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Posted on 01/23/2003 7:41:08 AM PST by conservativecorner
This so laughable. Gotta love it.
Yesterday I told you about the New Jersey Education Association’s website. I first read about this situation in JamesTaranto’s WSJ column … and brought it to you.
The NJEA web site has some downloads for parents on how they could get involved with their child’s school. There were three different downloads available. One was labeled “A parent’s resource.” Another was labeled “Spanish version.” The third version of this download was labled “African-American version.”
The difference between the “parent’s resource” and “Spanish version” downloads were obvious. One was in English, one in Spanish. But what about the difference between the “parent’s resource” download and the “African-American” version? Well, here … I’ll let you read for yourself.
First … two paragraphs from the “parent’s resource” version:
Today, there is an increasing emphasis on individualized instruction--fitting the curriculum to the child. Teachers want to employ new methods and materials to give each child personal guidance.
When you assist teachers with growing paperwork, make instructional materials, or conduct a science experiment, you give them more time for planning activities, for trying new teaching strategies, and for working directly with children. As a parent volunteer, you allow them to be more effective teachers--and the school obtains your skills and services that might be unavailable due to financial limitations.
OK .. now the same two paragraphs from the “African-American” version:
Today, teachers want to use new methods and materials to give each child personal guidance.
When you assist teachers, you give them more time to work with children. You allow them to be more effective teachers.
You see the difference, don’t you? The “African-American” version is clearly dumbed-down. No other way to describe it. The NJEA decided that they had to dumb-down the language --- make it simpler – for black parents to be able to grasp it.
Well, shortly after Taranto’s “Best of the Web” column appeared in the WSJ the NJEA acted quickly to calm things down. They first changed their website to change the “African-American version” label to “Ethnically-diverse version.” Oh yeah, that certainly took care of things, didn’t it?
Evidently not. By this morning the NJEA website had dropped the third version altogether and only included the “parent’s resource version” and “Spanish version.” What’s more --- the NJEA is now using the language in the former “African-American version” for the “parent’s resource version.” In other words … they took the dumbed-down language they had prepared for black parents and are now submitting that language for all English-speaking parents. Draw your own conclusions.
OK .. There were a lot of e-mails this morning from folks who, for some reason or another, think I may be trying to pull one over on them. So, I have included two links for you to peruse. First, a link to a cached version of the web page as it existed at the beginning of the week:
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:DiDSmzh-fV4C:www.njea.org/FamilyCircle/default.asp+Good+news+about+New+Jersey%27s+public+schools&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Second, this is how that web page looks this morning. http://www.njea.org/FamilyCircle/
Enjoy! And remember --- these people are teaching your kids. If they dumb-down material for black parents, just what do you think they are doing for your children?
The NJEA is calling for parents to do, on a volunteer basis, some of the work that teachers are paid to do!!!
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Let's see... accountability, parents' wishes regard sex education, those who want to know how union money is spent, government investigators, journalists... Wow, the list would be too long if I completed it!
Their own incompetence?
Just a thought.
Shalom.
The first version is written in "Educationese". It is the language of the professional "educator" and is intended to sound impressive while preventing parents from figuring out what they are up to.
We made a big mistake when we let teaching morph from a trade to a profession in the '30s '40s and '50s.
There is really nothing special to know about how to teach that couldn't be taught in a 90 day Summer Short Course. After all, everyone has years of on the job training in what a good teacher does and what a bad one does.
Because they don't really have anything worthwhile to teach, Education Departments at colleges invent buzz words to sound important and spend their lives putting students through meaningless busy work.
By the time a teacher graduates, they have spent so long hearing reading and writing nonsense and double talk that they can no longer remember what a good teacher is or what they are supposed to do. Most are so befuddled they don't even know they are worthless.
So9
So, before you belittle the officers of any teachers' union, you should at least, first have the courtesy to see how much time and effort the are spending on stealing everything they can.
This is Jersey, the home of "Raised from the Dead" Lautenberg, Prince Torrecelli and Gov. McGeevy (sp?)and the Sopranos. Let's let the union do what it knows best without having the right wing, normal media taking pot shots at hard working (it could be!!!) public servants!
One interesting take on this particular paragraph of "educationalese." Most of our society requires the individual tailor his or her responses to the group. There is room for individuality but not a lot of money spent fitting the environment to the individual. On the job you either shape up or ship out. You don't ask the boss to "employ new methods and materials to give you personal guidance."
They are claiming to offer something that the world never offers and, in so doing, teach children how to fail in the world. I think they make this claim because they really don't understand why their methods are failing so miserably and hope that "tailoring the process to the individual" will help. Not only don't I think it helps, I think it hurts.
Shalom.
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