Saturday, November 08, 2008

Can't You Just Let 4th Graders Be Kids?

When I am king, I will make it illegal for teachers to teach or discuss politics with children until they are seniors in high school. This just shows you how some teachers literally put themselves, the teachers union and their paychecks ahead of the kids and have no problems pimping out their ideology instead of teaching the children skills that will help them in life;



Can you socialists just let kids be kids? Can you?

My god, the brainwashed kid trying to give an answer why he likes Obama? He can't answer why he likes him! He's just trying to placate the teacher!...Of course, I don't get all that much of a different response from full grown adult Obama supporters, but, eh, hope, change, puppies and ponies. What do I care?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

That brings up old memories... I had moronic teachers who tried to brainwash children, too. I guess it's a problem all over the world.

When I was a child, I obviously didn't understand how I was getting brainwashed by the teachers. It took me a couple of years and college economics to cure myself from all the bullshit that my brain was fed with.

There are so many kids out there who will never think independently again. Their lifes are wasted. It's a tragedy.

Captain Capitalism said...

Correct. Though I still believe to this day each person has a choice to decide or choose whther they believe the BS or follow along, I'm thinking most kids today are opting to go the route of conformity which makes them lesser people than the true individualists.

That being said, a better use of the word bullshit does not exist.

Good to see you Swiss cursing appropriately.

Cpt.

Hot Sam said...

This is absolutely unbelievable. Not unbelievable that it happened, but unbelievable that this teacher hasn't been fired.

She has some incredible nerve to say that she doesn't "brow beat" children for their beliefs after we just saw her demonstrating disapproval for the "McCain supporters" with both her verbal response and body language. And every "Obama supporter" was greeted with a smile and a nod of approval.

None of these kids have a mature intellect to understand the issues or the character of the candidates, and apparently neither does this teacher.

And then she deliberately frightens a child whose father is in the military that he will be "staying in the Army for 100 years."

Where does this teacher work? Where did the video come from?

Hot Sam said...

After a little detective work, I found her.

Diantha Harris is a teacher at Mary McArthur Elementary School in Fayetteville right outside Fort Bragg North Carolina.

After bloggers posted links to the school superintendent's website, he issued this response:

http://www.ccs.k12.nc.us/

I will not trust their "personnel" process until she's on the unemployment line.

Warning: when I went to the Mary McArthur website and clicked on the faculty directory, it killed my browser every time.

And I disagree with the super: there is no appropriate way to have a political discussion with 4th or 5th graders about politics. You can discuss democratic processes in a social studies class, but any discussion about the candidates, their positions, and who the students prefer is fraught with peril. What kind of informed opinion does a fifth grader have?

Any discussion of sex, politics, or religion should be banned from elementary school education. Federal employees are prohibited by the Hatch Act from wearing political buttons, electioneering, or soliciting campaign contributions. The act should be extended to public schools as well.

As a Dean, I had to counsel a faculty member and we nearly fired her for doing something very similar in a college classroom. Needless to say, the subject was not Political Science and the candidate she supported was the same as Ms. Harris.

Anonymous said...

In the land of chocolate and cows it's very important to be able to recognize what real bullshit looks like. ;-)

Anonymous said...

I'd like to start by saying any generalization like "the majority of teachers do not teach because of something noble..." do not have any constructive value whatsoever. I left a profession in architecture to teach middle school english, and although there are many teachers who may not have noble reasons for teaching, there's a greater systemic problems, especially within public school, that prohibit any drastic improvements.

Furthermore, I think to say that kids do not have ANY capacity to have a discussion about sex, politics, or religion is not giving them enough credit. I proudly engaged with them on a quick discussion on the elecion, not to push for Obama [which I voted for], but to bring to the surface that the reasons they had for supporting Obama were for the most part baseless [the majority are latino/african-american] and that they need to inform themselves to eventually support a candidate, not because of their race, but because of their views on the issues. Addressing politics in the classroom does becom detrimental when the teacher has a bias toward a candidate, but I do believe that even kids in elementary can benefit from trying to look at these issues from a critical/objective perspective.

Anonymous said...

boortz was talking about this yesterday. The teacher in question is a MATH teacher. What the topic of conversation has to do with math, is beyond me....