Slight political rant ahead
Sep. 4th, 2009 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charliesmumOn Facebook there is a poll about the whole "Obama making a speech to the nation's children" and whether or not one agrees with this. Currently the majority votes 'no' on the speech, and I don't understand why.
I looked up the suggested questions/activities and they are all very innocuous. Well, here's an exerpt from the 7-12 age group:
Conduct a “quick write” or “think/pair/share” activity with students. (In the latter activity, students spend a few minutes thinking and writing about the question. Next, each student is paired with another student to discuss. Finally, the students share their ideas with the class as a whole). Teachers may choose to ask the following questions:
What ideas do we associate with the words “responsibility,” “persistence,” and “goals?”
How would we define each term?
How is this turning our kids into mindless socialists? How does this make him like Hitler? (Several of the comments on Facebook Godwin'd the whole thing. Hitler Youth was mentioned.)
Look, I'm not politically savvy at all, but isn't some of the stuff the 'Homeland Security' did much higher up on the 'arugh' scale then the President wanting to address to students the importance of a good education? It's okay to have a President who advocates torture, but not one who wants kids to learn about responsibility?
Some people on the Facebook poll comments (and really, don't read if you don't want to lose your faith in humanity) say 'politics have no place in the classroom'. Fine. So we'll not be having kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance anymore then?
What is this I don't even...
I looked up the suggested questions/activities and they are all very innocuous. Well, here's an exerpt from the 7-12 age group:
Conduct a “quick write” or “think/pair/share” activity with students. (In the latter activity, students spend a few minutes thinking and writing about the question. Next, each student is paired with another student to discuss. Finally, the students share their ideas with the class as a whole). Teachers may choose to ask the following questions:
What ideas do we associate with the words “responsibility,” “persistence,” and “goals?”
How would we define each term?
How is this turning our kids into mindless socialists? How does this make him like Hitler? (Several of the comments on Facebook Godwin'd the whole thing. Hitler Youth was mentioned.)
Look, I'm not politically savvy at all, but isn't some of the stuff the 'Homeland Security' did much higher up on the 'arugh' scale then the President wanting to address to students the importance of a good education? It's okay to have a President who advocates torture, but not one who wants kids to learn about responsibility?
Some people on the Facebook poll comments (and really, don't read if you don't want to lose your faith in humanity) say 'politics have no place in the classroom'. Fine. So we'll not be having kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance anymore then?
What is this I don't even...
