I was a classroom teacher for twenty-eight years.\u00a0\u00a0If you read these essays on \u201cOur America\u201d, it won\u2019t surprise you to know I taught social studies:\u00a0\u00a0American and World History, Government and Current Issues, Economics and even Sociology.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And I taught every grade level from sixth through seniors, at a time when our community was transitioning from farm town to \u201cthe suburbs\u201d; 1978 until I finally left the classroom for the front office in 2006.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teachers today are carefully scripted by the state and local administration. Each learning \u201cobjective\u201d is outlined in detail, so that everyone teaching the same subject has near identical plans, lessons, and outcomes. In some states, that literally means every eighth grade American History teacher is teaching the same lesson, on the same day. While Ohio isn\u2019t quite that strict, the whole goal is to have near daily control over what goes on in every classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are lots of reasons for \u201ccontrols\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We are a highly mobile society, with kids moving in and out of classrooms and schools all the time.\u00a0\u00a0To have a student stay in one school system kindergarten through twelve is the exception rather than the norm.\u00a0\u00a0So those kids deserve some continuity in their education.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there is the obvious reason: making sure teachers actually teach. By standardizing classrooms, then there is an \u201cobjective\u201d scale of success and failure. As I saw it, \u2018D\u2019 and \u2018C\u2019 teachers did improve, forced to teach at a higher level. But the price was that the \u2018A\u2019 teachers were forced to change a lot of what made them exceptional, pulling them \u201cdown\u201d. So the end result was \u2018B\u2019 and \u2018C\u2019 teachers and fewer failures, but fewer exceptional teachers as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I started teaching, \u201cback in the day\u201d there was a general understanding of what the subject matter was, but no specific controls. There was the \u201ctextbook\u201d, and there was a set of maybe twelve \u201cobjectives\u201d for a course, but after that what, how and when you taught the subject was solely left to the classroom teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That put the burden of planning on me.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019d sit down at the beginning of each school year and plot out a time-line for my courses, figuring out how long I could spend on each topic and still make my way through the entire curriculum.\u00a0\u00a0That was a lot of work, but it gave me the freedom to pace my class to take advantage of the \u201creal world\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0In Government, in even-years I taught politics and elections early in the class, to take advantage of the \u201creal world\u201d elections that happened in November.\u00a0\u00a0In odd-years, I taught that part of the class in the spring, leading up to the primaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also gave me control to respond to world events. In January of 1999, we learned a lot about impeaching a President (and Presidential sex). In November of 2000, we extended our examination of elections as the ballots were counted in Florida. And in September of 2001, I altered my time-line to learn about Islam, and radicals, and American policy in Southwest Asia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was teaching History in the 1980\u2019s, I built in extra-time to spend on World War II. It wasn\u2019t just to tell stories about my WW II spy Mom (one year, I actually got her to come speak to my classes). But in the 1980\u2019s in Pataskala, I felt it was important to give \u201cmy kids\u201d an understanding of racial bigotry. We spent time talking about the Nazi persecution of Jewish people, leading up to the Holocaust. And we contrasted that with the US persecution of Japanese-Americans during World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was careful to avoid \u201cequivalency\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0While the \u201cre-location camps\u201d now seem very un-American, they were not \u201cthe same\u201d as the Holocaust.\u00a0\u00a0But what I really wanted my kids to understand is that even \u201cthe good guys\u201d could fall into doing \u201cbad things\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0I wanted them to be on guard, as US citizens, for that kind of racial prejudice.\u00a0\u00a0Those historic examples lead us to discussions about current issues of race and religion in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In those days, we could meet folks who survived the experience. One year we had a Holocaust survivor, a sweet lady, come in and talk. Her life before the Holocaust was a simple childhood that all the children could relate to. She didn\u2019t tell too many \u201chorror stories\u201d, but it was enough to see the tattooed numbers on her wrist and the tears in her eyes when she mentioned her lost family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we had a survivor of the re-location camps, a high school second-baseman for East Los Angeles high school who ended up under lock and key in Arizona. His only way out was to volunteer to fight in World War II. He was in the mountains of Italy with one of most decorated US Units of the War. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know that the survivors of the War are almost all gone, but I\u2019m not sure you\u2019d \u201cexpose\u201d eighth graders to that today anyway. Not only would it disrupt the \u201cplanning\u201d, but in our current educational climate, why would any teacher take the chance of \u201cupsetting\u201d someone in the community? Any deviation from the \u201cset\u201d plan, the state approved curriculum; especially one that would emotionally impact a child, is just an unacceptable job risk for a teacher to take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Virginia, there\u2019s now a state \u201ctip line\u201d to let them know if a child is \u201cuncomfortable\u201d in class by discussions of racial bias.\u00a0\u00a0In Tennessee, they are banning a graphic novel that explains the Holocaust,\u00a0Maus<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0The book shares the experiences of a mouse, gently telling that horrible story. I had a copy of\u00a0Maus\u00a0<\/em>in my classroom since the mid-1980\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s still on my bookshelf today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our era of \u201csensitivity\u201d, how could a teacher possibly talk about the Holocaust, or the Trail of Tears,\u00a0\u00a0or the reason for the Bill Clinton impeachment?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In our polarized society, what lesson can teacher\u2019s give about the Nisei internment without being \u201cunpatriotic\u201d, much less John Lewis on the Edmund Pettis Bridge?\u00a0\u00a0And how foolhardy would it be to even bring up the two impeachments of Donald Trump, the Insurrection or Covid; the biggest \u201cteachable moments\u201d of the recent past?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a lesson for teachers here. Stick to the script, or risk losing your job. It\u2019s happening all over the country. And it\u2019s failing the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"