How do you educate a teacher so brainless/racist that she assigns students to give 3 good reasons for slavery?

How do you educate a teacher so brainless/racist that she assigns students to give 3 good reasons for slavery? How do you educate a principal so brainless/racist that he defends the action by saying the assignment was intended to spark debate? Debate about what? About how good it felt for the slave owners? How much wealth the slaves produced? No, Mr. Van Dellen, an inservice about cultural insensitivity isn't going to fix this problem.

The problem is the inability of a huge proportion of teachers and administrators to think critically. 

Teachers need education. Too many of them come to the classroom with a credential but little ability or inclination to use their powers of reason. 

Many, if not most, teachers have no idea how to teach kids to use their brains to separate truth and falsehood.

Step number one is to evaluate teachers' abilities effectively. Then the top 15% of teachers should be used to teach the average teachers how to think analytically.

School Homework Asks Kids To Give 3 ‘Good’ Reasons For Slavery
Taryn Finley
Huffington Post
01/10/2018

A private Christian school in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, is under fire after asking fourth-graders to lay out three “good” reasons for slavery as part of a homework assignment.

On Monday, the students at Our Redeemer Lutheran School were handed a social studies worksheet that told them to “give 3 ‘good’ reasons for slavery and 3 bad reasons.”...

Principal Jim Van Dellen sent a letter to parents with an apology and said that the teacher didn’t properly describe the task to students,according to the station.

[So, Mr. Van Dellen, why don't you explain the "proper" way to describe the task?]

The assignment was intended to spark debate in the class, he told Fox 6, adding that it has been pulled from the curriculum.

Brown-Berry shared an update on Facebook stating that she met with the principal and that he agreed to mandate “cultural diversity/cultural competency inservice [training for faculty] to prevent this from happening again.”...

Second-grade teacher's unique homework policy goes viral

Second-grade teacher's unique homework policy goes viral

By Jennifer Earl  

CBS News  

August 22, 2016

 

...[T]here’s at least one stressful thing second-graders at Godley Elementary School in Texas won’t have to worry about this year: homework.

Brandy Young teaches 2nd grade at Godley Elementary School in Godley, Texas.

godleyisd.net

Brandy Young, a second-grade teacher at the school, passed out a letter to every parent at a “Meet the Teacher Night” ahead of the start of the school year to explain her new homework policy -- or should we say, no-homework policy.

A pleased parent posted a photo of the letter on her Facebook page, and it went viral with more than 59,000 shares...

“There will be no formally assigned homework this year,” Brandy Young explained in the letter. “Rather, I ask you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early.”

The teacher said homework just wasn’t working for her classroom anymore. So, she decided to make meaningful change.

“[Students] work hard all day. When they go home they have other things they need to learn there,” Young told CBS News. “I’m trying to develop their whole person; it’s not beneficial to go home and do pencil and paper work.”...

Homework overload gets an 'F' from experts

Homework overload gets an 'F' from experts
By Corey Binns
TODAY.com
7/27/2012

It seems the smoke has barely cleared from those Fourth of July celebrations, but in many parts of the U.S., parents are trying to light fires under their kids in an effort to get them studying for the new school year.

Unfortunately, new research shows the amount of time kids clock in out of school may not pay off.

Kids who do more homework actually perform worse on standardized tests, according to research by Sydney University educational psychologist Richard Walker, author of the forthcoming book, Reforming Homework: Practices, Learning and Policies.

Homework only boosts student scores in the final three years of high school, says Walker, and only these older high school students should be doing a couple of hours of homework a night. Younger students only benefit from small assignments, if they’re getting help at home.

But that's not the end of the homework hurdles.

High-achieving students who are swamped with homework can suffer from poor mental and physical health,says Stanford University professor Denise Pope.

In fact, findings consistently show that homework has very limited value in the elementary grades...

Arizona girl, 8, humiliated with "catastrophe" award

UPDATE: I watched this video of a report on this story and was delighted to get a look at the girl's actual homework. Some of the assigned work looked like excellent reinforcement, assuming it was actually at the girl's independent reading level. But then I spied the spelling work. Experts long ago found that copying spelling words more than three times is completely useless, in addition to being mind-numbingly boring. I could see that the words were repeated well over three times each. It is busy work, pure and simple. Shame on the teacher.

Experts say that children should be given no more than ten minutes homework for each year they have been in school. I wonder if this girl's teacher followed best practices in assigning homework. Did she give more than half an hour's homework to this eight year old? Yes, I know that parents often want more homework for their kids. They think it will make them better students. Instead, the parents should be reading to their kids, discussing what they've read, discussing everyday math, and exchanging ideas and opinions with their kids. A lot of parents do this, and their children do better in school.

Also, I'd really love to know what the assignment was. Many teachers give work that they didn't have time to cover in class, so they expect parents to teach it. This girl's parents may not have been able to give her the needed help.

Many teachers think respect is a one-way street, something kids owe to them, but they don't owe to kids. One teacher at my school contemptuously referred to kids without homework as "losers".

Arizona girl, 8, humiliated with "catastrophe" award
Teacher pointed her out for not having homework
BY NANCY DILLON
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
May 28, 2012

An Arizona teacher gave her 8-year-old student a "catastrophe" award for not having her homework.

The dog ate her homework, so third-grader Cassandra Garcia got a serving of humiliation that some are finding hard to swallow.

The 8-year-old was called in front of her laughing classmates recently to receive a “catastrophe” award for “most excuses for not having homework” at her Tucson elementary school, KGUN9 News reported.

The colorful certificate included a giant cartoon ice cream cone, her teacher’s signature and a smiley face in black marker.

“It’s cruel, and no child should be given an award like this,” the girl’s mom, Christina Valdez, told KGUN. “It’s disturbing.”

She said her daughter was crushed by the hazing, so she complained to the principal at Desert Springs Academy.

“She blew me off. She said it was a joke that was played and that the teachers joke around with the children,” Valdez said.

Sheri Bauman, a psychologist at the University of Arizona College of Education, agreed.

“That isn’t an award,” Bauman told KGUN. “It doesn’t fit the criteria."

Being humiliated after making mistakes is counterproductive to learning, she said.

Are parents cheating with homework helpers?

Are parents cheating with homework helpers? Not unless the helpers are doing it wrong. Some kids will simply get failing grades and fail to get an education if they don't get help with focusing on homework. They shouldn't be deprived of an education because they don't yet have self-discipline. In fact, they shouldn't be deprived of an education if they have ADD and won't have self-discipline until well into adulthood. Of course, the helper shouldn't do too much for the student, and any sensible person will do it right.

Are parents cheating with homework helpers?
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November 8, 2010
by Theresa Walsh Giarrusso

The New York Times had a fascinating story about a new trend in parents hiring homework helpers/monitors to help their kids get through their homework. They’re not necessarily subject tutors. They are more there to help with organizational and motivational issues and to make sure the homework is done by the time the parents get home.

The indication from the story is that parents are often at work and can’t be there to make sure the homework gets done. Having the homework helper gets the homework done in the afternoons and allows the family to enjoy dinner and a happy evening without fighting over what is left to accomplish.

From The New York Times:

“As schools have piled on expectations and career paths have sucked in both mothers and fathers, this niche industry is catering to “students who are capable of doing the work,” but “need someone there who can just be there with them to consistently do the work in a regular manner,” said Mike Wallach, who along with Ms. Kraglievich runs Central Park Tutors.”

“But it has also led some educators to question whether this trend might simply be a subcontracted form of “helicopter parenting,” depriving children of the self-reliance they will need later in life.”

“ ‘I think it really came about as a result of very, very busy parents who needed some additional care given for their children after school and saw the opportunity to meld that with some academic support,’ said Robert Lauder, the principal of Friends Seminary, a Manhattan private school. But, he said, ‘with any kind of support, there is the possibility of it becoming a crutch.’ ”

Besides being concerned about the help becoming a crutch another worry is the homework helper doing the work for the kids.

Some helpers in the story were earning $100 an hour. Other parents were advertising to pay between $15 to $30 an hour for this help.

I’ve recently met a nanny who is basically doing this for her family. She gets the kids from school and deals with all the same homework issues I am dealing with. She has to cajole them to get started, make sure they are doing it and that it is actually right. She even gets calls from the teacher. When the parents get home the fighting over the homework is usually done and they get to enjoy happy time with their kids.

I told her we are re-writing her resume to include all this. She’s not just taking “care” of the kids. She’s doing one of the hardest parenting tasks there is!

So what do you think of homework helpers? Are these normally parents or day care workers in regular families? Would these services be worth the money for working parents whose kids are too old for day care and would just be home not doing their homework? Would it avoid potential fights?

Is the homework helper like a teacher where they will work harder for them than for you? Does it keep your relationship with the child clean and fight free so you can enjoy your dinner and evenings together? Are parents shirking their own involvement in their child’s academic development?

At what point should kids have these organizational and self-motivational skills down for themselves?