Delete comment from: Captain Capitalism
I'd like to start by saying any generalization like "the majority of teachers do not teach because of something noble..." do not have any constructive value whatsoever. I left a profession in architecture to teach middle school english, and although there are many teachers who may not have noble reasons for teaching, there's a greater systemic problems, especially within public school, that prohibit any drastic improvements.
Furthermore, I think to say that kids do not have ANY capacity to have a discussion about sex, politics, or religion is not giving them enough credit. I proudly engaged with them on a quick discussion on the elecion, not to push for Obama [which I voted for], but to bring to the surface that the reasons they had for supporting Obama were for the most part baseless [the majority are latino/african-american] and that they need to inform themselves to eventually support a candidate, not because of their race, but because of their views on the issues. Addressing politics in the classroom does becom detrimental when the teacher has a bias toward a candidate, but I do believe that even kids in elementary can benefit from trying to look at these issues from a critical/objective perspective.
Nov 10, 2008, 5:18:00 PM
Posted to Can't You Just Let 4th Graders Be Kids?