President Obama's Speech to School Children

[srkruzich]

I would be interested to know how many of you that have children in school, preview their textbooks?

Yes i did. Every year.  In fact, i previewed what the "board" was trying to get in before they planned their curriculum.  If i saw anything objectionable, i brought it up to the attention of other parents in our church and other churches, and we all as a group went in and made our objections known.  Since most of the school teachers attended our church, a whole lot of textbooks got tossed. 
Second thing i worked on for years and finally gave up on because the teachers union had more money to throw against me was to get every student in school a laptop, and put all of their textbooks on disk.  The excuse i got was not enough money but i went in and proved there was enough by showing where no textbook costs, eliminate school lockers which is both a problem with hiding contraband and wasted money and space.  Just the school lockers alone paid for half the laptops, and the savings on having a textbook for every kid was astronomical and would have paid not only for the rest of the laptops but also the curriculum on dvd's and the licensing to distribute to every student.  THis of course would necessitate networking in the school for the computers and that was also covered in the savings.

But noooo. The Teachers unions were against it, the super was against it, too many people were against it.  The reason the teachers unions were against it, and this is from friends of mine that were teachers there was because every teacher would have to qualify on a computer.  BIG Woop.  IF their teaching in this day and age, they should be qualified on a computer.   

Or did you when you had children in school? If so, did you prepare responses to anything you did not agree with?

You bet.

Do you preview their Weekly Reader? You know, the little newspaper they get in class once a week. (They still do don't they?). How many read it when they were in school?

I don't know if they do now. They didn't when my boys were in school. 

[pamsback]

  I always and still do with Ashley keep up with what they are learning and fill in the rest of the story. I didn't like people tellin me what I could or couldn't learn when I was a kid and I still don't. I think censorship is a retarded concept.

[larryJ]

I am kinda lost here.  I don't think there should be "censorship" of reading material.  Teachers go to college and the professor teaches them that a particular book is not truthful and/or accurate.  The teacher goes out into the community and teaches at a school where he/she discusses the books to be used in the school.  A book is introduced and the teacher remembers from the college professor that this book is not accurate.  So the teacher informs the school board and the parents that this book is no good and refuses to teach from it.  My belief is that the teacher should stand up in front of the class with that book in hand and say, "What I am teaching you in this class is to my knowledge accurate and true information.  This book I am holding does not, in my opinion, relay accurate and true information, but you should be able to read it and judge for yourselves."  That, to me, is teaching.  The teacher is not only teaching what he believes to be accurate information, but is giving the student a chance to form his own opinion. 

I am probably going to hear it from all you teachers, but my mother was a teacher and I went to college to become one, although I never did. 

One of my favorite teachers was a high school physics teacher.  Physics is a pretty much cut and dried subject as in, this is the way it is and the way it works, no other explanation fits.  This teacher taught us the concept of "what if" so we could actually see what it was that worked or didn't work.  By teaching this way, he made us think more rather than just write down what he said was true and leave it at that.

Okay, slap my hand now.

Larryj

[Diane Amberg]

Ahem, Ok Larry here it comes! I agree with you! Depending on the age of the kids and the material to be taught, critical thinking is so important. For the little guys who are still learning how to learn, the material has to be more concrete. But for High School and on, depending on how old the books are and what the subject is, why not? Some things have to be updated as more is learned anyway.  The atomic chart sure isn't any longer what I had in school. I think some of what would help was the way we did it in my t elementary schools  Text book publishers often dropped off new  texts to be reviewed. Every few years, when we changed books anyway, our textbook committee would meet. (I was on it.)  It was made up of teachers and a few parents and we would discuss the new offerings. We had all had a chance to take them home before the meeting. We'd discuss what we liked and disliked about each book and chose from that.