While I Wasn’t Paying Attention……
To be honest, the slow-motion train wreck known as the Trump presidency has absorbed most of my energy lately, and so I haven’t been paying close attention to public education. However, during all this mess, 50.7 million K-12 students, 3.6 million of their teachers, 16 million college students, and their 1.6 million teachers have been going about their business.
Think about that for a minute. A social studies teacher right now is a modern-day Hamlet. Should he or she embrace the chaos and encourage students to debate the morality of the flood of demonstrable lies coming from the Oval Office on a daily basis, knowing that doing so is guaranteed to incur the wrath of some parents, and perhaps some administrators as well? Or should the teacher studiously avoid controversy, knowing full well that doing that sends a powerful value-laden message? To teach, or not to teach, that is the question…..
Or suppose you were an elementary school teacher trying to model appropriate behavior for your impressionable students. How do you respond when one of your kids asks you why the President said Joe Biden was kissing Barack Obama’s ass? Or why Trump can say ‘bullshit’ but kids get punished for swearing?
During my time ‘off task,’ the flood of charter school scandals has continued. I wish this weren’t the case because the idea of giving school-based educators authority of CONTINUE READING: While I Wasn’t Paying Attention…… | The Merrow Report