By Kyle Olson
Friday, August 31, 2012
What happens when progressives run government schools?
They judge teachers based upon their own socio-political values.
They don’t care if Billy or Suzie can read or write very
well. But they want to make sure the kids are aware of all the social injustice
plaguing the United States of America.
That’s the only possible explanation for Denver Public
Schools’ new teacher evaluation system .
The system will rate teachers as “distinguished” – the
highest rating – when they (among other things):
Encourage students to “challenge and question the
dominant culture.”
Encourage students to take social action to change/ improve
society or work for social justice.
Use Visuals and artifacts to represent various
cultures/world groups.
“What exactly does this language mean?” said Pam Benigno,
director of the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center, in a news
release “Will 4th graders be taking field trips to Occupy Denver for extra
credit?”
Perhaps not “extra credit.” That may be their main
assignment for the semester.
This is not the first time such an ideological litmus
test has been placed on government school teachers.
The University of Minnesota College of Education took a
lot of heat a few years ago, when it was revealed that students had to
demonstrate they had “cultural competence” in order to receive their teaching
degree.
That meant prospective teachers were required to “accept
theories of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and
internalized oppression’ develop a positive sense of racial/cultural identity,
and recognize that schools are socially constructed systems that are
susceptible to racism … but are also critical sites for social and cultural
transformation.”
And what do these types of policies lead to? Check out
the following story from MinnPost.com:
“A month or so ago, Sarah Skahan let herself get knocked
off her game by a 10-year-old boy.
“The boy, who is African-American, spends time with
Skahan, the speech language pathologist at Westview Elementary in Apple Valley,
to get support for his learning disability.
“On this particular day he was shading in parts of a map,
finishing a geography assignment.
“’Man, I’m never going there,” he snorted as he started
coloring Florida.
“Skahan stopped what she was doing and asked him what he
knew about Trayvon Martin. Quite a lot, as it turned out. The shooting was a
topic of frequent conversation in the boy’s home.
“The two spent time every day for the rest of the week
working on a letter to Florida’s attorney general, urging him to prosecute
Martin’s killer. When George Zimmerman was taken into custody, the student came
to tell Skahan.”
Never mind that Florida’s attorney general is a woman.
How does this language pathologist have the right to suggest to a student that
a defendant in a criminal case is innocent or guilty? Shouldn’t an educator
encourage an interested student to look closely at the case and carefully form
an intelligent opinion, instead of clinging to a heated, kneejerk response?
But of course most extreme leftists convicted Zimmerman
in their minds within minutes of the shooting, purely based on racial
considerations. An alarming number of government school teachers are quite
liberal, and they’re becoming a lot less shy about sharing their views with
students.
But why should they be shy, when they are encouraged by
their employers (and official evaluation systems) to push their views on
students?
Who’s willing to bet that Skahan has been evaluated and
determined to be a “distinguished” educator?
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