'Obama socialism' homework angers students at Kell High School (teachers, companies)

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Hooray for a teacher that is getting his students to think outside the box.

it's not getting your students to "think outside the box" when you give them a false premise based on your own personal viewpoints and then ask them to prove it's true. that's indoctrination. i don't know where you've been the past 13 years, but you seem to have forgotten the "pass" that president bush got on nearly every issue that came up. afghanistan, iraq, torture, you name it, the press would give him a pass. obama isn't getting any kind of special treatment— but he did win the last two elections in a landslide (i don't know why you would think 365 electoral votes isn't a landslide), not because the press is giving him a pass, but because the republican party is too busy being the 'stupid party' (quote from bobby jindal there), riling up votes from the rednecks by promoting xenophobia and vigilante justice instead of promoting free market ideals and things the republican party has traditionally stood for. if the republicans can ever get their act together, maybe they'll win another election— but the way they are going, they seem to be digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole.

[GeorgiatoChina]

Not to mention all the vagina hating republicans/neocons do. Seriously, you want moderate women to side with that?

[Iconographer]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Well, if it is an "idiotic talking point that is tired" then the student has the ability to disprove the assertion. Whether Fox is considered a worthy source or not, at least they are critical of the current president. In my 51 years in this country, I have never seen the pass that this current president gets from the press. A free press is paramount to the free society we have. It is like they have rolled over and given up their duty for critical analysis. Obama did not win either election by a landslide. The house is republican. A majority of states have republican governors. Yet the majority of the press are going out of their way to marginalize conservatives and pander like fawning teeny boppers at anything the man does.

Hooray for a teacher that is getting his students to think outside the box.

Could not have said it better myself, Saintmarks. Furthermore, here we have the media seizing on what could be construed as conservative bias in the classroom...what about the myriad of examples of liberal bias? The media could fill an entire newspaper with them. Anyone that has had a nodding acquaintance with the public school system knows this to be true. My daughters had anti-conservative rhetoric shoved down their throats by their teachers (proud union members, no doubt) on an almost daily basis. I'll never forget my middle daughter coming home to inform me that her Math teacher suspended the daily curriculum so they could be lectured on the dangers of living under the Bush Administration. When my daughter tried to offer a defense of conservative economic policy, she was blasted by the teacher and threatened with a visit to the Principal's Office. Unfortunately for that Jackboot that called herself a teacher, the incident lit a fire under quite a few parents. Media coverage of this? Zilch.

[ja1myn]

Not sure that I see anything wrong with it.

[ATLTJL]

I'm really for any kind of message to question your leadership, whether it is seen as anti-Bush or anti-Obama.

It's very important to learn to question authority and that the story you are being told is not always the truth.

Just to get on a tangent with you guys, I totally agree that Obama is often given a free pass by the media and gets away with stuff that should be questioned. It isn't because the media is liberal, it's because above all else, the media wants access. The Bush administration also got enormous passes during the Iraq war, with all the embedded reporters that were supposedly reporting the action from the frontlines. Nevermind that they were only allowed to report from the platoons that they were assigned to by the military and only went on missions they were approved to go on. If you think we got the whole story from the Iraq war, think again!

Nowadays all presidents are given free passes by the media because what they fear most is losing their access. If the public schools teach the children to question what is going on, then it's a rare instance of the education system actually doing what it is supposed to.

[ja1myn]

^^^ ATLJTL knows what's up. Kids need to know that it's ok to question the government. They are citizens of the US and have a say in it. They should not live in fear of it.

[erick295]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Well, if it is an "idiotic talking point that is tired" then the student has the ability to disprove the assertion.

I didn't see anything in the assignment that allowed the students to disprove the assertion. The assignment was to show why Obama has turned the US into a socialist country, not to show whether or not he has.

That being said, if it's good enough for high school it's good enough for you... how exactly is the US any more socialist now than in 2008? If you can't answer that conclusively, then the assignment is fundamentally retarded.

[deacongirl]

Originally Posted by jsvh

The problem is that it is a loaded question / assignment. In the question, it assumes Obama is turning this into a socialist country and asks you to seek out evidence to support it. Asking students to analyze and then draw their own conclusions would make for a great assignment. Engaging students in current events can be effective. I would actually love to make the case that Obama has done a lot more than the GOP has to move us closer to a free market economy.

Exactly. I can't help wondering where that teacher got a degree from. The original assignment is NOT how you teach critical thinking.

[Tarzanman]

if the teacher watches fox news, then they are almost certainly misinformed. That is more of a problem than some lame assignment given to the kids

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

Except the assignment isn't really getting the students to think critically at all. It's telling them to go to websites that have an incredible conservative bias that denotes that Obama is turning America into a socialist country, something that is looked down heavily upon in the states. As the poster above you said, it is assuming that Obama is a socialist and to make comparison and similarities to other well known socialists. It's the same idiotic conservative talking point that has been tired out for years now.

I wonder what the reaction would be if a teacher gave an assignment asking students to find evidence for a comparison of Adolph Hitler's methods of changing Germany from a capitalist country to a fascist country to President George W. Bush's methods of changing the United States from a capitalist country to a fascist country.