School House Rock: Propaganda Edition
There has been a push over the past few years to establish a more multicultural curriculum in many colleges across the country. USF is no exception in this trend. A recent article on CNN.com discussed a similar move on the part of state legislatures to encourage more international course material in public schools. Critics suggest that this “politically correct” push could further overload history teachers who already have trouble finding time to teach American history.
Teachers are once again being given a new set of standards and a list of items that must be implanted into the young's collective brains before the Big Brain Dump of summer. Whatever happened to the good old days? When teachers could contrive their own lessons and mold young minds so that by the end of class they were all standing on their desks shouting "O Captain! My captain!!" Those days are long gone and perhaps only existed in the minds of a few screenwriters and ambitious education majors.
Teachers have been the soldiers of governmental propaganda for the past 100 years. For a few years when my siblings and I were young we were home schooled. It was less the fact that my parents were kooky (they were) and more of a fact that Mom just wanted us around. That fact matters not, it's just whenever the subject of home-schooling is brought up some excuse or reason is needed. You just heard mine. Anyhow, my mother decided to teach us from a old history book. Published around the 1890s, it was quite an interesting read. Mom tried to teach us from the book for a time but it soon became a massive collection of epic battles with Indians and the bravery of notable unknowns in obscure Civil War battles. Looking at the book years later it is easy to see what was going on. It was revisionist history before the term was even invented. I was astounded at the misgivings, racism, and blatant opinion presented as fact for the young Laura Ingalls-Wilder era child. It was the Chicken Soup for the Civil War Veteran's Soul.
On a hilarious note, my mother now teaches history to 'gifted' fifth graders in a beach community here in Florida. Recently, she showed me some of her curriculum that was issued to her from the state. There are entire chapters about the Nation of Israel circa 6,000BC - 5AD. Yep, that is prime Bible story time. Even being married to a preacher, she questioned the validity of such blatant welding of church and state. Sure enough, within a week of reaching the Ten Commandments section of 'history' she was getting letters and phone calls.
So what is the point? Well, unless you have a Professor John Keating or Steven Ambrose teaching your elementary class, you are just shit out of luck. History's role as a subject has unquestionable merit. Even so, when schools recieve their funds from the feds or the state there are certain sacrifices that must be made. Teaching what someone else deems as important definitely falls into that category. That isn't to say that a bold teacher can't get away with sneaking a lesson or two into the school year about something relevant like say... slavery's roots. However, the chances that that teacher will return in the next year may be greatly diminished.
Teachers are once again being given a new set of standards and a list of items that must be implanted into the young's collective brains before the Big Brain Dump of summer. Whatever happened to the good old days? When teachers could contrive their own lessons and mold young minds so that by the end of class they were all standing on their desks shouting "O Captain! My captain!!" Those days are long gone and perhaps only existed in the minds of a few screenwriters and ambitious education majors.
Teachers have been the soldiers of governmental propaganda for the past 100 years. For a few years when my siblings and I were young we were home schooled. It was less the fact that my parents were kooky (they were) and more of a fact that Mom just wanted us around. That fact matters not, it's just whenever the subject of home-schooling is brought up some excuse or reason is needed. You just heard mine. Anyhow, my mother decided to teach us from a old history book. Published around the 1890s, it was quite an interesting read. Mom tried to teach us from the book for a time but it soon became a massive collection of epic battles with Indians and the bravery of notable unknowns in obscure Civil War battles. Looking at the book years later it is easy to see what was going on. It was revisionist history before the term was even invented. I was astounded at the misgivings, racism, and blatant opinion presented as fact for the young Laura Ingalls-Wilder era child. It was the Chicken Soup for the Civil War Veteran's Soul.
On a hilarious note, my mother now teaches history to 'gifted' fifth graders in a beach community here in Florida. Recently, she showed me some of her curriculum that was issued to her from the state. There are entire chapters about the Nation of Israel circa 6,000BC - 5AD. Yep, that is prime Bible story time. Even being married to a preacher, she questioned the validity of such blatant welding of church and state. Sure enough, within a week of reaching the Ten Commandments section of 'history' she was getting letters and phone calls.
So what is the point? Well, unless you have a Professor John Keating or Steven Ambrose teaching your elementary class, you are just shit out of luck. History's role as a subject has unquestionable merit. Even so, when schools recieve their funds from the feds or the state there are certain sacrifices that must be made. Teaching what someone else deems as important definitely falls into that category. That isn't to say that a bold teacher can't get away with sneaking a lesson or two into the school year about something relevant like say... slavery's roots. However, the chances that that teacher will return in the next year may be greatly diminished.
posted by Ben at 11:55 PM
1 Comments:
remeber Joiner? damn, she seemed to me to always test the wtares. i remeber her being farely liberal, but also being able to actually TEACH. did you guys get "Monk Day?" We entered a darkened candle lit classroom with "You are not allowed to talk during class today" sign on the board, we broke up into groups of 4-5 and moved about different sations in the room performing tasks that monks in medieval times would have had to do.
Joiner would always bring in supplemental stuff like art books, and we once spent an entire day in awe as she read random passages from a book all about the Black Death, it was "Black Death Day"
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