By Ruth A. Sheets
As a teacher, I wonder what impact the planning and materials I present will have on the students with whom I work. I try to offer them different points of view, although I do not share articles, columns, etc. that are clearly lies or conspiracy theories because I don’t want to plant those seeds.
I know teachers work very hard to cover the materials they are required to serve up, but it seems lately, education, not just public education, is failing our citizens.
How is it we were unable to help 35% of our population see that a particular presidential candidate did not know enough to hold that office, that he was not a good businessman, and that the TV program he was on and so admired for was scripted, neither spontaneous nor a true showcase for his talent or lack thereof?
How is it more than 30% of our citizens believed we were being invaded on our southern border by a few thousand desperate, exhausted immigrants, mostly women and children?
How is it a significant percentage of the population approved for the Supreme Court of the United States an over-emotional, disrespectful womanizer?
How is it that many of our elected officials are ignorant of human reproduction, abortion, and related issues and make laws based on their ignorance?
How is it citizens are easily confused by a president who does not know our Constitution and ignores it on a regular basis? Is it they don’t know it either?
How is it people who have not visited a college campus since they graduated criticize current students as not open-minded enough when that open-mindedness only goes as far as including ultra-conservative voices?
I suspect it is we the teachers who are failing our children. When we require only specific answers to complex questions, or just don’t ask complex questions at all, we encourage ignorance.
We claim we expect students to think critically, but when their critical thinking leads them in directions we don’t like, we use our red pencils and teacher voices to shut them down.
OK, this lack of careful thinking cannot be fully placed at our feet. Administrators choose curricula that avoid challenge, designed to get kids through the standardized tests.
Parents are often overworked and don’t have time to check to see what kind of thinking their children are doing. They count on the schools to take care of that, right?
State governments have cut education funds, some hoping to drive public education into the hands of private companies who can then control what children are taught, what to think.
A Secretary of Education who has no experience with education was not only nominated by someone ignorant of education but approved by Senators who should have known better and cared more about our children.
It breaks my heart when supporters or Mr. Trump are interviewed and they can’t even speak rationally about why they support him. They claim they want to “make America great again,” but beyond keeping immigrants out and improving the economy in some undisclosed manner, they can’t give any kind of meaningful answer. It’s embarrassing to listen to them. Where were their teachers? Where is their critical thinking?
How can we teachers do better? What is getting in the way of our giving students the tools they truly need to live as good citizens in a democracy? We need to have a lot of conversations about this if our democracy is to survive.
We need to teach about advertising, propaganda, and the many tools used to get us to dismiss our critical thinking. We need to set our own egos aside so we can hear student questions and comments that might challenge our own thinking. Then, we must challenge theirs right back.
For example, we need to give children choices and teach them how to determine which would be best for them at a given time. We need to teach history, not as dates and events to be memorized, but as people like themselves making decisions, good and bad, considering the factors the men, women, and children of the past took into account as they chose their actions.
So, fellow teachers, citizens, we have a lot of work to do. We can’t take the chance of losing another generation to inadequate thinking and thought thieves.
