Testing! Testing!

[velvetpage]

Hamilton teacher pulled from class over a religiously-charged assignment

My first thought: I've been saying for years that the emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving was going to lead to this kind of conflict in schools. It's in direct opposition to what many parents understand school to be about, and while it's possible to find a lot of good and neutral topics for critical thinking (e.g. Racism is wrong! The Montgomery Bus Boycott was fabulous!) it's also very easy to get in trouble with them. I was wondering when something like this would happen, and how the board would handle it when it did; I'm not terribly surprised that they seem to have thrown him to the wolves.

My second thought: The first article contained the following paradigmatic quote: “This would be appropriate for a university tutorial, not Grade 6." Here we have it, folks: the disconnect between what is being taught and what parents believe is being taught. Though I'm rather surprised he took on this particular topic, the idea of social justice, media, and critical thinking in the classroom are all firmly embedded in our board and our provincial curriculum. Questions of that depth, on subject matter relating more to social justice issues, are routine. It's not a huge stretch to bring views of God and religion into a classroom that has already discussed issues like poverty, globalization, earthquakes, and tsunamis. But the parent either doesn't realize that these questions are routine, or sees this particular version as fundamentally different. That's a big, big disconnect, and a serious threat to critical thinking in Ontario classrooms.

Third: I looked up the song, and I think he asked the wrong question. There are ways to ask a deep question about that song that do not ask a student to justify their belief in God, but he didn't take those. (Or, of course, he could have chosen a different media piece about social justice rather than agnosticism. I'm not terribly comfortable with that choice, but it certainly would have been safer.) I would like to know the context; what is the big idea of this unit? How did the choice of this assignment fit into it?

Fourth: It looks to me like the teacher asked for exactly what he would with any other writing assignment: when you give an opinion, you have to back it up.
That's standard operating procedure, and the student probably knew this very well. Strictly following the rubric for this kind of writing at that level - the rubric I used in grade five, which is fairly standard - would indeed have resulted in a failing grade if the student didn't give reasons at all, because that's what you do in that kind of writing. What I don't know, because it didn't happen, is whether or not the teacher would have taken religious reasons that came from her faith as valid and given her a decent mark. If he wouldn't, in my opinion that would be a far worse offense than asking the question to begin with. I also don't know if that was clearly explained to her.

The other piece of information that is lacking is the student's history with writing assignments. Is this the kind of kid who normally writes pages about well-developed and -supported opinions? Do words have to be dragged out of her one at a time? Context is important and I don't have enough to say if the teacher overstepped. I do think it's telling that many other students and parents are rallying to him.

I've spent years carefully dancing around religious issues in the classroom. I've had a couple of assignments which, taken out of context, could have led to the same result. I don't know how far out of context this assignment has been taken. I hope he gets his job back, and I hope the union is going to fight tooth and nail for him. But I suspect he's not going to use materials like that after this.

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

This would be appropriate for a university tutorial, not Grade 6

I find this problematic. It seems to me that it's exactly the process of providing challenging matters of thought and discussion that prepares students to participate in university tutorials. That said, I agree with your commentary on the purpose of this assignment, and our lack of context.

From the behaviour and attitudes of parents at my children's own elementary school, I also agree that many parents don't seem to have a good handle on what kinds of basic tools are taught to our children, what their purpose is, and how they can be put to use.

If I were a teacher (I am not), knowing what I know about the song, and the furor it caused in the wider social context when it first appeared, I'm very surprised that the teacher didn't seek to better inform the parents, or the kids, ahead of time as to the nature of the material and what point he was trying to address in teaching it. I might have been tempted to send the lyric sheet home to parents ahead of time with a note about what discussion would touch on, what it would not touch on, and the whole point of the lesson. Sort of a "warning this is a tough topic, but we can look at it safely, because it's valuable to help understand this theme that we're also looking at".

One thing that angers me greatly about some religious parents' opinions is they seem awfully quick to stand up for the right of their children to not have their belief systems challenged, but they're completely willing to, by the same turn, trample all over the belief systems of others (including those who choose not to believe in a divine presence).

If it were as simple as "we demand you teach about the Christian God because all other faiths are a lie", I could see that point of view and then seek to meet it on one set of terms. But to be presented with the ironic inconsistency of "I demand that my beliefs be privileged because I have a right to believe what I choose to"? That's nonsensical, and even more offensive than just pure-strain fundamentalism, it seems to me.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I agree completely. When a parent challenged me last year because I answered her child's direct question about my belief with, "I'm an atheist," and then followed that up with, "I'm not telling you what you should believe," she did it on the grounds that I was influencing the students to give up their faith. It's absolute hogwash that a Christian teacher can say, "I'm a Christian," and then move on, and never get called on it, but an atheist teacher can't do the same. I don't see why I can't answer a child's direct question about what I believe. In fact, it seems disrespectful of them to tell them I won't answer.

I worry that events like this are going to feed the anti-teacher perception that's been lying low the last few years, just in time for a provincial election where getting people riled up against teachers could be very, very useful.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Growing anti-teacher perception seems just in tone with the government in power at the federal level at the moment, and it seems reasonable to assume that the demographics of political voting in this country say something about the winds of popular feeling.

Perhaps it's time to migrate away from direct answers to questions: when a child asks you "whether you believe in God", you start out a unit on the value of that age-old advice of how it's never a good idea to talk about religion or politics in public. 8/

One of the reasons I chose not to go into the teaching profession when I had the opportunity was knowing full well that I had very little patience to spend on the kind of idiotic dancing about one had to do in the face of all-too-common parental ignorance, arrogance, and laziness.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

While I absolutely think it's a good thing to have students engaging with serious philosophical questions at a young age, I also think teachers need to tread extremely carefully with topics that are as politically and socially fraught as religion. Engaging with religious questions in grade six is not the same as engaging with them in university. Sixth graders, unless they're gifted, are probably just gaining the capacity to engage with abstract philosophical issues for the first time in their lives. They're very young and very impressionable. Teachers should go very gently in challenging the beliefs of someone who has had so little time to formulate what they believe, and is still so susceptible to undue adult influence.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

One of the publicly funded school boards in this province starts teaching kids about religion in junior kindergarten. And it does seem to have the effect of teaching them more than just a singular worldview: it opens them up to the notion of belief, and that people believe a whole bunch of different things.

I'm not sure which tack I'd rather take, but I'm pretty sure what I'm against is using the "we shall keep religion out of the classroom" meme as a cloak for orthodoxy.

At least the Catholic school seems to have developed a thoughtful curriculum and practice around the issue, whereas schools without this curriculum don't have that framework to fall back on.

But I agree with you entirely that care needs to be taken when teaching children challenging material, especially material about fundamental social issues: religion or otherwise.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The problem is that what might be sufficient care for one student or class or set of parents may prove to be insufficient for others.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Thanks for doing the job you do, Erin; it's good that we have conscientious folks like you negotiating this minefield for our kids.

[shadow-maze.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure the existence of god is not a social justice issue. Religion, of course, is, but the existence or actions of some particular religion is not what was being discussed. There are no religious reasons for belief in the existance of god (churches are a human reaction to the existence of god... god(s) are not the result of religion) so the child would not be in a position to use them as a proper argument in support of their belief. What the teacher would have been prepared to accept as justification for faith would be interesting to hear, in that if it could in any way be justified, it wouldn't be "faith" any more, would it? Some line from the bible comes to mind about "blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, that's my point. The song is basically about the age-old question, "If God is loving, why is there still suffering?" It could have been explored from the humanist perspective of, "What can we do to alleviate the suffering the song talks about?" and if he'd taken that tack, I doubt he would have run into this problem. He asked the wrong question to support what I suspect was his theme (because teachers are being instructed to teach about social justice.)

Regardless, had the student decided to give any reasons, he would have been obliged to accept any reasons she gave, because there's no way to disprove them except through faith (or lack of faith.) But we don't know, because the girl couldn't articulate her lack of reasons any more than she could articulate reasons.