Education - Training
Educational Priorities to Strengthen Our Schools!
My mother gave me a box of crayons when I was in 1st grade. It only had a few more crayons than the basic box of eight!
The teacher had requested crayons and for a parent to purchase them. Perchance my mother purchased a bigger box for me with larger crayons. It was for a classroom project as I recall now. As to its purpose, I still wonder to this day. As for me, well, here is the rest of the story.
As we started the classroom project, suddenly, the teacher came over, took my crayons from my desk, and asked me if she could share them with the other class members. Okay, I was not opposed to this, I thought innocently. What could I do about it? After all, I was only six years of age. The teacher then proceeded to destroy them by breaking them into very small pieces to distribute around the room. I was in shock! But then, what could I do as a student in a class, as a six-year-old with an elder leader making demands of me? I suppose she was trying to teach me some type of 'conformity' in retrospect today.
My mother, bless her, was more than just a little amazed by this! I am certain knowing my parent the way I do, that at the parent-teacher conferences late fall that year, she had a discussion with the teacher about being compensated for her loss. (It's funny how things work. That teacher was no longer my first-grade teacher when we came back to class after the winter break as she had left the program. I wonder why to this day?)
As you can see I had problems with indoctrination by the Minnesota school system and a teacher even back in the 1950s. Shame! They did this type of stuff to 6-year-olds even back then!
The results: I never trusted another teacher to form my decision process when I could certainly do at least as well, if not better on my own.
The broader perspective: My mother took an opportunity to encourage me to do more, learn more, and broaden my engagement by going beyond boundaries set by the status quo with the simple purchase of a few more crayons. She stood in the gap to encourage me when others either did not understand or were more committed to hammering the identity of students with the assumption that each student is just the same pliable piece of clay. My mother did this for me, as a parent, throughout her 97-year life! Horray!
The application today: A creative experience for an inquisitive student can be difficult. However, never give up on an idea, see it through, and develop it to create a breakthrough of enlightenment in your life and those whose lives are improved by the discovery.
That teacher was wrong then and still today! We need a family-centric perspective on our students' development; Forcing them to accept ideas that are not founded in simple family values is contradictive to the parents' involvement in their child's development.
Ed Gross, MORvets Chair
A Student's Development Should be Family-Centric and Not Empeded Upon by Inappropriate Training!