Josh wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 9:46 pm
I’m focused more on how Genghis Khan was believed to personally treat women. He seemed to think he should try to have as many descendants as possible. I think having children by lots of different women shows a very poor attitude towards women and doesn’t treat them well.
You missed the entire point of the exercise which was that students did their own historical research on an infamous figure from history. And they developed their own criteria through which to judge him by the standards of his own time. They did this entirely on their own and they decided it was most appropriate to judge him according to his own time. They developed their own arguments, did their own research. And came to their own conclusions. Rather than being fed some dry cursory textbook narrative.
Judged by the standards of the time they reached the conclusion that the role of women in Mongol society provided them with more freedom and responsibility than any of the surrounding empires against which the Mongols competed. Especially the Chinese to the east and the Muslim empires to the west. I think they were probably right to reach that conclusion. But even if they weren't it was a valuable exercise. And that was only just one point of evidence among many that they used to judge Genghis Kahn.
That is how you teach figures like Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Malcom X, Robert E Lee, or Stalin. You come up with a lesson that gives students a chance to dig their teeth into the subject, discuss, argue, and reach their own conclusions. The teacher is, of course, there to keep things on track. But not to promote any particular narrative or indoctrinate them into any particular viewpoint.
What perfect timing. Ken, I believe you asked for evidence of teachers trying to corrupt students?
Do you support the agenda and techniques that were discussed at this conference?
I don’t actually recall asking for evidence of anything. This is an enormous and vast country and I’m sure you can find examples of teachers doing stupid stuff everywhere. I can find it in the schools where I teach. As well as every church I have ever attended and every job I have ever worked at.
All I see here at your link is some third-hand anecdotal blog reporting about a educational conference in California by someone who calls herself “The Truth Fairy”. With no sense as to whether what she is reporting is remotely accurate.
I will be the first to admit that there is an enormous amount of garbage being peddled out there at educational conferences. I’ve been going to those sorts of things for 15 years to get required continuing education training hours and rarely have I ever found anything useful and mostly that was at conferences very specifically and narrowly dedicated to science teaching and being taught by top science teachers. Most of the rest of it is pretty useless and I expect that 9 out of 10 teachers would agree. It is mostly all garbage, not just the lefty stuff you might happen to find examples of here and there. The educational consulting business is an enormous racket that sucks millions of dollars out of school districts who would rather pay outside consultants for garbage rather than empower their own teachers. Most of the educational trainings I have been to had nothing whatsoever to do with lefty indoctrination but was mostly just useless educational jargon and fad peddling. Maybe I’m particularly impatient with this sort of thing because I came into education through a previous science career rather than through a traditional university school of education like many teachers.
On the other hand, I’ve seen just as egregious examples of outside consultants working in the world of business so maybe it is a universal problem and not anything specific to education.
0 x
A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
Ken wrote: ↑Thu Dec 09, 2021 4:15 pm
I don’t actually recall asking for evidence of anything. This is an enormous and vast country and I’m sure you can find examples of teachers doing stupid stuff everywhere. I can find it in the schools where I teach. As well as every church I have ever attended and every job I have ever worked at.
All I see here at your link is some third-hand anecdotal blog reporting about a educational conference in California by someone who calls herself “The Truth Fairy”. With no sense as to whether what she is reporting is remotely accurate.
I will be the first to admit that there is an enormous amount of garbage being peddled out there at educational conferences. I’ve been going to those sorts of things for 15 years to get required continuing education training hours and rarely have I ever found anything useful and mostly that was at conferences very specifically and narrowly dedicated to science teaching and being taught by top science teachers. Most of the rest of it is pretty useless and I expect that 9 out of 10 teachers would agree. It is mostly all garbage, not just the lefty stuff you might happen to find examples of here and there. The educational consulting business is an enormous racket that sucks millions of dollars out of school districts who would rather pay outside consultants for garbage rather than empower their own teachers. Most of the educational trainings I have been to had nothing whatsoever to do with lefty indoctrination but was mostly just useless educational jargon and fad peddling. Maybe I’m particularly impatient with this sort of thing because I came into education through a previous science career rather than through a traditional university school of education like many teachers.
On the other hand, I’ve seen just as egregious examples of outside consultants working in the world of business so maybe it is a universal problem and not anything specific to education.
Tell me you didn't read the article without telling me you didn't read the article.
Ken wrote: ↑Thu Dec 09, 2021 4:15 pm
I don’t actually recall asking for evidence of anything. This is an enormous and vast country and I’m sure you can find examples of teachers doing stupid stuff everywhere. I can find it in the schools where I teach. As well as every church I have ever attended and every job I have ever worked at.
All I see here at your link is some third-hand anecdotal blog reporting about a educational conference in California by someone who calls herself “The Truth Fairy”. With no sense as to whether what she is reporting is remotely accurate.
I will be the first to admit that there is an enormous amount of garbage being peddled out there at educational conferences. I’ve been going to those sorts of things for 15 years to get required continuing education training hours and rarely have I ever found anything useful and mostly that was at conferences very specifically and narrowly dedicated to science teaching and being taught by top science teachers. Most of the rest of it is pretty useless and I expect that 9 out of 10 teachers would agree. It is mostly all garbage, not just the lefty stuff you might happen to find examples of here and there. The educational consulting business is an enormous racket that sucks millions of dollars out of school districts who would rather pay outside consultants for garbage rather than empower their own teachers. Most of the educational trainings I have been to had nothing whatsoever to do with lefty indoctrination but was mostly just useless educational jargon and fad peddling. Maybe I’m particularly impatient with this sort of thing because I came into education through a previous science career rather than through a traditional university school of education like many teachers.
On the other hand, I’ve seen just as egregious examples of outside consultants working in the world of business so maybe it is a universal problem and not anything specific to education.
Tell me you didn't read the article without telling me you didn't read the article.
I read it and didn’t see a single bit of first-hand information about anything. Show me an actual published curriculum used by an actual school district and I’ll tell you what I think if it is within my area of expertise.
0 x
A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
Ken wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 10:59 pm
Most of the educational trainings I have been to had nothing whatsoever to do with lefty indoctrination but was mostly just useless educational jargon and fad peddling.
From your lips to God’s ears. I’m going through the alternative license program and the amount of jargon in education is surreal. It’s like learning another language. The education alphabet soup of acronyms is worse than the Mennonite alphabet soup of acronyms. I sat through some training the other day from MTIS about RTI using SWSS.