A Mind Awake: April 2013

We cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that without the Bible, we would know nothing about God. (John H. Walton p409)

NY Teacher Who Asked Students to ‘Argue That Jews Are Evil’ Reportedly Put on Leave

NY Teacher Who Asked Students to ‘Argue That Jews Are Evil’ Reportedly Put on Leave:

New York Teacher Who Had Students Argue Jews Are Evil Has Been Put on Leave

A screenshot of the writing assignment asking students to argue the Nazi case.

Parents were horrified when it was revealed that a teacher at Albany High School in New York was making students in her sophomore English classes argue that “Jews are evil” as part of an exercise in persuasive writing.
TheBlaze’s Tiffany Gabbay explained the assignment and its wider implications:

“You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!” read the description on the assignment, which the school superintendent said reflects the kind of sophisticated writing expected of students under the new Common Core standards and was meant to hone students’ persuasive argument abilities.

According to the Times Union, which broke the story, the teacher was not in class Friday and has been placed on leave.
District Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard held a news conference apologizing for the assignment, but said it was too early to determine what punishment the teacher will receive.
It could apparently range from a letter of reprimand to termination.
“You asked a child to support the notion that the Holocaust was justified, that’s my struggle,” she said. “It’s an illogical leap for a student to make.”

Albany Public Schools Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard speaks about an assignment asking students to create a persuasive argument blaming Jews for the problems of Nazi Germany during a news conference on Friday, April 12, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

The school district has not named the teacher, who has been described as a veteran who likes to “challenge” students. Monday’s assignment was brought to administrators’ attention by a horrified parent, before making national news. Some of the children reportedly refused to write the essay, but others were concerned it would irreparably affect their grade.
“I was putting it off because I didn’t want to think about it and I didn’t want to say anything bad about Jewish people,” 16-year-old Emily Karandy remarked. “We thought it would make more sense if we were Jews arguing against Nazis.”
She said she felt “horrible” when she turned it in.
New York City Councilman David Greenfield was one of many to call for the unnamed teacher’s resignation, concluding: “The teacher responsible for coming up with and assigning students with this task must be held accountable for attempting to indoctrinate children with anti-Semitic beliefs…Quite obviously, this teacher lacks the judgment and common sense necessary to have a position of such great responsibility and is clearly not fit to return to the classroom.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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‘Do Not Pick Up the Pencil’: New York Parents Coach Kids to Refuse Common Core Tests

‘Do Not Pick Up the Pencil’: New York Parents Coach Kids to Refuse Common Core Tests:
Common Core, the controversial set of educational standards aimed at firming up students’ grasp of math and language, has already attracted criticism from sources both left and right. On the one hand, privacy advocates fret over the program’s data mining on students. On the other, teachers complain that the standards are overly rigid and won’t lead to a better education system. And now, parents angry over their students being tested on subjects they haven’t had time to learn are striking back as well — by giving their children a truly hands’ on lesson in civil disobedience.
WHEC Rochester reports:

Some parents are really fired up over this. News10NBC talked with parents outside School No. 33 including city school board member Willa Powell. The New York State Education Department says students are obligated to take the state tests, just like any other test and cannot opt out. But parents say they have the ultimate authority when it comes to their kids. They’re going to tell their kids to not pick up the pencil and tell the teacher they don’t have to take the state test.
Willa Powell, City School Board Member, said, “Guide your child to tell them how they go about refusing. How they go about refusing is simply do not pick up the pencil. Do not put their name on the page and say I don’t have to take this test. It’s that simple.”
Beth Laidlaw, City School Parent, said, “My child would not take a test whose score is not reported to the classroom teacher so it can’t help the classroom teacher do her job better. The scores are not included in the report card grade so it can’t hurt the child not to take it. As a parent, as a U.S. citizen, it is wonderful that I am able to coach my child to refuse these tests.”

The station also produced a video report, viewable below:
These instances of civil disobedience may hold back the test’s administration, though the extent to which they have that effect will depend on how many students are induced to behave in this fashion. Otherwise, a few students may end up simply failing due to blank tests.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: ‘I Stand By’ ‘Kids Belong to Whole Communities’ MSNBC Promo

Melissa Harris-Perry: ‘I Stand By’ ‘Kids Belong to Whole Communities’ MSNBC Promo:

MSNBC

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry on Saturday strongly reaffirmed the sentiment behind her recent promotional ad for the network in which she declared that children are part of the collective.
Addressing the outcry on her show Saturday morning, Harris-Perry said it would be “too easy” to simply dismiss that some people are just “haters.”
In the ad, Harris-Perry said that “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
“I can see that some people are genuinely upset about what I actually said,” she said.
She added, “I stand by that statement. Families have first and primary responsibility for their children. The private sphere of our homes and families deserves great deference in policy and in practice…but I believe our children are not our private property, they are not just extensions of ourselves. They are independent, individual beings.”
Harris-Perry — who is auctioning off the sweater she wore in the spot for charity — said the ad “isn’t about me wanting to take your kids, and this isn’t even about whether children are property.”
“This is about whether we as a society, expressing our collective will through our public institutions, including our government, have a right to impinge on individual freedoms in order to advance a common good. And that is exactly the fight that we have been having for a couple hundred years,” she said.
She said a budget debate, after all, is “a conversation about finding the balance between rights and responsibilities — private earnings and public investments.”
“Our kids who will inherit our nation belong to all of us and we have a collective responsibility to them. I hit a nerve with a 30-second promotional ad, and the nerve that I hit is connected to the central nervous system of our democracy, at the synapses of civic engagement is the electrical current that forges our more perfect union.”

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A Mind Awake

Monday, April 15, 2013

NY Teacher Who Asked Students to ‘Argue That Jews Are Evil’ Reportedly Put on Leave

‘Do Not Pick Up the Pencil’: New York Parents Coach Kids to Refuse Common Core Tests

Melissa Harris-Perry: ‘I Stand By’ ‘Kids Belong to Whole Communities’ MSNBC Promo

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