think even Che's head would explode if he saw that one.
Kind of like what became of the Sundance Film Festival. Hollywood did not have to fear it margializing it by speaking to the non-elite masses. They just had to take it over too…
Not flag but t-shirt
[…] with their efforts to stop military recruiting by attacking and banning recruiters or going after ROTC programs. Remember all the stories of the military not meeting their recruiting numbers a couple years ago? […]
[…] [GI Korea] Are American Teachers Failing their Students? Published: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:25:30 +0000 I know I have some school teachers that read this blog so I am particularly interested in what they have to say about this LA Times article about teachers in a Los Angeles high school doing everything possible to ban a JROTC program at the school.?* Is this acceptable behavior for teachers in America’s high […] Read More… […]
[…] their efforts to stop military recruiting by attacking and banning recruiters or going after ROTC programs. Likewise this has also failed though they continue to attack recruiters. The military has been […]