Discussion for article #222525
Okay, so the school board has owned up to the cock-up. Any word on the “small group of teachers” who “developed the assignment”? Did the “lack of critical thought” come from them or their supervisor(s)? In short…
WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?
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That is exactly what I was thinking!!! Okay sure, maybe the area is a hotbed of white supremacist nutbags, I get that. I also get that you might get one of those kind of nutcases onto the teaching staff. But what group of 8th grade teachers supposedly credentialed professionals came up with with kind of crap??? Didn’t any of them have any misgivings??
Just unreal.
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Just an honest mistake from some pure-intentioned educators, I’m sure. Who among us has never searched Holocaust denial sites for writing ideas?
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Probably the same/similar small group of teachers who have children solve math questions about slaves.
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My guess is the board would have quite cheerfully fired the teachers involved the moment this broke if they could have, but it’s very hard to fire a public-school teacher for any reason and this situation could land them in court for years. Any competent lawyer could say the denial-site material was a deliberate example of an inaccurate, tendentious source. If there’s evidence any teacher was involved with or supported neo-Nazism, the board won’t have much choice, but it won’t be pretty no matter what happens.
“but due to a lack of critical thought” more likely lack of a brain cell. Sensitivity training won’t help if the person who created this assignment is in a position of power that no one thought to question the topic the second it was put on paper. This is an example of what schools will be like if we let corporations, religion and politics to take over education. The person who wrote this should not be anywhere near any educational process other than as the worst example of an automaton of propaganda.
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It’s weird to me that the commenters on a web site which tends to support the “reality based” side of politics is so universally against this assignment. While no one has emerged to explain the context, I think it’s actually a very good idea to set exercises like this for students, precisely as a way to teach them how to apply critical thought to information they find online. Understanding how an argument with which you disagree was constructed enables you to better see the faults in that argument.
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It appears to Ugg that at least some eighth graders applied critical thinking skills. “Mom, dad, can you believe this crap assignment!!!”
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Firing might really stir their brain cells. Let’s try that.
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Actually, we don’t know if the teacher(s) involved have reached tenure. The teacher can be rejected during his/her probation period. Also, California public agencies have the power to implement progressive discipline, but it’s up to the administration to utilize it. It’s often not exercised because it requires effort and follow-through. The problem that I’ve seen is more than the administration, and often the district, aligns itself with bad teachers. I’m a California native.
It will clearly be utopia when teachers can be fired for discussing controversial topics – climate change, gay rights, evolution. Be careful what you wish for.
(Yes, the assignment was egregious educational malpractice and (possibly) an attempt to propagandize for Holocaust denialism. After due process, those responsible should be held accountable.)
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The Koch Brothers have tried to brainwash this nation and it looks like it’s helping the Aryan Nation big time. When it became obvious that Hispanics and blacks fight back, they decided to go after the Jews again? Can Catholics be far behind with Pope Francis saying not to judge gays and do away with income inequality?
.
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Not impressed. “Accepting responsibility” and then doing nothing besides sentencing the teachers to a field trip is not really handling the issue is it?
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So tell me who will be fired and blacklisted from ever teaching again for conspiring to corrupt the children with thinly veiled hate messages?
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I’m firmly against tort reform. Sue the teachers and you’ll find out who they are allied with and what was the force behind this. Firmly believe it was the Koch Brothers and their affiliated conservative billionaires. They have been trying to insert all sort of counter culture crap inside our classrooms for decades know.
Some enterprising young journalist could win a Pulitzer for doing a expose of the Far Right’s “educational” strategy.
The Bushes have been in the textbook business here and abroad since the 1980s and the Todd Akins branch of the GOP the homeschooling push. But it’s all funded by the usual multinational economic monopoly suspects.
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It is wholly inappropriate for any teacher anywhere to use a Holocaust denial conspiracy theory website as a source for students to use.
Students in the 8th grade lack the maturity and cognitive skills necessary to understand and differentiate such garbage from reality.
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If I were a parent in the Rialto school district, I’d want to know why the teachers engaged this assignment. What did they expect 8th grade kids to learn from the assignment? Why choose this assignment over another, i.e., why wasn’t a less controversial assignment selected over this assignment? I can see a study of, say, holocaust deniers as a psychology assignment or an assignment on bigotry, although IMO, in-depth study of such controversial topics should be deferred until high school.
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If I was Jewish, I’d organize a PAC to hire investigators with high power lawyers to get the depositions going. This is the tip of an iceberg. That it happened in CA tells you that there is plenty more where this came from going on in other states, particularly in the the usual red states.
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It seems to me that only the person or persons who came up with this deeply f*d up idea are the ones that need training. Training and a good, quick firing.
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