Teachers — Educate or Advocate?
This story from San Francisco illustrates some of the issues about the role of teachers in public schools.
San Francisco teacher defends lesson plan calling Donald Trump racist, sexist — http://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-francisco-teacher-lesson-plan-donald-trump-racist-sexist/
To what extent do teachers have the right to bring their personal views into the High School classroom?
This teacher made up her own lesson plan, not approved by anyone or any authority. The School District said it had no part in it. But, when the news came out, the teachers’ union and the National Education Association advertised it in their media outlets.
A Republican spokesperson was quoted: “It’s boiling down the results [of the election] . . . into two words: racist and sexist . . . Some of these students probably have parents who voted for Donald Trump. How are those students going to feel . . . ?
This opens up questions in our neck-of-the-woods.
Do teachers have “autonomy” or license to create their own lesson plans?
Do teachers use lesson plans that might be controversial that are provided by the teacher union? See this controversy — http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bctf-pulls-controversial-online-counter-military-recruitment-posters-1.3850942
Should teacher unions produce lesson plans? And why do they fight tooth-and-nail during collective bargaining for increasing power over professional development? See these obvious left-slanted PD Math workshops last month in BC:
* Social Justice as a platform for problem solving — Social justice lies at the intersection of school mathematics and students lives. In this workshop we will explore initiatives to engage students with social justice issues through problem solving . . .
* Social Justice and mathematics: Beyond the equation— . . . mathematics through a social justice lens. Social justice, in general, is about equity and the development of a critical mindset that can identify inequities is an essential competency of an educated and democratic citizen . . . mathematics may be one of the most accessible and productive ways to develop this critical mindedness. I will draw on and share numerous mathematical inquiry activities and general approaches to mathematics teaching supporting the revised curriculum and its move toward a socially-relevant education.
I think we urgently need to reconfigure education so that parents can choose between activist progressive schools and those that educate, not advocate! Parents should be at the forefront, with transparent information available, to sort out what they want for their children and be able to avoid discredited, crappy, and obviously political agendas if they don’t want them!
[ ssubmitted to Educhatter blog on topic — ‘Crap-Detection’ in Teaching: How Do We Separate the Good ‘Brain Science’ from the Bad? ]