Should the Curriculum Address Controversial Issues?

Let me first start by stating the fact that being an educator is a very challenging profession. (Well duh, I know.) As a teacher, you take on many different roles; you are mother, a father, a certified babysitter, a teacher, a counselor etc. It makes sense since, for many students, their teacher is the adult figure that they see more in the day than their own parent or guardian. Six and a half hours are spent everyday teaching them information; some of this information is helpful such as work ethic, how to read effectively, and basic math skills. Teaching to prepare for state standardized tests does not seem effective or beneficial, but for 3-12 teachers in Maryland, right that is what we are doing. We as teachers teach students all of these concepts that they may or may not remember and yet we tend to leave out the more important lessons; life lessons that need to be addressed and emphasized in order to help children become acceptable men and women in society or the real world. It’s funny to me that for as long as we have them, we guard them; we shield our students from addressing the real issues, the issues that they may be faced with now and/ or later.

We teach students, so why is that when a topic comes up that is not in the curriculum and could be considered controversial BUT effective and beneficial for my students to learn, why it is that I have to beat around the bush and not teach them at a time that would be ideal and an authentic teachable moment? Why is it that we shelter these students from real topics? Why do we shelter them from what lies beyond the school walls? These are questions I often think about but even more so while reading and reflecting on this cycle’s focus.

This cycle’s focus looked at whether or not controversial issues should be addressed in the curriculum taught. The issue that we mainly investigated was on the topic of homosexuality. As stated in earlier blogs, I currently am a fifth grade teacher in an inner city school. Many of my students have had to grow up way too fast and because of this, they know more than they should. An example of this happened a few months ago when I was explaining to students that they would be presenting their country projects and this would be a portion of their overall grade. When discussing the project, I said ‘oral presentation’ and two my students burst out laughing. It took several minutes to get these two girls focused again and when I asked them what was so funny, their response was Oh nothing. Students in this generation are exposed to far too much information whether it is from watching television, surfing the internet, hearing their parents, or hearing their peers. Yet so often these students misinterpret the facts and therefore, have a wrong perception about how it is really is. Allowing students to take on these perceptions seems wrong to me on so many levels, but there are certain topics of conversation that I have to stay away from because it’s not my place.

Many of the families and teachers in my school are very religious. It is obvious that bringing up a topic such as homosexuality would be blasphemy. Many of the teachers and parents that are apart of my school feel that homosexuality is not a lifestyle, but a choice. From generation to generation, people are taught from their mothers and fathers and grandparents etc about what they believe is true. There was a time in my life where I felt that homosexuality was a choice and that it was wrong. Growing up in a small town in Michigan would make it easy to take on such an opinion since in my town, everyone was white and everyone was religious and everyone was straight. However, as time went on and as society has became more accepting of homosexuality, all of a sudden there were homosexual people in my hometown. This isn’t to say that there never were homosexual people before, but now they are starting to feel okay coming out and being themselves.

Homosexuality is a lifestyle in my eyes. I am not one to force my beliefs on other people and I am not saying that everyone has to agree with homosexuality, but I will say that people need to at least recognize that it is a different type of lifestyle, not a choice and students need to recognize that understanding as well. As stated in the Eckholm article, the earlier children are given a positive perception of different types of lifestyles, the more willing they will be to accept it. The earlier that we teach our youth that homosexuality is another part of life, the better chance that it would be seen as a norm rather than abnormal.

This past Tuesday there was a new Glee episode. This episode conveniently focused in on bullying, specifically bullying students because of their sexual orientation. Basically, there was a football player who for a long time bullied another student for being openly gay. It ended up coming out that this football player was actually gay and he bullied the other student because he was envious of how okay he was with himself. He was bullied and decided it was best to move to another school; move to a city where no one knew that he was gay so he could continue to be his old jock self. Eventually, news got out of his sexual orientation and very quickly, the terms fag and gay consumed his facebook wall and text messaging box. The bullying got so severe that this man attempted suicide and would have been successful had his father not found him in time. I bring this example up because this emphasizes the point that people reject what they were never taught to be okay or normal and because of this, men and women attempt or successful with taking their lives because so many people can’t seen beyond the realm.

Bullying has become a nation-wide problem as every day men and women, boys and girls can’t take the name-calling, the teasing, the fighting, the facebook messages, the text messages and so they give up. My school is an anti-bully school and we do our part to diminish the bullying problems. Bullying has always been an issue, but as stated earlier, with the several ways to communicate, bullying is becoming more visible.  Bullying is also becoming a more personal issue as students are being teased not just for how they look, but for who they are.  Similarly to the Eckholm article in my hometown, the topic of placing sexual orientation in the anti-bullying bylaws was brought up and after several months, it was decided that it was not necessary, even though several students emphasized the mental abuse he or she received often because they were gay or lesbian. Even with concrete proof, it still wasn’t enough. This is another reason why many areas of the U.S.A are being counterproductive in exemplifying “an equal and accepting society.”  

          The article “Silence on Gays and Lesbians” really got to me on a number of levels. Firstly, I will be completely honest by saying that for a long time, I was under the impression that homosexuality was new, that it hadn’t been around for a long time. I guess growing up Catholic and living in a really small town would make such misconceptions apparent. Reading the article really opened my eyes to the idea that if homosexuality was brought up in social studies content as a mere part of the course (as pure fact) maybe so many of the examples brought up would seem okay.

The article addressed about the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan and how appalled people are of the beatings, but how men who are homosexual are mistreated as well, probably fair worse, but no one talks about this. For so long race and women were oppressed for equal rights in the United States. For a long time, these issues were not addressed in schools and were considered controversial. Enough people fought and fought to be treated fairly, despite race or gender. It seems that because sexual orientation is not a physical trait, but rather an emotional trait, people can’t accept its truth. Perhaps with time, people will be willing to do the same for sexual orientation. I know I know, easier said then done.

Just because students are not independent, does not mean that they are unable to take on opinions and beliefs of their own. As Eisner emphasized in his piece, “Yet if one mission of the school is to foster wisdom, weaken prejudice, and develop the ability to use a wide range of modes of thought, then it seems to me we ought to examine school programs to locate those areas of thought and those perspectives that are now absent in order to reassure ourselves that these omissions were not a result of ignorance but a product of choice” (pg. 83) We as a society need to stop bestowing our biased opinions on our youth and allow them an opportunity to make their own opinions and their own beliefs because without this thinking, we will continue to go in circles, rather than move forward and prosper.

From this week’s focus, it has opened my eyes to the possibilities that I have with my students, but because of politics and religion, we are limited with how much we say and how we articulate it. As stated in the Eisner article, “Sc Furthermore, it is important to realize that what schools teach is not simply a function of covert intentions; it is largely unintentional. What schools teach they teach in the fashion that the culture itself teaches, because schools are the kinds of places they are” (page 78).Television shows such as Glee and Real World have played a role in making homosexuality not about people with AIDS, but rather people who live the same life as us, just a little differently. My hope is that with time and continuous awareness, such topics such as sexual orientation will not be an issue, but rather an embedded part to the curriculum.

Stop Bullying This website looks at the awareness of bullying, different types of bullying. and ways to prevent and stop bullying in the United States. There are a lot of great resources that could be resourceful in the classroom.

Multicultural Education This website focuses on multicultural education and different resources used to make aware and implement a diverse mentality of learning and growing.

Okay to Be Gay This blog investigates the misconceptions of homosexuality and brings to light a positive, more realistic perception of people who are homosexuals and how it is okay to be gay.

Cycle 2: What Should the Content of Curriculum Be?

As we learned last week, curriculum can very much be seen as a journey; a path of learning, growth, and life. We teach to strengthen students’ minds with knowledge that may or may not be beneficial for the students in the long run, but nonetheless, is apart of that grade’s standards and indicators. This week, we took a step further and looked at what exactly do we teach? This is a question that even thinking about it now overwhelms me. There are so many areas of learning that could be taught in a curriculum and so many areas of learning that would benefit students. As I was reading, I thought about all the times in my three years of teaching where I found myself wanting to teach this or wanting to implement that, but when it came down to it, my brainstorming was much larger than the reality of my 6 ½ hour teaching day.  So the real question is… where to begin?

Since the origin of education, there has always been a purpose for why specific content was taught. For years, it was to produce literate men, then women, and then schooling became preparation for a future career. Our current curriculum, as stressed in my last blog, is anything but valuable to our students as it limits their thinking to what can be found on a multiple choice test. While some of the content taught to the students is resourceful and will help them later in life (how to read for meaning, how to add/ subtract/ multiply/ divide, and how to justify their thinking), a lot of it is unnecessary and redundant. As stated in my last blog, the Common Core Curriculum was created because politicians felt that our current curriculum was not doing the students justice. A major factor that sparked a red flag was the fact that students were being accepted into college and then having to take remedial courses because they lacked the knowledge to take the regular freshmen courses. Looking at the differing curriculums in the last twenty years, we treat it almost as trial and error. While this component may benefit the teachers as they can take professional developments and revamp their teaching (certainly not easy, but possible), it is much more intricate for those students who went through a particular curriculum as the guinea pig and it debilitated them academically. The concept of what to teach is so complex, but we need to take a step back and think not what to teach but more so who are we teaching.

In the Corbett article, we witness a New York school that is run by and through technology. Unlike the popular assumption that the students play video games all day, students not only play them, but create video games as well. Students are put in the front seat of their learning and use what they learn in video games and what they are taught by their teachers to create, investigate, and get messy.  As stated on page 2, “Quest to Learn is organized specifically around the idea that digital games are central to the lives of today’s children and also increasingly, as their speed and capability grow, powerful tools for intellectual exploration” (Corbett, page 2) One of the major components when lesson planning is how do I get my students to be engaged in what we will be learning today? Quest to Learn has taken the common hobby of technology and video games to engage its learners, make them want to learn, and then take it a step further and motivate and inspire them to apply their learning into a variety of methods.  We live in the technological era where we rely heavily on technology. Students grew up with technology and therefore, possess a stronger level of competency and literacy to technology.  Therefore, it only makes sense to create a learning environment that is centered on technology.

At my school, we continue to do what we can to promote technology in the classroom. It would be amazing to teach my students in a setting like the one provided in the Corbett article. Students today do not compare at all to students twenty years ago. While we keep making this idea known, we continue to teach students in a way that is very outdated and unbeneficial to society’s current youth.  An example of this idea occurred a few days ago when a question on my students’ homework asked them what the purpose of an encyclopedia was.  As a person who readily used hardcover encyclopedias and Encarta as a child, I was shocked to find that so many of my students didn’t know its purpose. As I was talking to a colleague about this, it dawned on us the fact that they don’t know because they probably have never seen or used one before. The internet provides enough resources to where an encyclopedia seems quite archaic to ever use; another reason why our manner of teaching is behind the times

In his article, Dewey brings up the idea of individual nature vs. social culture.  I find this theory to provide strong reasoning to the idea that students must be taught content that is applicable to their current society.  Students can’t sit in their seats for hours like was done in the yester years and why should they have to? Students should be taught meaningful and authentic information that will benefit them in the long run. Especially with a huge stress to get students engaged in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) realm where they are learning, moving, discovering and growing. It is evident that Dewey feels that children should learn what is most applicable to their natural world and what knowledge they will need to best prepare them for their future careers. As he states on page 108, “It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity of learning.” Meaning, it’s up to the individual student to come to a conclusion on what content is essential to grasp, process, and comprehend.

In contrast to Dewey, Hirsch takes on a very differing opinion mainly stressing the importance of traditionalism in the classroom. A s stated on page 113, “To miss the opportunity of teaching young (and older) children the traditional materials of literate culture is a tragically wasteful mistake… that deprives them of information that they would find later in life…and is a chief cause of illiteracy.” I find this to be quite a bold statement and while I agree that some aspects of literate culture are relevant in a classroom setting: teaching about our country’s history, reading fictional literature, basic math facts, US government etc. a lot of the content lacks appeal to the students and therefore, is irrelevant to teach. 

If I could create my own content to teach with no pressures of students having to learn this or that, I feel I would balance both Dewey and Hirsch’s philosophies. There are many components that can not simply be taught by saying, but rather by doing. Creating an atmosphere of learning that mimics much of the social constructivism elements would allow so many more opportunities for students to experience. Students would be in control for what they learn and what they learn because it is applicable to them and them alone.  In this type of environment, students would find a purpose for learning and self-reliance.

Content will continue to change and that is without saying. If only society would trust its teachers to do his/ her jobs and to teach to benefit their specific students; if only teaching was about individual student growth and not advanced, proficient, and basic; if only students were held more accountable for what they learn and why they learn it.  But alas, the daydreaming of what could be must cease and the reality of teaching must return.

Standardized Testing - Simpsons Style: Not the best quality, but I found this to be quite humorous when looking at the content of our current curriculum and how we teach to the test, leaving little room for true comprehension and retaining of information.

Multiple Intelligences This website goes into detail about Gardner’s theory about multiple intelligences and the idea that every student is a different type of learner; this relates back to the argument that students perceive and learn in different ways.

Learning Beyond Textbooks This website highlights the idea that textbooks are outdated and how there are more efficient ways to provide specific content to students via the internet. This emphasizes convenience and fast results; two ideas that our current society thrive on.

Experienced Based Learning This website brings to the light the idea of experience based learning, how authentic learning comes from practice.