Letter to the editor: Columbia County woman offers thoughts on possible literature textbook
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Ms. Lee — I taught high school literature for many years, Textbooks were always loaded with margin notes and reflection questions for the students to tackle. However, I usually guided the students to reflect upon the aspects of the message as they saw fit. And yes, I taught fiction composed by various authors from many diverse cultural genres. I think your fear of SEL and other guidelines is valid. I hope that you are successful in your efforts; however, I can only advise you to trust your child’s teachers. The vast majority are good, honest people without an axe to grind. As long as the kids are passing the state-mandated tests, the administration does not micromanage how the teacher got them there. Once again, good luck!
There’s much more curated political non-fiction in these modern textbooks than in the past, and the material is selected to raise issues important to one particular political party. That’s by design and an essential part of educational structure under critical theory. If you’ve never read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed or The Politics of Education, I highly recommend it. Those two works are highly influential in today’s faculties of education.
“The vast majority are good, honest people”
Yeah, but it’s critical to be able to figure out which ones are not and the institutional structures make that difficult today. Our own school administrators in the past have hosted critical race theorists for teacher training and I’m currently working to get just one piece of pseudo science propaganda piece removed from Environmental Science. There’s more going on than we’ll catch, unfortunately.
My sisters were teachers in public schools from the 1960’s until their retirements. They taught English, English Literature, and Englsih as a Second Language (ESL). I witnessed their frustration as they lost control of their classroom discipline, lesson plans and textbooks, schedules, instructional technology, and autonomy. They were caught between irresponsible, indulgent, and permissive parents and school administrators who did not have their backs when dealing with parents, the school boards, and the federal Department of Education. They toed the line and taught what and how they were told to teach out of fear of losing their contract or having their career destroyed. I agree with Ms. Lee’s assessment of the Columbia County textbooks, but would not expect the most principled of teachers to fall on their swords if this type of propaganda was their mandated curriculum. It needs to be stopped before it gets into the classroom.
Thank you for sharing. I reviewed Savvas Learning Company and found they not only promote DEI, social justice and more, but partner with companies thar unapologetically promote concepts of CRT. What disturbs me most is that the CCSD committee assigned to review the various curriculum options either did not do a thorough review or if they did we can only conclude they support companies that promote concepts of CRT, SEL and the CASEL model, social justice, and more of the like. Either way is not good. 1. The process is broken and does not work to protect our children from divisive concepts OR the district supports a curriculum from a company that clearly promotes DEI and concepts of CRT. My question is which is it?
Regardless of the details, we shouldn’t be forking out money to the worst of woke companies. The school board knows who they’re proposing to deal with. Hoping they don’t put our tax dollars into the hands of people that hate counties like ours.
Interestingly, the school board approved HMH for 6-8th grade literature. Most recently, we have seen in this companies 4th grade lessons the promotion of the World Economic Forum teaching our kids to eat “eco friendly foods” aka insects. More on this to come. Really, the WEF in 4th grade!
On a positive note, the CCSD retracted their recommendation for the SAVVAS Learning Co curriculum. On a not so positive note the board approved HMH in place of it. Read todays Letter to the editor to learn more about HMH which promotes child activism, globalism etc.