Marxist indoctrination of little kids in Seattle

Post lifted from Dinocrat. See the original for links

You probably have seen this article about teachers' banning Legos in a Seattle school and then browbeating the eight year old children until they got the results they wanted:

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.. We should all just have the same number of pieces, like 15 or 28 pieces."

As teachers, we were excited by these comments. The children gave voice to the value that collectivity is a solid, energizing way to organize a community - and that it requires power-sharing, equal access to resources, and trust in the other participants. They expressed the need, within collectivity, for personal expression, for being acknowledged as an individual within the group. And finally, they named the deep satisfaction of shared engagement and investment, and the ways in which the participation of many people deepens the experience of membership in community for everyone.

From this framework, the children made a number of specific proposals for rules about Legos, engaged in some collegial debate about those proposals, and worked through their differing suggestions until they reached consensus about three core agreements:

* All structures are public structures. Everyone can use all the Lego structures. But only the builder or people who have her or his permission are allowed to change a structure.

* Lego people can be saved only by a "team" of kids, not by individuals.

* All structures will be standard sizes.

With these three agreements - which distilled months of social justice exploration into a few simple tenets of community use of resources - we returned the Legos to their place of honor in the classroom.

Children absorb political, social, and economic worldviews from an early age.We believe that educators have a responsibility to pay close attention to the themes, theories, and values that children use to anchor their play. Then we can interact with those worldviews, using play to instill the values of equality and democracy.

It's hard to say what is most offensive about this. Perhaps it is the relentless indoctrination of these 8-year olds with Marxist and feminist claptrap. Perhaps it utterly clueless tone of moral superiority that Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin manage to infuse into every clich‚ they form. Those are bad enough. Worse still, in our view, is that these fine examples of the contemporary teaching profession inflicted on the rest of us 4,814 words to describe all this. Each one of their words should be a violation of Geneva Convention prohibitions against torture.




Australia: Selective schools improve learning

SELECTIVE schools are helping students score an extra 10 marks in the Higher School Certificate. The NSW Department of Education has for the first time released official data which shows that students at selective schools have been achieving on average an additional two marks for each subject, based on their relative performance in year 10.

The department has a database that allows it to compare students' results as they progress from year 3 to year 12. Their marks in the basic skills test in years 3 and 5 are compared. The same is done for the literacy and numeracy tests in years 7 and 8. The department also tracks improvement in students' results between years 10 and 12. This measure is called value-added, and shows that students in selective schools are lifting their performance in year 12 beyond expectations. The value-added index can often be higher in comprehensive schools, which help poor-performing students reach their full potential. But selective school students often perform to their potential in year 10, which leaves little room for improvement.

A spokeswoman for the department said there was "truth to the idea that students in selective schools are close to the ceiling of performance and that it is more difficult for them to demonstrate consistent growth compared with average- or lower-achieving students". "The fact that students in selective schools demonstrate above-expected levels of achievement so consistently is a truly stunning outcome of the selective stream," she said.

Last year the average "value-added per student" for selective schools across the five School Certificate external tests ranged from 2.5 marks in science to 5.8 marks in mathematics. The School Certificate value-added is the number of marks a student obtains above or below what might be expected, based on relative performance in the year 5 basic skills test.

But the Greens MP and education spokesman, John Kaye, challenged the department's value-added data. "Most comparisons between schools are meaningless because of the wide variations in student performance and the spread of improvements within schools," he said.

The Minister for Education, John Della Bosca, said he would establish a working group to help determine which schools would receive the extra 600 selective school places announced before the election in March. He said the composition of the working group was expected to include representatives from parents' and citizens' associations, primary and secondary principals, the Department of Education, and teachers. "Some of the issues it will take into account will include the fair allocation of places in rural, regional and metropolitan areas and the impacts on surrounding school communities," he said. "Our overall objective is to ensure the places are allocated in an equitable and sensible way."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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