Re: Re: Re: Re: for H.S. band directors


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Posted by Rick Denney on January 17, 2003 at 14:20:59:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: for H.S. band directors posted by My Comment on January 17, 2003 at 12:05:34:

Mathematics is probably one of the very few courses of study that still remain somewhat objective, though methods of teaching math have varied all over the place with the winds of educational fashion, so perhaps the issues in question don't apply to you quite as much. If you taught English, and could not prescribe the reading of actual literature and instead was limited to the materials in a "literature" textbook (materials with an obvious social or political slant), or if you taught history and discovered that your required history textbook contain revisionist misinformation, you might feel differently. These are common situations and have been for a number of decades. I'm in my 40's and was probably close to the last generation of students in my home district to be required to read outside literature, for example. I know for a fact my teacher had to defend the practice repeatedly, and that she was the only remaining English teacher in the school to do so.

But I still don't buy that if you didn't like the textbook used by your system, you would be able to use one of your own choosing. Let's say that your district required you to use the Taylor calculus textbook (to pull a name from a very old memory file), and you found it was too advanced for your high-school honors math students, and instead preferred Protter-Morrey? (Or, the other way around--P-M bored your gifted class and you thought they should be challenged more.) Unless you are very big fish in a very small pond, you would be out of luck. And if you can remove a disruptive student effectively (meaning in some cases permanently), then you must be one of very few teachers who can. Supposing you disagree with your district committee? And though I know many teachers, I can't think of one that wasn't required, at the very least, to provide excessive justification for failing a student if that student's parents complained, especially if that student is in any sort of socially protected class.

So, count yourself lucky. But I don't think you can consider yourself typical.

Rick "who thinks establishments in power will allways allow you to have the 'power' to do their bidding" Denney


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