Christopher Bauer’s Weblog

Greetings,

This came through my Bloglines last night, and I thought I would share it with you. It is an columnist from the Dickson Herald, who states that it is a teacher’s job to teach the subject they are hired to teach, and lambastes the teachers who, say, talk about the connections between Hitler and Bush, in a geography class. I have two thoughts on this.

I would agree whole heartedly on this. If I am supposed to be teaching Math, and I would rather talk about another subject, I am responsible, as a professional, to deal with the math first, and then, once that is finished, I might be able to do so. This would be analogous to any other profession. I would not want to go and sit down with an accountant and have the accountant begin talking about some random and unrelated topic while I am paying him to do, say, my taxes.

However, if the topic I am teaching, and the topic I can be framed by my subject, say, I would like to talk about the current politics of President Bush, and I am teaching Government, History, or a similar Social Studies subject, I believe it would be acceptable, as long as it is framed properly, and the discussion is balanced. If not, then it would be no better than teachers who randomly talk about whatever they want and waste the time of the teacher, the time of the student, and the taxpayer’s money.

Work Cited:

Dannenmaier, Bill. “Teach what you’re being paid for.” The Dickson Herald. 28 April, 2006. http://www.rctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060428/MTCN0205/304280023/1302/MTCN0305
“Colorado Teacher On Leave After Alleged Anti-Bush Remarks.” The Associate Press. Fox News. March 02, 2006. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186672,00.html>
“Suspended Colo. Teacher Won’t File Lawsuit Against School.” Fox News. March 03, 2006. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186708,00.html>
Bauer, Christopher. “Appropriateness of Ranting and Raving in the Classroom.” 7 March, 2006. http://cbauer.edublogs.org/2006/03/07/appropriateness-of-ranting-and-raving-in-the-classroom/

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 3:09 pm and is filed under General Interest and You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.