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Sunday, May 6, 2012

YESTERDAY’S TEACHING METHODS WOULD BE CHILD ABUSE TODAY « Teachers Fight Back

YESTERDAY’S TEACHING METHODS WOULD BE CHILD ABUSE TODAY « Teachers Fight Back:


YESTERDAY’S TEACHING METHODS WOULD BE CHILD ABUSE TODAY

The following story was taken from Dawn Turner Trice’s column in the Tribune.
One day in the early 1960s, when Marilyn Johnson was a first-grader at a Chicago Catholic school, her teacher announced that she would call the “good readers” to the front of the class.
One by one, students left their seats and stood proudly by the chalkboard.  When the nun finished calling names, only Johnson and a little boy remained at their desks.
“I ran home and told my mother, and she went out and bought a bunch of flash cards,” said Johnson, 57.  “And I went from the nun telling my mother that I was going to be ‘slow’, to reading everything that wasn’t moving, including the Kellogg’s cereal box.”
Johnson is now a Cook County Circuit Court judge.
I can’t imagine a teacher today that would leave only two students to be seated while all others were rewarded. Today that borders on child abuse. What about the two unfortunate children’s embarrassment? What about their