November 22, 2006

Teaching truth is hateful?

Thanksgiving lessons taught in new lightTeacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them.

The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.
Oddly, not everyone is happy with this appraoch.Others see Morgan and teachers like him as too extreme.

"I think that is very sad," said Janice Shaw Crouse, a former college dean and public high school teacher and now a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization. "He is teaching his students to hate their country. That is a very distorted view of history, a distorted view of Thanksgiving."
Comment:  The lesson Morgan uses is described in Rethinking Columbus, an educational resource for teachers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting teaching approach, one I'd think more effective and appropriate for older kids--maybe age 14 or so. Younger kids might not understand the complexity of the greater lesson imparted.

Rob said...

Note that it was a high school teacher who said Morgan "is teaching his students to hate their country." Presumably she thinks his lesson is inappropriate for all ages.