Saturday, March 20, 2010

 

Poor (Future) Kids


One Evan Pennington, writing in The Underground: The Unofficial Student Publication of Missouri State University and who describes himself as "a future teacher," decides that teaching biology, which necessarily includes teaching evolution, to public school kids is "useless when compared to the rest of the curriculum." Mr. Pennington believes that K-12 education should stick to 'the basics.' Citing to the case of James Corbett, he says:

This guy Corbett, for example, was a European History teacher. European History, people. Is there not enough history to pass the day with? Must we resort instead to creationism vs. evolution? Please.

In summation, Corbett was being an ideological quack who used his classroom not as a "bully pulpit," but rather as a soapbox on which to vent his frustrations about creationism. He apparently found this more suiting than teaching history and facilitating the learning of his students.

And this kid who recorded Corbett's lectures so that mom and dad could swat the mean-old-teacher on the wrist with a nasty lawsuit? A quack if I ever saw one. He probably spent more time cooking up that little scheme with the tape recorder than he did on his homework.

Both sides plan to appeal. Both sides believe they're right. Neither side really cares about what happens to our students. Let's all just stick with what works, shall we? Readin', writin', and 'rithmatic rarely cheese anyone off, after all.
As we know from recent history in Texas, history cheeses people off too, so lets drop that as well, along with any and all science that points to an old Earth or climate warming. The list is going to get rather long. Mr. Pennington doesn't say what type of teacher he plans to be but let's hope that he is studying only to teach the ABCs, penmanship, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Otherwise, if anyone was silly enough to follow his advice, he'll be unemployed.
.

Comments:
Actually, given the controversies over themath wars, Phonics vs whole language, and inventive spelling, I would say that reading, writing, and arithmetic piss a lot of people off too.

Maybe the schools should just teach nothing at all.
 
But ... but ... then they'd just be doing what they always do ...
 
History is something to "pass the day with"? That's a mighty incurious attitude for a future educator.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

. . . . .

Organizations

Links
How to Support Science Education
archives