Under “things I didn’t know, but might have guessed“…
Like the more famous Teach for America, the New York Teaching Fellows program provides an alternate route to state certification for about 1,700 new teachers annually. When I met with a group of the fellows taking a required class at a school of education last summer, we began by discussing education reform, but the conversation soon took a turn, with many recounting one horror story after another from their rocky first year: chaotic classrooms, indifferent administrators, veteran teachers who rarely offered a helping hand. You might expect the required readings for these struggling rookies to contain good practical tips on classroom management, say, or sensible advice on teaching reading to disadvantaged students. Instead, the one book that the fellows had to read in full was Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.
h/t Peter G.
What a pile of steaming crap. No wonder our civilization is dying.
Is Your Children Leftist?
I love the title, since the vast majority of leftists are followers of a script that long ago lost relevance. Combine the twisting of language, meaning and intent and the title becomes even more insightful.
We shouldn’t be surprised though, 50 years’ worth of attack from Marxists has GOT to leave at least some cultural flotsam and jetsam.
This video wraps it up in a bow:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k6KUDv1wzraWhwlBt1
Nice, BB, seen it before. I suppose this type of information is “too sensitive” to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, W5 or anywhere else, eh. After all, this is “old news”, no longer relevant to anyone, what with the planet dying, the economic system melting down and whatever the panic-of-the-day is in the MSM.
Regarding today’s education a video with Charlotte Iserbyt (a former senior advisor in the U.S. Department of Educaton). She has written the “deliberate dumbing down of America” — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDyDtYy2I0M
But, LindaL, that woman is old and wrinkly (and probably independent-minded). Why would she have anything interesting or useful to say in today’s modern, progressive society? Surely she’s a throwback to the old days when everything was evil. /sarc off
I have just discovered that you can download a PDF of Iserbyt’s book here: http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
This article just goes to show that what is really required is the full privatization of ALL education, from the universities right down to the kindergartens. The issue is the same as the separation of church and state. If one private education provider were to start utilizing bad teaching methods or “pedagogies”, parents can vote with their dollars and choose another one. Competition will enable the best teaching methods to win out. This option is denied the victimized children in public schools.
A few decades ago, it was the phony “look-say” or “whole-word” reading methods which took the place of phonics that brought down literacy standards in public schools (which, depending on who you believe, continue to this day). Now, apparently, stuff like the “pedagogy of the oppressed” is continuing the assault on proper education, including politicizing grade fours (as per the linked article). Among other things, its intention is to instill feelings of guilt in the students regarding the allegedly “oppressed” peoples of the world (some are, of course, although not necessarily in the way the Marxists would have us believe, and of course far more people have been oppressed by Marxists in the past century than by anyone else). Meanwhile, the Marxists themselves consider guilt feelings to be “bourgeois” and a useful tool for obtaining compliance (Ayn Rand’s article about the devastating impact of unearned guilt feelings on the individual is worth a re-read).
We all know how the universities are full of Marxists, and apparently the law schools are too (you can even read some Supreme Court of Canada judgments to find nonsense in this vein, particularly those dealing with “discrimination” law). And of course the phony “human rights commissions” are full of these vermin. All of these peddlers of a false philosophy are maliciously and deliberately orchestrating the destruction of civilized, capitalist society.
The only irony is that the Marxists themselves will likely suffer as much as anyone else from the failing economic production, and possibly from the more murderous among their own numbers. Familiarity breeds contempt: there was no bourgeois guilt to be found in the bloodthirsty savagery of Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot.
I sort of find it somewhat ironic, looking back at my childhood school years from the mid ’60’s to the late ’70’s, that the message of the day was to question the “man”. To challenge the “man”. Not necessarily taught from the classroom, but from the media from news reporting to commentaries.
Now it seems those who expounded those ideas, are now the “man” and we are not allowed to question and challenge.
That’s how I see it.
Please … don’t get me started. Courage, common sense, and caring, truly caring, for the well-being of our children have flown out the window, all because the leftards have absolutely no understanding of human nature. They think we’re all born good and that if left to our own devices, everything will be OK. How wrong they are.
Discipline, either self- or imposed by teachers and administrators,is a thing of the past: Self-expression and the students’ creativity are paramount.
The end result? Very little learning and absolute chaos — plus, a lot of people get hurt.
Now it seems those who expounded those ideas, are now the “man” and we are not allowed to question and challenge.
“Progressives” ironically live in the past. Their self-perceived moral authority actually hurts modern societies. Then again, thou shalt not bite the hand that feeds you, and sometimes you’re in too deep to be able to make a change (financially or ideologically).
It’s telling that most rail against “the establishment” in a way that is quite a bit more severe than what they “feel” they themselves were “subjected to”. They never actually grew up, as others have observed.
Raise the voting age to 25.
The tag line is a clever reprise of GWB’s misspeak “…is our children learning?”
I think it’s a gentle reminder that all is not exactly perfect left of centre.
with many recounting one horror story after another from their rocky first year: chaotic classrooms, indifferent administrators, veteran teachers who rarely offered a helping hand.
Um, this is news? Geez, I remember my parents reading Up the Down Staircase in the early 60’s, and howling over the stories of rookie teachers dealing with, IIRC, chaotic classrooms, indifferent administrators (complaints were often met with the response “Let it be a challenge to you”), and veteran teachers who rarely offered a helping hand.
The book did, however, offer the best ever excuse for not turning in your homework: “My dog peed on it”.
Public Education is nothing short of CHILD ABUSE!
the left has worked very hard to get rid of god. without god you get the downward spiral we have been in. by the way allah is not god.
I remember reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire in a graduate studies program for my masters in adult education. I didn’t see its relevance then and I still can’t see its relevance (I guess leftists would just call me an uneducated redneck since I will never believe what they do!). Brazil is not Canada or the US – the opportunities abound in Canada and the US in spite of what the nay sayers and the promoters of victim hood will have you believe. However those opportunities will never be realized if our school systems continue to serve up pap to students and fail to set high standards for performance. Ontario is going down the path that all high schools students will graduate (to improve high school graduation rates – well this is one way to do it, however I have to wonder how much thought was ever given to setting higher standards) and teachers are instructed to give students multiple chances to do so, from handing in assignments late, to getting to take exams over and over and over again to dumbing down the curriculum. Yeah that’s going to make Canada a top performing country.
I remember another of these “classic” texts of modern Leftyism, “Small Is Beautiful”. I still have a copy kicking around somewhere, I think. Probably in my mum’s basement.
Anyway, after reading the thing and discussing it with the prof who just adored it (this was about 1978ish), we started talking about the effect the “small is beautiful” model would have on pollution. Which was obviously that it would make it worse.
You have a bunch of little factories with inexpensive pollution control equipment removing 90% of contaminants, producing the same output as one big-ass factory with mega pollution controls removing 95%+. More money equals better stuff, right? You can’t make the little factories buy the mega-expensive control equipment because they can’t make a buck. Concentration of capital has its uses, that’s why people do it, right?
To me at like 19 or 20 years old, this was a no brainer. The prof was surprised. Hadn’t thought of it. Don’t know if I changed his mind or not, but he sure shut up and started thinking about it real hard, and we didn’t hear about Small Is Beautiful again for the rest of the semester.
This teaching thing seems the same to me. The people involved haven’t considered the functional aspects of their ideology. The -students- go out into the world and discover their training was crap the first day, but the Gray Eminences of the profession carry on in blissful isolation.
Maybe if every p1ssed off new grad from teacher’s college sued for a refund it would get somebody’s attention?
Excellent Reads: All by John Taylor Gatto
-Dumbing us down
-The underground history of American Education.
-Weapons of Mass instruction.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, I learned in Teacher’s College was in the least helpful to actually being a successful educator in the classroom.
I learned only what DEFINITELY not to do and teach. There was very little openness to real discussion or debate with my fellow-students who’d been thoroughly brainwashed by the leftards who “educated” them. I was grateful that I’d come up through the public system before it had become totally contaminated and had, thankfully, had some “subversive” teachers who wouldn’t be allowed in today’s classrooms.
Public “education” today is simply leftard propaganda and indoctrination and the dolts — professors, teachers, students — are too brainwashed to recognize it for what it is.
Our poor kids. And, poor us when the full “flowering” of this education system is released into society. Some of us will want to head for the hills, the only problem being, where are the hills anymore? (One gains a new appreciation for the Desert Fathers and Mothers and the Catacombs.)
Maureen;
Since Politicans got to where they are by following the least route of resistance. They now believe that this is the way to success.
Criminals are just sick. Education is for propaganda & indoctrination. So many where taking their kids out of school in England from these swamps of socialism to homeschool. They have made it illegal.
Whicj shows their true goals in a nut shell.
I totally agree with batb, Revnant Dream, and others here, who see the public education systems of this country as, essentially, a lost cause, re providing an authentic education for our children.
In that regard, people should be aware of the Ethics and Religious Culture program, the mandatory ethics course, that’s being foisted on all pre post-secondary students in Quebec. Although more than two thirds (69%) of Quebecers agree that parents should have a choice between denominational religious instruction and the new Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) program, the Quebec government has adamantly refused to allow parental choice around this issue: no exemptions are allowed—not even, I believe, for religious or other private schools, or for home schoolers.
This kind of rigidity and illiberal attempt to indoctrinate kids in the lefty mindset is all too prevalent in the public education systems of this country. There will be a trial in Drummondville on May 11th challenging the constitutionality of the mandatory aspect of this program and the fact that NO exemptions are being allowed. Whatever the outcome, it’s likely that this case will go all the way to the Supreme Court. If it’s lost, parents will have even less control over the educa . . . I mean, indoctrination of their children than they already have.
Our public schools are fast becoming politically correct gulags: dissenters will be punished. (Actually teaching the 3 Rs to mastery and good citizenship? Fergeddaboutit!)
i lost my kid where or where is the damn child?